Bees are amazing creatures. They pollinate one in every three of the foods that we eat daily. Honeybees pollinate over $14 million in crops for the United States alone, keeping our agricultural economy steady, and our food prices low.

However, beginning in the year 2006, bees are slowly declining due to a variety of factors that scientists call “Colony Collapse Disorder.”

You may be asking yourself, well, what are all of these factors that contribute to CCD? Scientist experiments have resulted in a multitude of results, therefore, the information is too scattered to pinpoint an exact reason for decline.

Bees are mainly, and most commonly (as shown by scientist experiments), declining due to a pesticide class known as the neonicotinoid, a nicotine-based substance. This substance directly takes over a bee’s immune system, killing it even when the bee is exposed to a small emission. This neonicotinoid pesticide is very commonly used by farmers and sprayed across large fields of crops. Little do the farmers know, or choose to ignore, that the neonicotinoid pesticide, when sprayed on a crop, will spread throughout the entire plant, including the soil, and can stay there for years. When a bee comes to pollinate, a similar effect will occur on the bee, killing it.

Genetically Modified Organisms are also part of the problem here. When a crop is genetically modified, the pollen inside the flower is modified as well, causing the bees to die of illness due to the lack of nutrients inside the pollen that keep them living. This also affects the digestive capacity of bees, meaning that their ability to eat is lessened, and this can lead to malnutrition in times of year like the winter, when food is the hardest to find due to the weather.

This petition is here to address this issue, and two major factors in the issue.

One way to make the change is to show that we care. By signing this petition, you are sending a message to retailers and to farmers as well, telling them that this decline is a big deal! Our entire economy and food supply is at risk here due to this decline. The more signatures, the more it will become evident to farmers and retailers that this is a big issue that is caused by the decisions they make. Sure, farmers don’t make the pesticides, but that doesn’t put the blame on the manufacturers. The Environmental Protection Agency have put in hard work to ensure that there are specific labels and instructions on the pesticides, to use only when directed. There are hundreds of studies that have been done that even show that no matter what, pesticides emit a large toxicity rate to bees. But they are choosing to ignore this, because right now, in 2014, 8 years after the decline was first recorded, there are STILL farmers taking this approach, and killing off our bees. There is hope. however! By simply signing your name, you are showing that you care about this decline, and you are telling retailers that selling pesticides only provokes a larger group of people to buy them, and you are telling farmers that the approaches that they are taking is only hurting their outcome more.

We NEED to make it clear to the retailers and farmers that what has been happening the past 8 years cannot go on any further, or our bees will go extinct, our economy will be destroyed, and our food supply will be very poor. The idea is that, the more people that sign, the more people the farmers and retailers will realize that they are doing a bad job. The more people, the more it will become clear that this IS an issue, and what they are doing is causing the issue-- they are practically causing the decline themselves, being the ones making the decision to take these harmful approaches.