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Honeybees will die out in Britain within a decade as virulent diseases and parasites spread through the nation's hives, experts have warned. Whole colonies of bees are already being wiped out, with current methods of pest control unable to stop the problem. The British Beekeepers Association (BBKA) said that if the crisis continued, honeybees would disappear completely from Britain by 2018, causing "calamitous" economic and environmental problems. It called on the Government to restart shelved research programmes and to fund new ones to try to save the insects. Tim Lovett, the association's president, said: "The situation has become insupportable and...

The Honey Bee Crisis of 2007 Escalating Honey Bee Decline Baffles Scientists Sally Morton Feb 17, 2007 The honey bee crisis in the United States has been escalating for several years, rising to "unprecedented" levels of honey bee losses between Oct 2006 and Feb 2007. The honey bee crisis of 2005, which was blamed on the Varoa mite, decimated as much as 50% of honey bee populations in the US, but was weathered, overcome, and quickly passed out of most people’s vocabulary. I wrote an article about it for Suite 101, which you can read here. In it, I gave...

Honeybees in a Mite More Than TroubleParasites, an Exodus of Apiarists and Budget Cuts Imperil Vital Insect Excerpts: In recent years, two tiny spider-like parasites have been weakening and killing bee populations across the United States. While the mass media have played up the threat of Africanized "killer" bees in the Southwest, the rest of the country has been losing 80 percent or more of its wild honeybee populations. and ... Even commercial beekeepers, who take extraordinary measures to ward off pests and disease, are in trouble. During the winter of 2000-2001, Maryland was among East Coast states hit...