A Dream for a Better World

When we talk about honey bees, we often associate them with sweet honey which is the excellent beauty product for women as well as great nourishment. Of course, people also can not forget the pain after being bitten by the busy animal. A famous scientist Albert Einstein says, when honey bees disappear, human being could only live 4 years more at most. It seems a kind of exaggeration but it can be true. Who knows?
Since the beginning of 1970s, the quantity of wild honey bees started to decrease. In addition, the honey bees groups also reduced. Even so, such decreasing occurred gradually. However, during the autumn of the year 2006, the number of honey bees groups unexpectedly started to decrease rapidly and flocks of bees suddenly disappeared. What is more strange, people could not find the dead honey bees around and no ones knew where they had gone. Such phenomenon is called Colony Collapse Disorder, short for CCD. People in America first found CCD which happened in 24 states such as California, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Oklahoma etc in 2006. It was estimated that about 35% honey bees disappeared. In fact, some bee keepers said that 30% to 90% groups of honey bees disappeared. USDA and ARS in the country also have made research on the lost honey bees in fall as well as winter. According to their analysis, 31% groups of honey bees from the year 2006 to 2007 disappeared on average. From 2007 to 2008, 36% honey bees groups were out of people’s sight. The data has been concluded by visiting bee keepers. Besides America, CCD has also happened in other countries. During recent years, 40% honey bees disappeared in Quebec of Canada. In India, Brazil and some European countries such as France, Germany, Swiss, Greece, Italy, Spain and Poland etc, CCD was also found. In April 2007, CCD was found in Taiwan Island. In such circumstance, people engaging in bees business started to pay much attention to the terrible phenomenon. In December 2007, the Entomological Society of America hold a seminar with the title of Colony Collapse Disorder in Honey Bees but they did not obtain any breakthrough. In March 2009, the European Union called together another seminar titled COLOSS. 33 representatives from 23 countries and 33 regions have participated in the conference and expressed details of CCD in their places respectively. As for the causes for CCD, some people think it is related with rural urbanization, pesticide, pests, bee malnutrition, mismanagement of colony feeding, fungal infections, immune deficiency, genetically modified crops, global warming, and electromagnetic radiation etc. People are still puzzled that CCD is caused by a single factor or the effect of combining factors. In addition, people are not sure that CCD is a kind of new phenomenon or it has occurred in the past. In recent two years, America has to import honey bees from Australia. American experts predict that if CCD continues happening, all honey bees in the country will have been extinct by the year of 2035.