Bee Colony Collapse: Reversed!

Guys ..... I am again passing along good technology news in this troubled time.

Starting a decade ago, everyone was told that honey bee colonies were collapsing all over the world. Because the are a principal pollinator of valuable crops (and because we love honey) this was alarming. This article from “The Economist” provides the good news that the world bee population is now recovering at the rate of 2 percent a year. Great!

It also describes a new theory for the earlier decline. It was returning bees carrying mites which in turn we’re carrying a virus that was infecting and killing whole hives. The new twist was that the disease was brought into healthy hives that had no herd immunity by bees that were simply disoriented and went to the wrong hive. They were lost because all standard hives look just alike .... same design, same color, same orientation of the entrance, same height off the ground, etc. Also, many hives are generally clustered right together in a bunch.

What the researchers have learned to save bees is to keep the hives further apart, paint them different colors, point them in different directions ..... anything to reduce accidental visits from the wrong bees.

Note that this is SOCIAL DISTANCING. Stay in you own hive and avoid infection.