It can be inferred that future efforts to save bees will need to focus on a more comprehensive and cautious approach to managing both commercial and wild bee populations as well as their habitats. The excerpt suggests that simply promoting the planting of “bee-friendly” flowers may inadvertently increase disease transmission among bee populations. Sheila Colla’s statement, “in some cases you might actually be increasing disease levels when you plant those flowers,” indicates a need for careful consideration of plant choices and strategies to mitigate disease spread, such as creating “a [buffer] area without flowers.” Furthermore, Alger's investigation into increasing plant diversity and culling certain plants underscores the need for innovative solutions tailored to balance bee health with habitat support.
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.”
Nobody is suggesting we stop planting flowers altogether. “We know that habitat loss is already a big problem for bees,” said Alger. Instead, she’s now investigating if increasing plant diversity, or culling certain plants could help decrease disease transmission.
She added that beekeepers and farmers need to take a long, hard look at how they are managing bees.
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)
1 answer
3 answers