by Williamsport, Ohio (AP) – Sweat covers Isaac Barnes in the face under the veil of his beekeeper when he gives boxes with honeycomb box from his beehives to his truck. It is a training session in a sauna when the temperatures rise in the Juni-Juni juni.
Although Barnes was hot, his bees were even hotter. Your body temperatures can be up to 27 degrees Fahrenheit (approx. 15 Celsius) higher than the air around them. When the global temperatures rise under climate change, scientists try to better understand the effects on managed and wild bees when they dust plants, collect nectar, make honey and reproduce themselves.
They noticed that flying bees had avoided nectar overheating on the hottest days by using less but harder wing beats to keep their body temperature below the dangerous level, according to a study that was published last year. Scientists also say that bees – like humans – can also handle by withdrawing into a cooler environment such as the shadow or their nest.
“Just like we go in the shade or we sweat or we could work less hard, bees do exactly the same thing so that they can avoid the heat,” said Jon Harrison, environmental physiologist at Arizona State University and one of the study authors.
However, this means that the bees are unable to do what they normally do, said Kevin McCluney, biology professor at Bowling Green State University.
“They do not go out and get more nectar. They don’t combine. They don’t do the things that bees would do otherwise,” said McCluney.
Warmth is only a challenge for critical pollinators
In general, most bees are heat -tolerant, but if the climate is heated up, some experts believe that their ability to ward off diseases and collect food could become more difficult. And habitat loss, increased use of pesticides, diseases and lack of feed for managed and wild bees are listed as potential participants for the global decline of bees and other pollares.
“If you are not fed well and your body is inserted with pesticides and you have many diseases in your body, you will be less heat-tolerant than if you were healthy,” said Margarita López-Uribe, an expert on the pollber’s pollinator at Pennsylvania State University.
At the beginning of this year, the preliminary results of the annual survey of the US beekeepers that beekeepers lost almost 56% of their managed colonies, the highest loss since the survey started in 2010.
Almost all managed honeybee colonies in the USA are used to dust agricultural plants such as almonds, apples, cherries and blueberries. Fewer pollinators can lead to less pollination and possibly lower yields.
“It is a very fragile system when you think about it,” said López-Uribe. “Because if something goes wrong, you have these super high quality plants that don’t get enough bees for pollination.”
Lose beehives in Honeyrun Farms
Back in Barnes’ bee cocks in Ohio, thousands of honeybees fly around as he collects boxes to return to his farm for honey production. A few of his bees end up nearby nearby on wolf milk flowers, a rare piece of plant variety in an area that is dominated by corn and soybean fields.
For Barnes, who runs with his wife Jayne Honeyrun Farm, one of the challenges for his 500 Honeybee bee cocks can have parasitic mites that threaten the bees. If the temperatures get too hot, it cannot apply ants, an organic chemical that kills the mites. If it is used if it is too hot, the bees could die.
Last year they lost almost a third of the 400 beehives, which they sent to California to dust the commercial almond groves. Barnes believes that these beehives could have been poor health before pollination because they were unable to ward off mites in hot months.
“Dead beehives do not dust the almonds,” he said. “It is a real wave effect that goes back from the heat in summer.”
Sometimes the heat helps. Here in Ohio, Barnes’ beehives produced a bumper harvest from honey last summer when they bloomed on the nearby soybohn nectar than the plants in the heat. Nevertheless, the lack of different plants that feed bees in an area dominated by corn and soybean fields is not ideal.
And even the local flowers appear irregular, said Barnes. In autumn, his bees search for food on Goldenrod, but these flowers appear later. And even then he added additional food to his beehive to keep it healthy in winter.
“Every single plant that blooms can use the bee,” said Barnes. “And every single plant is affected by climate change.”
Research that can help bees is in danger
It was only in the past decade that people have become aware of the extent of the global tunnel loss, said Harrison from Arizona State University. The data is limited how much climate change and heat stress contribute to the decline in the pollinator.
“It is a relatively new focus for biology,” he said. “I think it’s very important, but it is not a ton.”
The proposed budget of the Trump administration would eliminate the research program that finances the USGS bee laboratory, which supports the inventory, surveillance and the natural history of the country’s wild bees. Other grants for bee research are also at risk.
The US Senator Jeff Merkley from Oregon said that America’s pollinators were in “serious danger” and he would fight for federal financing. Pollers contribute to the health of the planet, the harvests we grow, and to the food we eat, said, he said.
“Instead of taking courageous measures to protect them, the Trump administration has proposed a ruthless budget that does not have financing for critical research results to save important pollinators,” he said in an explanation of Associated Press.
Harrison said his research on this topic would come to a standstill if cuts were made on his federal financing, and it would generally be more difficult that scientists would examine the disappearance of bees and other pollinators and improve the losses. Unable to cope with these deaths for pollinators can lead to fruit, vegetables, nuts, coffee and chocolate jumping or scarce.
“Hopefully such research in Europe and China will continue to continue such research in the United States and prevent these extreme scenarios,” said Harrison.
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