Holistic Approach to Colony Colapse Disorder

My name is Ori Ben-Shir and am a senior studying Sustainable Food and Farming at UMass Amherst. There is a crisis occurring and it is the mass death of the honey bee. The honey bee has a symbiotic relationship with the environment and humans and without the honey bee we will have extreme problems. We need the honey bee because it has a major role as a pollinator. Without this pollinator we will have a decrease in plants, food, and seed production. My suggestion is approaching this disease in a more holistic approach to see whether it is possible to heal the honeybee in a symbiotic relationship with nature. What I am proposing on doing is trying to heal the honeybee in a different method. Colony Collapse Disorder is wreaking havoc on farmers and quality of food. I believe that there is a way of healing the honeybee without the use of chemicals. This is by using mushrooms such as the red belted polypore and other immune system enhancers, such as herbs, to boost the health of the honeybee. When a beekeeper looks at their honeybee and sees that they have some type of virus many of these individuals as well as state inspectors are assigning the use of chemicals to treat the bees. This is a problem because we are only treating the visible signs of the disease but not the root cause. Within a honeybee hive there are many types of diseases that can occur, however, when the bees have a weak immune system they become more susceptible to diseases. The fact that bees are only pollinating monocultures or are pollinating plants that have been sprayed with chemicals they become weaker. The honeybee is an extremely important partner of ours on earth and without the bee we as a species will perish. Albert Einstein said, “If the bee disappeared off the face of the Earth, man would only have four years left to live.” It is extremely important that we do all that we can to help benefit the health of the bee before it is too late. Even though this bee is not native to the Northeast it is so closely worked with that without this bee we will lose a valuable relationship with an insect that helps us tremendously. The honeybee provides honey, beeswax, royal jelly, and free pollination the least we can do for this incredible insect is to try to figure out a solution to the diseases that we as a species have caused due to our interaction with the environment.