USDA research points to viruses spread by pesticide-resistant mites, indicating a worrying trend
U.S. beekeepers had a disastrous winter. Between June 2024 and January 2025, a full 62% of commercial honey bee colonies in the United States died, according to an extensive survey. It was the largest die-off on record, coming on the heels of a 55% die-off the previous winter.
As soon as scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) caught wind of the record-breaking die-offs, they sprang into action—but their efforts were slowed by a series of federal funding cuts and layoffs by President Donald Trump’s administration. Now, 6 months later, USDA scientists have finally identified a culprit.
According to a preprint posted to the bioRxiv server this month, nearly all the dead colonies tested positive for bee viruses spread by parasitic mites. Alarmingly, every single one of the mites the researchers screened was resistant to amitraz, the only viable mite-specific pesticide—or miticide—of its kind left in humans’ arsenal.
As another commenter has already said, this article provides a great insight into this.
Human land use has gone up from 4% during the medieval ages to 44% today, so it has increased by a factor of 10x, while, as i wrote above, population count has gone up by 30x. That means that land produces 3x the food today than it did a thousand years ago.
Notice, however, that the land that’s being used for agriculture though is the most fertile land, i.e. farmers try to maximize their profit by farming the most fertile lands. So, “44% of land usage” might be misleading, as it would suggest that we’re just using every second acre, while in fact, the land that we don’t use either has lower livability for both humans and insects, or is mountaineous area which is difficult to access for vehicles and heavy machines.