Photo by Holly Shanks
A recent story in the Webster-Kirkwood Times by Joe Leicht highlighted a concerning amount of honeybees dying off this past winter. Please take a few minutes and read about what is happening to our important pollinators.
Excerpt below from the article, “What’s Happening To Our Honey Bees?”
But those bees that once seemed to cover nearly every clover bud are far from ubiquitous these days. In fact, wildlife biologists have been tracking their steady decline over the past 10 years. Nicole Miller-Struttmann, a renowned expert on bees and a professor at Webster University, is one of those scientists. …
“I remember as a kid driving on vacation with my family and having to clean the dead insects off the windshield whenever we’d stop for gas. It isn’t just bees and butterflies — the pollinators — there is increasing evidence that insects in general are declining in numbers,” said Miller-Struttmann, a Webster Groves native.
This spring, Miller-struttmann and other academics were dismayed by studies that indicated the number of honeybees that survived the winter dropped precipitously.
An annual nationwide survey by the Bee Informed Partnership reports that 37.7 percent of honeybee colonies died this past winter, nearly nine percentage points higher than the average winter loss.
“It’s been an issue, yet after a few recent years, it looked as if the bee deaths were leveling out. Then we got slammed (in 2019.) It was one of the worst ever,” said Miller-Struttmann. (Pictured above)
Read the full article HERE.
