What Exactly is Killing the Bees: Metal Pollution, Pesticides and Colony Collapse Disorder

What exactly is killing all the bees? It's a good question, and not one that can be answered easily. On average, more than 30 percent of honeybees vanish each spring. Yet this year, the disappearing bees have reached a new level. More than half of all the honeybees in the U.S. have died almost at once.

Bees are major pollinators of crops, including everything from apples to cucumbers. Yet as their numbers dwindle, farmers have had to resort to hiring bees from beekeepers every season in order to pollinate the flowers that emerge. Unfortunately, it seems that this year this problem is only growing worse.

There are a series of issues that have been associated with the bee disappearance. Researchers have recently found that pesticides affect the brains of bees, confusing them and causing them to be unable to navigate properly to food sources. They've also found that toxic metals such as aluminum and nickel can be found in the flowers that bees visit--though it primarily affects bumblebees as opposed to honeybees. Yet perhaps the greatest issue that has affected the honeybee is a phenomenon called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).

CCD is a serious problem that's threatening the health of honeybee colonies throughout the U.S. It occurs when most (if not all) of the adult honeybees in a colony disappear. This leaves juvenile honeybees and the queen to fend for themselves. Unable to properly cope with the loss of a whole generation of bees, the colony itself usually collapses and dies off.

The exact causes for CCD are currently unknown, yet researchers believe that a variety of factors could all culminate in the mass mortality. Honeybees have to cope with intestine-eating diseases, viruses and mites. They also have to deal with the fact that millions of acres of the U.S. have been converted to corn monocultures--an unfit diet for the bees. In previous years, fields were covered with flowers that the insects could utilize, according to CNN. In addition, the honeybees fly through fields that are a stew of chemicals that range from pesticides to herbicides.

So what is killing all the bees? Almost everything is. Unfortunately, there's little that anyone can do about it. Only by completely reworking agricultural practices can these insects possibly be saved. Until then, it's likely that their numbers will keep declining, which means bad news for farmers who need them to pollinate their crops.