UK farmers have a fourth of the honeybees they need, according to a , but the gap represents more than a shortage in Britain. Bees are dying around the world, and pollination demand is growing nearly five times faster than the available honeybee population.
An unusually harsh winter , but if the polar vortex had been the only force threatening these honeycombers, global mortality rates would not continue to trend upward—31 percent in the United States, 33.6 percent in Latvia (and that’s compared to a published by the European Commission).
Colony collapse disorder , costing farmers who rely on pollination to increase crop yield some $30 billion. In Northern Europe, the European Commission found a frightening predominance of varroa destructor—the parasite responsible for bee colony collapse disorder in Canada and Hawaii—in Latvia and Poland.
Thirty-nine of the world’s 57 major crops . For now, wild honeybees make up the difference.
Wild pollinators cover $3 billion of , but they might face extinction. that almost a quarter of Europe’s 68 bumblebee species are threatened with extinction.
So, please, don’t call an exterminator.