Name: 我們離拯救蜜蜂還有多遠？ (How Close Are We to Saving the Bees?)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T09:59:04.000Z
Duration: 8 min 6 s
Description: 【看影片學英語】數萬部 YouTube 影片，搭配英漢字典即點即查，輕鬆掌握單字發音與用法，長久累積看電影不必再看字幕。

A world without bees would… sting, to say the least.

進階被動語態

It would be a place where up to a third of our crops could be affected.

關係子句

A world without the sweetness of honey, or its medicinal properties that can heal wounds

and could guard against everything from allergies to cancer.

A world where our entire economy, health, and even your second cup of coffee are all

But with beekeepers losing up to half their colonies each year, scientists, farmers, engineers

and, of course, beekeepers are foraging for answers and creative solutions.

The last time you heard about bees in the news, it might have been connected with a

mysterious phenomenon called “colony collapse disorder.”

CCD was a series of strange, sudden disappearances of entire colonies, where workers left

behind a queen, some young, and plenty of food, but not so much as a note.

- Which makes it really hard to know what happened, as if you're trying to do kind of

We still haven’t pinned down the exact cause of CCD.

But researchers agree that a mix of the perilous four Ps was likely to blame: parasites, pathogens,

And though reports of CCD itself have waned, those four factors combined are still a major

- The Department of Agriculture makes surveys every year to see how many colonies survive

The rate of losses for the beekeepers are approximately 40-45%.

Evan Henry’s research team believes that the first step in saving the bees is to know,

in real time, what the status of a colony is.

That’s why they developed Nectar, an in-hive sensor and data management platform for beekeepers.

- So here's this beacon, our sensor device that we installed a couple of weeks ago.

It collects temperature, humidity, sound, position data and sends it to the gateway

And it sends everything over 3G or 4G to the cloud.

The ability to remotely monitor and manage their hives in real time is immensely valuable

to commercial beekeepers, who might have as many as 1000 hives spread across large areas.

- We can help tell if the hive is queenless, if the queen's laying eggs are not, if the

hive got knocked over by a bear or a predator... we're developing sensors that have longer

batteries that are more affordable and more durable to survive the inside of the beehive

We analyze that data using various machine learning and AI algorithms where beekeepers

can see the status of all the hives that are connected as well as perform different management

This allows the beekeepers to be alerted immediately to any changes in their hives, giving them

more time to visit a colony, see what could be affecting it, and save the bees in danger.

Or, it can show them that everything’s okay.

- So you can see here this is a brood pattern of a healthy queen who lays eggs in every cell.

When the queen is failing or less healthy, she misses cells and has more of a shotgun

But here we see the queen's very healthy, productive.

With information like this, beekeepers can better monitor which of the four Ps are affecting

But we also want to prevent these problems from happening in the first place.

Pests, like the wax moth and hive beetle, feast on everything the bees make... including

their young. And they leave behind a rotten-orange-smelling yeast that smothers the hive.

But even more  destructive is a tiny mite, aptly named "Varroa destructor."

When the Asian mite encountered European bees, it became an insidious pest, slowly wearing

- And with that compromise of the immune system, those diseases have increased several fold.

Some strains of those viruses became more abundant and more lethal.

Pathogens, like these viruses, are a nasty threat of their own.

In particular, a disease called Deformed Wing Virus causes a baby bee’s wings develop

And even if bees don’t show signs of the disease, they can still carry and spread it.

This leads to trouble foraging and shorter lifespans, which can be disastrous for a colony

- A lot of colonies come out with very, very low numbers of workers that are not enough

Let's feed the bee something that even if he gets attacked by a mite, it can have the

superhero strength to fight the diseases.

Some think that “something” is a super vitamin of sorts

When administered to hives in a sugar water solution, it resulted in a 79-fold reduction

Others are using formic acid and menthol to fend off the mites.

- People are looking into selecting queens that their colonies are very clean, very,

They check on every cell and if they don't like the scent, if they think something's wrong

with that pupa, they'll sacrifice that baby bee,

they will interrupt that varroa mite breeding cycle.

Pesticides may damage male drone bees’ sperm, affecting their ability to reproduce.

But the ultimate key to saving the bees could be improving their poor nutrition.

To build up the fat they need to make immune proteins, bees require certain amino acids

- Bees that are fed on a variety of flowers do better than those  that are fed on one

And as we simplify the environment, as we create great landscapes for agriculture, we

That’s why farmers are reserving parts of their land for plants besides their primary

We haven’t even mentioned wild bees, but there are ways to help them as well, like

These little yellow critters provide an estimated $15 billion service to U.S. agriculture alone

and are an important piece of Earth’s ecosystem, so we definitely want to keep them around.

Between planting wildflowers, installing high-tech sensor systems, and boosting their immunity,

we have plenty of tools to preserve our furry little friends.