Scientists warn of severe honey bee losses in 2025

4 comments

1. **From NBC News:**

   Honey bee colonies in the U.S. are projected to decline by up to 70% in 2025, entomologists at Washington State University said on Tuesday.

   The university said in a [press release](https://news.wsu.edu/news/2025/03/25/honey-bee-colony-declines-grow-as-wsu-researchers-work-to-fight-losses/) that in the past decade, honey bee colony losses have averaged between 40 to 50% annually. But this year, a combination of nutrition deficiencies, mite infestations, viral diseases, and possible pesticide exposure during the previous pollinating season led to higher losses, according to the release.

   “Losses have been increasing steadily,” Priya Chakrabarti Basu, an assistant professor of pollinator health and apiculture at WSU, said in the press release. “Pollination demands haven’t gone down, so beekeepers face tremendous pressure to keep the same number of colonies to meet those needs.”

2. Honey bees are important for agriculture but are terrible for the environment. They are nonnative/invasives that outcompete native bees and pollinators while spreading disease to native insect populations

3. Please plant native species for our native bees. There are around 4,000 species of native bees that get a small fraction of the attention that nonnative invasive honeybees do. Planting natives can also increase the number of caterpillars and thus the number of birds.

   Everyone should check out r/nativeplantgardening if they’re interested in gardening with native plants.

4. Trummp, Vance and musk give not a single fuck .

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