Commercial Bees Spreading Disease To Wild Pollinating Bees

Bees provide crucial pollination service to numerous crops and up to a third of the human diet comes from plants pollinated by insects. However, pollinating bees are suffering widespread declines in North America and scientists warn that this could have serious implications for agriculture and food supply. While the cause of these declines has largely been a mystery, new research reveals an alarming spread of disease from commercial bees to wild pollinators.

Michael Otterstatter and James Thomson of the University of Toronto have presented compelling evidence in a new study that commercially produced bumble bees used in greenhouses are infecting their wild cousins, and that this is likely contributing to reductions in the natural pollinating bee population.

Otterstatter and Thomson investigated the occurrence of disease in wild bumble bees in southern Ontario, Canada, particularly in areas close to industrial greenhouse operations. In addition, the authors used a combination of laboratory experiments and mathematical modelling to simulate the spread, or ’spillover’, of disease from commercial bees to wild populations, and to predict the extent and severity of such spread in the wild.

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Tagged as: Bees, Commercial Bees, Creepy Crawlies, Disease, Greenhouses, James Thomson, Michael Otterstatter, Pollination, Populations