If bees go, will they take us with them?

Bees, wild and domesticated, are in big trouble. Bee colonies are dying off at alarming rates, and the cause isn’t clear. Pesticides, habitat loss, disease… there’s a laundry list of likely culprits. We rely on these tiny pollinators for a majority of our fruits, veggies, and nuts… if they disappear, could we be next?

LINKS/SOURCES:

• Bee declines driven by combined stress from parasites, pesticides, and lack of flowers (Science, 2015) http://www.sciencemag.org/content/347…
• What’s killing America’s bees? http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/…
• Anand Varma’s TED talk on saving bees: http://www.ted.com/talks/anand_varma_…
• The White House’s 2015 Pollinator Action Plan: http://journalistsresource.org/studie…
• Colony collapse disorder: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_c…
• Report of the commissioner of agriculture (1868): https://archive.org/details/reportofc…
• Summary of colony collapse disorder: http://journalistsresource.org/studie…

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