More “intensive” beekeeping does not raise the risk of diseases that harm or kill the insects, new research suggests.
Intensive agriculture – where animals or plants are kept crowded together in very high densities – is thought to result in higher rates of disease spreading.
But researchers from the University of Exeter and the University of California, Berkeley found this is not the case for honeybees.
Their study modelled the spread of multiple honeybee diseases and found that crowding many colonies together was “unlikely to greatly increase disease prevalence”.
Read more at University of Exeter
Image: More 'intensive' beekeeping does not raise the risk of diseases that harm or kill the insects, new research suggests. (Credit: Ben Rouse)