This is one of those “don’t let perfect be the enemy of good” situations. The article is full of statements about how all pollinators are in trouble. The headline is clickbait. If honeybees serve as a poster child for pollinator awareness, that’s a good thing.
Yeah, I despise the honey industry profiteering off of this, when they're even partially responsible for killing off proper pollinators, but if we stop using certain pesticides to protect the honey bees, that will likely benefit non-honey bees and other pollinators, too.
Laypeople don't make the distinction between bees. They want to "Save the bees", not save the honey bees. Of course the sentiment will be exploited by an industry.
The save the bees thing isn't a biodiversity thing but tries to prevent our extinction by not having Pollinators so every bee will do.
Colony-collapse disorder is an actual thing.
I'd read some research-result release that said there is a specific virus-fungus combination that all colony-collapse hives had both of ( & their immune-systems were essentially non-functional: they were infected with EVERYTHING ),
vs colonies which had 0 or 1 of the 2.
I don't remember the names of either the virus or the fungus.
When we keep importing/exporting contaminated bits of wildlife, there are consequences.
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Biodiversity is a term used to describe the enormous variety of life on Earth. It can be used more specifically to refer to all of the species in one region or ecosystem. Biodiversity refers to every living thing, including plants, bacteria, animals, and humans. Scientists have estimated that there are around 8.7 million species of plants and animals in existence. However, only around 1.2 million species have been identified and described so far, most of which are insects. This means that millions of other organisms remain a complete mystery.
Over generations, all of the species that are currently alive today have evolved unique traits that make them distinct from other species. These differences are what scientists use to tell one species from another. Organisms that have evolved to be so different from one another that they can no longer reproduce with each other are considered different species. All organisms that can reproduce with each other fall into one species. Read more...
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