Preserving Honey Bees Means Protecting Our Food Supply
December 9, 2016
From: Forbes
Nancy Kavazanjian and Jay Hill | Nancy, with Hammer and Kavazanjian Farms, is a corn, soybean and wheat farmer. Jay, with Hill Farms, is a vegetable, nut and beef farmer.
This year, we established 16 acres of pollinator habitat on our Wisconsin corn, soybean and wheat farm. With honey bees dying at higher rates, agriculture is part of the solution in preserving this important species. We’ve made this part of our Conservation Stewardship Program, and my husband and I are pretty proud of this.
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Dennis also notes it’s important for beekeepers to keep in mind – you can’t prevent your colonies from getting varroa. What you need to do is monitor and manage mite populations so they don’t get too high. Right now, national surveys show most colonies sampled have mite levels higher than we think colonies can survive without damage. If we want to understand the contribution other factors – like poor nutrition and pesticides – have on colonies in real world conditions, we first need to clean up varroa populations.
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