percent or even 50 percent of the hives needed to pollinate many of the nation’ s fruits and vegetables.
Bret Adee, who is an owner, with his father and brother, of Adee Honey Farms of South Dakota, the nation’ s largest beekeeper, described mounting losses.“ We lost 42 percent over the winter. But by the time we came around to pollinate almonds, it was a 55 percent loss,” he said in an interview here this week.
“ They looked beautiful in October,” Mr. Adee said,“ and in December, they started falling apart, when it got cold.”
Dave Hackenberg, the Pennsylvania-based commercial beekeeper who first raised the alarm about CCD in November 2006, criticises the survey for focusing on winter losses. He says by doing so,“ it underplays serious threats to honeybees during the summer from pesticide use and gives a false picture of the scale of the losses”. He says he lost“ 62 % of his 2,600 colonies between May 2009 and April 2010”.
Bill Dahle, Owner of Big Sky honey notices a large death rate of honeybees in the fall of 2012.
What will Happen to America if Bees Become Extinct?
Many bee species, especially honey bees, pollinate seventy one percent of the worlds crops. Without bees to pollinate our crops America will lose about two hundred seventeen billion dollars in crops! That’ s a lot of food that will not be grown if bees become extinct. Without bees to pollinate our crops the farms will go out of business and more people will go hungry. That also creates more unemployed people who don’ t have