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Daly

Honeybees suffer from colony collapse disorder, which has depleted their population nationwide and has been in the news for several years. Both wild and managed honeybees have died from a combination of issues: parasites, pesticides, habitat deterioration and disease.

Why are they so important? When bees visit flowers to collect the nectar for food for their offspring, pollen is inadvertently collected on their fuzzy bodies. As they move from flower to flower, they transfer the pollen in a process called pollination, which increases the yields of fruit and vegetable crops. These insects add $14 billion to the value of American-grown produce. The ones in the United States are European bees from Italy or Russia brought here.

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Timothy Daly is the Agricultural and Natural Resource agent with UGA Extension Henry. He can be contacted at 770-288-8421 or tdaly@uga.edu.

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