Since the need for honeybees is so great, beekeepers have started different ways to care for them. But honeybees are fragile creatures and as beekeepers keep trying to find more profitable ways to raise bees, bees are suffering.
Trucking
Agriculture has become a large scale industry in the United States. This means acres of plants have to be pollinated at just the right time each season (Williams, 2008). Beekeepers have started trucking their bee colonies to these fields (Williams, 2008). This interrupts the lives of the honeybee. Being put into a truck, confined, overcrowded, and lacking food affects honeybees (Williams, 2008).
Above: Truckload of bees in hives
Artificial Food
Since herbicides have killed off certain types of pollen for honeybees, beekeepers have started feeding bees artificial food (Williams, 2008). Bees are often left with plants that do not have good nutritional value (Williams, 2008). Beekeepers have started feeding their bees high fructose corn syrup (Jacobson, 2008). In February, beekeepers place high fructose corn syrup near the hives so bees begin to stop hibernating and start reproducing (Jacobson, 2008). Since this is a food source, bees can wake up and have food instead of sleeping and saving their food. By doing this, honeybees reproduce sooner so they can reproduce more so the colonies are larger when pollination season begins (Jacobson, 2008).
After doing this a few years, beekeepers noticed their entire colonies would die in the middle of the season (Jacobson, 2008). Because bees were not eating food with nutritional value, they were weak and did not have immunities (Jacobson, 2008). Honeybees need protein so beekeepers have stopped using high fructose corn syrup and now make concoctions of protein supplements (Jacobson, 2008). This seems to keep the colony healthy all season long even when starting reproduction earlier (Jacobson, 2008).
Below: Honeybees feeding on an artificial diet
Management Stresses and CCD
Most management stresses are not seen as killing the honeybees but just altering their lives. Trucking has not been known to kill off colonies, but it does stress the bees altering their gathering potential (Williams, 2008). Since beekeepers have learned to treat honeybees holistically, they have stopped feeding poor diets to bees (Jacobson, 2008). Management stresses are probably not a cause of CCD, but stress does affect bees and could leave them prone to disease (Jacobson, 2008).
