Penn State hosted the first International Conference on Pollinator Biology, Health and Policy this week to address the decline in pollinators — particularly honeybees — around the world.
The conference was held Saturday to Wednesday and was organized by Penn State’s Center for Pollinator Research, which was formed in 2009, said Christina Grozinger, director of the Center for Pollinator Research.
The conference was attended by people from more than 14 countries, she said.
Dennis vanEngelsdorp, a senior research associate at Penn State, said the world has been losing bees for 60 years, but it was not until 2006 that people started to take the problem seriously.
“One in every three bites of food you eat is directly or indirectly pollinated,” vanEngelsdorp said.
Without pollen there would be only wheats, corn and potatoes, he said.
Kristen Brugger, an eco-toxicologist working for DuPont, said honeybees have “high economic value.”
Fruits like watermelon, apples and grapes are all pollinated, she said. DuPont, a private business based in Delaware, was at the conference to present its research on which pesticides are least harmful to the bee population.
Genetics professor David De Jong, who attended the meeting from the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, said mites are a key part in pollinator decline.
De Jong likened mites to ticks, saying that mites suck the blood from bees, causing them to hatch weaker.
Alex Nikolakis, attending the conference on behalf of Bayer CropScience in Germany, said mites are a “major threat” to the bees, but other problems are also present that scientists are trying to understand.
Scientists at the conference said miticides, pesticides, fungicides and bad bee-keeping management are all potential problems contributing to pollinator decline.
Multiple factors go into causing pollinator decline that makes it a very complex issue, Grozinger said.
Overall, Grozinger said the conference went well.
“Everyone that I talked to really enjoyed it,” she said.
In the future, the conference will be held every two or three years, she said.