Spring without the buzz. Why do bees disappear? Authors Antonio Gómez Pajuelo Consultor apícola Keywords: beekeeping, bee disappearance, climate change, chemical residues. Abstract Since ancient times, beekeeping has provided humanity with two important products: honey, the only sweetener until the 16th century, and beeswax. Later, with the development of microscopy, the pollination process became known, allowing the improvement of fruits and seeds, which form one-third of all human food. The problem now observed of the disappearance of bees is due to a combination of factors. Other bee disappearances have occurred in the past but the large decrease in the pollinating bee population since 1995 is specifically attributed to neonicotinoids. The studies in this field led the European Union (EU) to put a ban on three neonicotinoids for a period of two years from 1 December 2013. Other causes of the decreased bee population are the poor autumn flowering of plants due to climate change, which causes malnutrition in bees in a critical stage of their life cycle; the residues of acarides used by farmers to fight the varroa mite, which produce sub-lethal intoxication in bees while affecting gene expression in their immune system; and the selfsame parasitic action of varroa, which also causes malnutrition and transmits diseases. Varying in importance depending on areas and bee farms, these factors interact, creating synergies.Keywords: beekeeping, bee disappearance, climate change, chemical residues. Downloads Download data is not yet available. Downloads PDF (Català) Issue No. 36: juny 2014 Section Agroforum License The intellectual property of articles belongs to the respective authors. On submitting articles for publication to the journal QUADERNS AGRARIS, authors accept the following terms: Authors assign to ICEA (a subsidiary of Institut d’Estudis Catalans) the rights of reproduction, communication to the public and distribution of the articles submitted for publication to QUADERNS AGRARIS.Authors answer to ICEA for the authorship and originality of submitted articles.Authors are responsible for obtaining permission for the reproduction of all graphic material included in articles.ICEA declines all liability for the possible infringement of intellectual property rights by authors.The contents published in the journal, unless otherwise stated in the text or in the graphic material, are subject to a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (by-nc-nd) 3.0 Spain licence, the complete text of which may be found at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/es/deed.en. Consequently, the general public is authorised to reproduce, distribute and communicate the work, provided that its authorship and the body publishing it are acknowledged, and that no commercial use and no derivative works are made of it.The journal QUADERNS AGRARIS is not responsible for the ideas and opinions expressed by the authors of the published articles.
