Bee Health Hub<\/a> at the University of California, Davis, said researchers have not determined why so many bees have died in the past year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n“There are many contributing factors that can cause a colony to die,\u201d she said, including pathogens; varroa mites, a parasite that feeds on bees; and a lack of nutrition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTo put it into perspective \u2014 we, the United States \u2014 we have about 2.7 million colonies. So that\u2019s a huge loss for beekeepers, huge loss for agricultural industry,” Ni\u00f1o said. “And of course, when you combine thefts with that, it\u2019s not good news for beekeepers, either.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bees are responsible for $17 billion in agricultural production in the United States every year, according to Project Apis m.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSo if you have a loss of pollinators that are pollinating those crops, prices of food are probably going to go up,\u201d Ni\u00f1o said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bees, the only insects that produce food for human consumption, have become a hot commodity as their numbers dwindle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Northern California’s Butte County, beehive theft revolves around almond pollination, said Sheriff’s Deputy Rowdy Freeman, a member of the California Rural Crime Prevention Task Force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI often describe it as a perfect crime, because it\u2019s beekeepers stealing from other beekeepers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Investigators say most thefts occur at night, so beekeepers are getting creative by hiding tracking devices deep in the hives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The task force also encourages beekeepers to brand their hives so law enforcement can determine the rightful owner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s kind of rare that we do recover stolen hives,\u201d Freeman said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bee thefts in California have increased 87% since 2013, to 10,000 stolen hives valued at over $3.5 million, according to the task force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Beekeeper Trevor Tauzer, whose 4 million bees help pollinate a 40-acre almond orchard near Sacramento, California, has had to deal with bee deaths and thefts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt feels violating,” Tauzer said. “You work all year, you put all your money, you put all of your effort, all of your passion, into keeping the bees healthy, and then somebody picks up and disappears with them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ni\u00f1o said that beekeepers need government support to counteract the losses but that regular people can also play a role by providing access to clean bee forage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf you have a backyard, we have great resources at UC Davis where you can look up what plants you could plant to support the pollinators,” Ni\u00f1o said. \u201cResearch has shown over and over again that if the bees do have access to plentiful forage, plentiful flowers, they can deal with a lot of the other negative factors that they have to be exposed to.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nbcnews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Beekeepers across the country are sounding the alarm as honeybee populations are dwindling at an unprecedented rate, a trend that could affect Americans’ wallets at the grocery store. Honeybees are the backbone of the food ecosystem, pollinating 75% of the world’s natural supplies, according to the National Park Service. But a recent nationwide survey by Project Apis m., […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":40515,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1155],"tags":[32873,23070,2566,32874],"class_list":["post-40514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-bee-population","tag-grocery-store","tag-mortality","tag-wallet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40514"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40516,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40514\/revisions\/40516"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/40515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}