How Urbanization is Affecting Bee Population
One of the factors affecting dropping populations of bees is urbanization. Urbanization can affect the bee population in many ways. As urbanization increases, so does pollution levels, amounts of garbage, as well as amount of radiation. Urbanization can increase the relevance of some parasites in urban areas because parasites can be transmitted more quickly in more urban areas (Goulson, Whitehorn, Fowley, 2012). Urbanization affects the immune response and increasing pathogen load of honey bees (Youngsteadt, Appler, López-Uribe, Tarpy, Frank, 2015) Survival rates among bees declined as urbanization increased. Pathogen pressure on honey bees also increased with urbanization. More intense infections in managed colonies were linked with weaker immune responses.
The disposal of paper cups from commercial coffee shops can also affect the declining bee population. In a study, several commercial coffee shops were examined. Rather than visiting flowers, the bees were attracted to the sugar left from beverages in disposed cups. Bees fell into the cups containing the residual beverages and were unable to fly out. This led to the death of the bees (168 bees/day/shop). About 1.3 billion and 800 million cups of coffee and tea are consumed everyday
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The first section, on climate change, analyzed how rising temperature has negatively impacted bee’s physical bodies as well as bee migration range. The second second section, on parasites and pathogens, are present and are harming and killing bees. Finally, the third section that discusses Urbanization shows that bees are physically affected in a negative way, through illness and death. The analysis of these factors shows that changes need to be made to save the dropping bee population. This needs to be done quickly and effectively, otherwise the world’s ecosystem will fall into