Free the bees.Bees are in trouble in America. In the 1980s, wild bees were devastated by an invading parasite, the varroa var·ro·an. A reddish-brown, oval mite (Varroa jacobsoni) that is a parasite of honeybees. [New Latin Varroa, genus name, after Marcus Terentius Varro.] , or vampire mite. Now, along with varroa, pesticides and predator birds are devastating the insects needed to pollinate pol·li·nate also pol·len·ate tr.v. pol·li·nat·ed also pol·len·at·ed, pol·li·nat·ing also pol·len·at·ing, pol·li·nates also pol·len·ates To transfer pollen from an anther to the stigma of (a flower). 90 or so crops. "For the first time in our history [pollination] is a limiting factor in crop production," Keith Delaplane, professor of entomology entomology, study of insects, an arthropod class that comprises about 900,000 known species, representing about three fourths of all the classified animal species. at the University of Georgia Organization The President of the University of Georgia (as of 2007, Michael F. Adams) is the head administrator and is appointed and overseen by the Georgia Board of Regents. , told the Christian Science Monitor. U.S. farmers now rely on commercial bee colonies, but there aren't enough of them either. A short-term solution is finding chemicals to kill the parasites, but the mites are developing resistance to them. So scientists are looking at long-term solutions such as genetically altered bees that can resist mites or bees that are imported from eastern Russia and have already adapted to the varroa mite. |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion