Over the past century, there has been a radical and unprecedented population decline of Western honey bees. As the primary pollinators of cultivated crops, Western honey bees are essential to global agriculture.
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Potential causes
One possible cause is the infestation of parasites, namely Varroa mites (Varroa destructor). These mites attach to the bee and drain the bee of its lymph-like body fluid, dehydrating the bee which results in a suppressed immune system and an increased risk to disease. In addition, the mites leave an open wound on the bee, allowing viruses such as deformed wing virus, acute bee paralysis virus, and many other potentially lethal diseases to easy infect and dominate the bee due to its already weak immune system.
The most commonly known potential cause of decline is pesticides. Neonicotinoids, a class of nicotine-like pesticides, are believed to have several negative effects on bees. These pesticides act as a neurotoxin to bees, disrupting their ability to remember floral locations, their home location, and the ability to communicate floral locations. In addition, neonicotinoids are believed to result in a decline of the queen bees' life span in colonies. This causes stress on worker bees to almost constantly raise a queen bee, leading them to try and forage while too young and to often die from this dangerous task.
Perhaps the most confounding possible cause is colony collapse disorder, where a colony of worker bees suddenly abandons their hive along with their queen bee and a few nurse bees. What makes this phenomenon even more confusing is the lack of bee corpses found around the hive.
Effects of decline
From 1945 to 2005, the number of managed Western honey bee colonies has decreased from around 6,000,000 to less than 3,000,000.
Potential solutions
One of the most important possible solutions is the development of sustainable agriculture practices. A relatively new research field in biopesticides is an essential in keeping that balance between providing crops for the human race while preventing harm to bee populations. Researchers are already developing a biopesticide derived from the venom of the Australian funnel web spider in order to make it accessible to farmers to use on a large scale.