"Are Commercial Honeybees Making Wild Bees Sick?"

Question

by Berly McCoy

If human-managed bees and bee-friendly flowers are acting as hotspots for pathogens, keeping more bees and planting more flowers may be contributing to the steep losses in commercial pollinators seen in the U.S. each year, as well as fueling the decline of wild bees. The more that bees are transported and concentrated for larger-scale pollination events, the more opportunities for diseases to spread.

And it’s not just a one-way street.

“It’s likely the transmission is going both ways,” said Scott McArt, a pollinator ecologist at Cornell University who was not involved in the study. Even if diseases in commercial bees are eliminated, new infections from the wild bee population, which are known to harbor pathogens, could spill back into managed populations, making disease eradication even tougher than it is now.
From the urban gardener to the rural farmer, people are encouraged to grow “bee-friendly” plants.

“But in some cases you might actually be increasing disease levels when you plant those flowers,” said Sheila Colla, a conservation biologist at York University who was not involved in the study. “Maybe we need to have a [buffer] area without flowers to stop diseases from spreading to wild bees.”

Question
Use the article excerpt to answer the question.

What evidence from the text best supports the inference that advice to people who want to help bees will continue to change over time?

(1 point)
Responses

A. It is likely that disease spread is going both ways, so even if diseases in commercial bees are eliminated wild bees could potentially reinfect them.

B. Alger is still investigating whether increasing plant diversity or culling certain plants could help decrease disease transmission.

C. From the urban gardeners to rural farmers, people have been encouraged to plant more bee-friendly flowers.

D. Keeping more bees and planting more flowers may be contributing to the spread of diseases among human-managed and wild bees.

Answer 1

The evidence from the text that best supports the inference that advice to people who want to help bees will continue to change over time is:

D. Keeping more bees and planting more flowers may be contributing to the spread of diseases among human-managed and wild bees.

This response indicates that the current advice (planting more flowers and having more bees) could lead to negative consequences, suggesting that future advice may need to adapt based on ongoing research and findings about disease spread.

Answer 2

Are you sure