Keeping Bees on the Job
by the US Department of Agriculture

Bee populations in North America have been in a tailspin since the 1940s. This has made people in the agriculture industry, especially farmers, worried sick. Why? Because about 75 percent of specialty crops depend on the services of pollinators. And the most economically important pollinators are bees.
In the United States, honey bees and native bees are the key bee species. They contribute approximately $15 billion in crop value. The USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) invests in many research studies on bees. These include investigating the reasons for the declining populations, promoting pollinator health, reducing honey bee colony losses, and restoring pollinator habitats.
Since 2008, NIFA has invested about $49 million in grants on research that addresses bee health. Among these is Michigan State University's Integrated Crop Pollination project. For this project, researchers and specialists have developed sustainable pollination strategies for both wild and managed bees. One of their successes was to develop landscape models. These models were used to identify where best to establish native plants to enhance crop pollination. One good place they discovered was marginal soil sites near pollinator-dependent crops.
Another project went to the University of Maryland. For that project, researchers, specialists, and beekeepers refined and validated best management practices to minimize losses from pests and diseases.
In Minnesota, where the average mortality of honey bee colonies rose to a crescendo of 51 percent in 2014–2015. NIFA supported a University of Minnesota project to examine bees' natural defenses against parasites and diseases, breed bees to enhance these traits, and develop ways to improve the overall management of honey bee colonies. Research findings include documenting the anti-microbial properties of propolis, which honey bees collect from tree resin to help fend off diseases in the hive. This is a major reversal in perception because beekeepers had long considered propolis to be a sticky nuisance.
NIFA-funded researchers at Washington State University (WSU) are using advanced technology to understand the honey bee's past and preserve the best of the present in order to improve the species' future.

1
Select the correct answer from the drop-down menu.
In the first paragraph of the passage, the author states that American bee populations have been "in a tailspin" for several decades. The author uses the figurative expression "in a tailspin" to indicate that the overall bee population is