" >
Honey, one of the healthiest foods in our diet — an not just in our diet, it’s used topically as well. And honey is also valued in our diet for non-health reasons: like its delicious and can be used to sweeten just about anything. How many of you use honey in your coffee or tea instead of sugar?
In the US, honey is worth around $30 billion per year.
A new study has pointed to some of the most probable reasons for the “Colony Collapse Disorder” (CCD) that has wiped out 10 million beehives and 2 billion dollars over the past several years.
The scientists identified a mix of pesticides and fungicides that contaminate pollen, which is used to feed bee hives.
CCD is when a whole hive dies at once, and the scientists have not identified why this phenomena happens.
One thing they did, though, is feed pollen from unhealthy hives to healthy bees in another area. The bees became less able to resist a particular parasite, it was reported: Nosema ceranae.
Three times as likely to get infected by the parasite were those bees that ate the honey.
“There’s growing evidence that fungicides may be affecting the bees on their own and I think what it highlights is a need to reassess how we label these agricultural chemicals,” said Dennis van Engelsdorp, the study’s lead author.
