Time Magazine: It's hard out there for a honeybee

Commercial honeybees might be America’s unluckiest laborers. They’re infested with pests like the Varroa destructor mite and theNosema ceranae parasite; infected with diseases like the Israeli paralytic virus and the tobacco ringspot virus; dosed with pesticides like clothianidin and imidacloprid; starved off nutrition thanks to crop monocultures; shipped around the country to be worked half to death in almond fields and apple orchards; and victimized by a still mysterious malady called colony collapse disorder (CCD). It’s little surprise that U.S. beekeepers lost about a third of their colonies over the winter of 2012-13, and if early reports from states like Ohio are any indication, this year could be even worse. Read full article