We’re all familiar with the #savethebees movement, but how many of us are actually taking action and saving them? The dwindling population of honeybees has been a topic of frantic discussion since as early as 2006, according to beekeepers who had begun noticing their honeybees dying off at an alarming rate. Eleven years later and here we still stand, with a variety of bee species continuing to struggle. Not shockingly, the cause of their rapid decline is of the impact that humans have on the environment.

Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD, happens when the majority of worker bees die off, leaving the Queen bee and a few others to restart the population and try their best to thrive, despite having suffered the losses of so many from their hive.

Why does CCD happen to bee colonies? There is a multitude of different reasons behind the sudden collapse, but some of the main causes are from an increased amount of pesticide intake and extreme stress due to the sporadic amounts of transportation they must endure in order to provide pollination services around the country, according to an article written on the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s website. Correspondingly, during the winter of 2016, “Nearly 30% of American honeybees died”, and “…more than a quarter of the 46 bumblebee species in North America are considered at risk”, as said in The Guardian when confronting the harmfulness of the most widely used pesticide in the world.

The bees may be better, which is what a variety of experts have been reporting, but it is evident that there is still much more to be done before bee populations begin to thrive again.