"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.

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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

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

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

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

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.
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.

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:

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

This statement suggests that the current practices recommended to support bee populations (such as keeping more bees and planting more flowers) might actually have unintended consequences, indicating that recommendations could evolve as new information about disease transmission and its effects becomes available.