There is no threat to honeybees. On a top-ten list of factors that are destroying honey bee colonies, pesticides would come in at number 11.
Pesticides, drought, habitat loss, inadequate diet, air pollution, global warming, and other issues, according to scientists, are all contributing to the decline of bee populations. Several of these factors are connected. The final line is that we are aware that the two most significant causes—pesticides and habitat loss—are mostly attributable to humans.
Millions of honeybees inexplicably started departing their colonies in 2006, leaving only the queen bee and insufficiently mature worker bees to support the colony. Given that the colonies were discovered to contain healthy brood and food reserves, there was no obvious explanation for what would have been an ecological catastrophe if it had persisted and spread over the planet. Later, it was known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).
There was no evidence to back up the initial accusations made by prominent environmental groups that the crisis was caused by genetically modified (GMO) crops and the herbicide Roundup (produced by Monsanto but also available in generic form as glyphosate).
Over the following few years, the CCD issue, which was primarily concentrated in California, subsided without ever having its root cause identified by scientists. Yet, environmental advocacy groups capitalized on this fictitious catastrophe to draw attention to the transitory rise in overwinter bee mortality rates that followed the CCD epidemic. Many lab investigations suggested that neonics might play a role. Neonic insecticides that “kill” bees were reported to need to be banned in order to maintain global food production and avert an unstoppable scenario that some in the media called the impending “beepocalypse.”
Instead, the majority of entomologists thought that bee health issues were caused by a variety of factors, including the Varroa destructor mite, which is known as the biggest threat to honeybees, the increased use of miticides, and the fact that beekeepers in some areas don’t use adequate sanitation practices.
