"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.

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Question
Use the article excerpt to answer the question.

It is possible to infer from this excerpt something about future efforts to save the bees. What inference can you make? In 3–5 sentences, state your inference and provide strong and thorough textual evidence from the excerpt to support the inference.

(4 points)

Answer 1

Based on the excerpt, it can be inferred that future efforts to save both commercial and wild bees must focus on managing disease transmission between these populations. The text states that "the more that bees are transported and concentrated for larger-scale pollination events, the more opportunities for diseases to spread," indicating that simply increasing the number of managed bees and bee-friendly plants may exacerbate the problem. Furthermore, Scott McArt’s comment about the bidirectional nature of disease transmission highlights the complexity of the issue, suggesting that efforts to improve the health of commercial bees will also need to consider the pathogens present in wild bee populations. Therefore, a comprehensive strategy is needed that addresses both the management of commercial bees and the health of wild bee populations to effectively mitigate disease spread.