By: Allison Aguilar
A study conducted by a team at the University of Washington shows that longer autumns increase the odds that honeybee populations may collapse when spring arrives. The team used climate and bee population models paired with simulated climate projections for the years 2050 to 2100 with a focus on the Pacific Northwest region. The results showed that in areas with warmer winters and autumns, bee populations suffer major declines.
Honey bees play a crucial role in the process of pollination, the loss of these pollinators can have severe consequences for our ecosystem as they are essential for agricultural production and food security. They are also beneficial economically as they aid in the pollination of over $15 billion worth of crops in the United States annually and $3.2 million worth of honey.
Fortunately, a solution is being further investigated that appears to be promising for the future of bee conservation; placing bee colonies into cold storage where they live from October to April. Though this practice may be fairly new to research, it has long prevailed amongst commercial beekeepers who need to move large quantities of bees like the ones used to pollinate Californian almond trees (that’s over 2 million bees). The team also created another simulated model to test what would happen to honey bees placed in cold storage and sure enough, by the year 2100, the bees in cold storage from October to April would see a bloom in the spring of a population reaching more than 15,000. This is in stark contrast to the results of hives who stayed outside who would only see numbers of 5,000 to 8,000.
But how do we know that it is seasonal conditions affecting bee population numbers? Co-author Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman, a research leader at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Carl Hayden Bee Research Center, explained that through the simulation they found that “even if there is no nutritional stress, no pathogens, no pesticides — just the conditions in fall and winter are enough to compromise the age structure of a colony". Colonies in colder regions near Canada were fine in numbers but near the Oregon border which have warmer winters there was a decline of the adult populations with “fewer than 9,000 by 2050 and under 5,000 by the turn of the century”, according to the study. Global warming is a serious issue, and without immediate efforts we may lose one of nature’s best pollinators.
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