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Feature
"Are Commercial Honeybees Making Wild Bees Sick?"
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.”
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.
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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
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.
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.
1 answer
The best evidence from the text that supports the inference that advice to people who want to help bees will continue to change over time is:
Alger is still investigating whether increasing plant diversity or culling certain plants could help decrease disease transmission.
This statement indicates that there is ongoing research and reconsideration of current practices related to helping bees, suggesting that recommendations may evolve as new findings emerge.
