According to an article that appeared on NorthJersey.com, millions of honeybees are dying throughout New Jersey from a mysterious epidemic, worrying the state’s beekeepers and farmers who depend on the bees to pollinate their crops.
John Nazarian, a Wyckoff resident who keeps bees as a hobby, recently lost 100,000 of his bees to what has been dubbed colony collapse disorder.
“I was shocked,” said Nazarian, who has kept bees for nearly 30 years. “I checked on the hive in early February and the bees had vanished.”
The devastation was even worse for Bea and Jean-Claude Tassot’s hives in Morris and Hunterdon counties. They estimate 2.2 million bees died when they lost 110 of their 140 hives.
Since it was first identified last fall, the epidemic has spread to at least 27 states and Europe. Dewey Caron, an entomology professor at the University of Delaware, said tens of thousands of hives have been killed off nationwide, with many beekeepers on the East Coast, the Midwest and Texas losing more than half of their hives.
Caron and other researchers don’t know what is causing the die-offs, but beekeepers have their theories. Bea Tassot, president of the New Jersey Beekeepers Association, suspects new types of pesticides, genetically modified crops and “all the new high-tech pest controls and vegetable enhancers, which are very efficient on their target but unfortunately also induce very bad side effects.”
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