To bee or not to bee, that is the question. Well, actually, the specific question is, “are bees actually dying at a rate faster than they normally should? And if yes, why is that?” Currently, not enough information from the scientific community is available to the public to compose an answer to these perplexing issues. Honey bee lives must be conserved and respected by increasing the amount of research being conducted on their possible extinction, by reducing the usage of pesticides in beekeeping practices, and by planting and restoring bee-friendly landscapes in order to preserve and protect bees’ honorable position within the Earth’s life-sustaining agriculture industry. Bees have existed on Earth for over 800,000 years longer than humans have. The oldest …show more content…
It is not so much a hatred towards bees, but an opinion that there actually is no population loss going on. In the Washington Post article, “Believe it or not, the bees are doing just fine,” Christopher Ingraham argues that honey bees are not facing the threat of extinction. Ingraham calls out the “sixty percent of people who share stories without actually reading them” in a somewhat hypocritical fashion—he then states that “bees are doing just fine, according to data released by the USDA this year.” Nowhere in the USDA-conducted study does it state that bees are fine. The study actually lists some pretty grim numbers, telling readers of how the United States honey bee population has dropped a whole eight percent (Honey Bee Colonies). Ingram scoots around this steep decline, stating that beekeepers can simply “split one healthy colony into two.” If Ingram had researched the USDA’s findings a bit more, he would’ve discovered that splitting up colonies can quickly spread Varroa mites between colonies and infect all future honey bee larvae. The points made by Ingram would have been seen as valid, had he not hypocritically projected at