Thursday, February 24, 2022

Drought, pesticides take a toll on Chile's crucial honeybees

 

I suggest reading the whole article:

 

https://apnews.com/article/business-agriculture-chile-flowers-plants-ceb14b0940d609714d7261cdb45ea653

 

A drought has gripped Chile for 13 years and the flowers that fed Carlos Peralta’s honeybees around the central town of Colina have grown increasingly scarce.

He said he had lost about 300 hives since the start of November and was left with a choice: try to keep the 900 that remained alive with an artificial nectar or move them to a place where flowers and pollen are more abundant.

“If the bees die, we all die. ... The bee is life,” he said, referring to the insects’ key role in pollinating plants both wild and commercial, helping Chile maintain its role as a major fruit exporter.

So Peralta decided to move his operations some 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) to the south, to Puerto Montt.

Andrés González, a regional expert on biodiversity for the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, said a reduced population of pollinating insects “has to do ... with the use of pesticides and fertilizers, monocultures, droughts caused in great part by climate change and by bad management of (water) resources.”

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