Honey bees are under extreme pressure. Beekeepers in the US have been losing and then replacing an average of 40 percent of their honey bee colonies every year since 2010, a rate that is probably unsustainable and would be unacceptable in other kinds of husbandry. The biggest contributor to this decline is viruses spread by a parasite, Varroa Destructor. But this isn’t a natural situation. The parasite is spread by beekeeping practices, including keeping the bees in conditions that are very different from their natural abode of tree hollows. A few years ago, I demonstrated that the heat losses in…

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