By now, you've heard the story. Honeybees are dying off at alarming rates. In Canada, about 30 per cent of bees are disappearing every winter. And to date, nobody's entirely sure why.
The plight of the honeybee is a humbling reminder that despite our technological ingenuity, our agricultural system is still largely dependent on a natural process carried out by tiny, winged insects. In the United States, the loss of honeybee hives was estimated to have cost US $2 billion as of last summer.
Recently, neonicotinoid insecticides have emerged as the most likely culprit behind the large-scale die-off of honeybees. The pesticides are widely used in commercial agriculture.
But other explanations are also floating around. Researchers at the University of Ottawa recently found that as temperatures warm, bee populations are being compressed from the south, but aren't spreading northward at an equal rate. The research suggests that climate change may have a role to play in the decline.
Large-scale monoculture and various viruses and pathogens have also been proposed as contributing factors.
But for all the research on the causes of the collapse, there is plenty of other work being done to try and find solutions.
At UBC, professor Leonard Foster is working to selectively breed stronger queen bees with higher odds of survival.
With his $7.3-million "BeeOMICS" project, he's trying to develop protein biomarkers that will help select for colonies that are pest-resistant and disease-free. The goal is to reduce overwinter mortality of bees from 30 to 10 per cent.
"What we're trying to do is what humans have been doing with livestock for, really, thousands of years, which is to selectively breed for traits that are valuable to us," he told the CBC last fall.
Last year, a group of UBC students also worked on developing bee gut bacteria that could break down neonicotinoids into a less toxic chemical.
Outside of academic institutions, many people are finding their own ways to try and help the honeybees. Beekeeping is becoming a more popular, mainstream hobby in several Canadian cities. Even in the northern city of Whitehorse, Yukon, a group of gardeners is pushing to be allowed to construct two beehives downtown.
And there are other steps that just about anyone can take to try and help out the bees and preserve the sustainability of our agricultural system.
Those include planting window boxes and gardens, limiting the use of pesticides and buying local, organically grown produce.
By Maura Forrest, 23 June 2016