Here is a close up picture of a beautiful bee that must have become exhausted and landed right in my hand to feed on the sour patch candy I was about to eat while relaxing at the beach in Santa Monica CA!
After doing a search by pure curiosity I learned that the coronavirus lockdown was a blessing for the wild bee population that quickly rebounded!
I also learned with much joy that the devastating picture that is often painted regarding what we are often told is close to a bees extinction was not as gloomy as we were told.
A 2018 article in The Scientist states that the idea that “bee populations are rapidly declining as a result of pesticide use” is untrue.
In fact it seems that honeybees in the US, Canada and also in Europe has actually increased a little and went to a 22-year high in 2016.
In 2019, the article says there were 2.67 million colonies.
Picture credit Andreas trepte
It even looks like it’s the idea of Colony Collapse Disorder that is partly responsible for that uptick both in public interest and in funding for honeybee research.
A fun fact about the lockdown, in the UK, bee specialists say that bees are flourishing because officials have stopped maintaining highway shoulders, turning them into flowery habitats for the bees!
Picture credit Terry Yockey