The global stock of domesticated honey bees is growing slower than agricultural demand for pollination.
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Cites background from "The global stock of domesticated ho..."
...Although global honey bee stocks have increased by ~45%, demand has risenmore than supply; the fraction of global crops that require animal pollination has tripled over the same time period (8), making food production more dependent on pollinators than before....
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Cites background from "The global stock of domesticated ho..."
...Nor is it known whether increasing application of honey bees (9) compensates for losses of wild pollinators, or even promotes these losses....
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...Several authors have speculated about how changes in biodiversity (5) and phenology (6–8) might translate into changes in the structure (9, 10) and stability (11) of complex interaction networks....
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References
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"The global stock of domesticated ho..." refers background or methods in this paper
...Agricultural crops vary greatly in their requirements for animal pollination, from those for which animal pollination is irrelevant because they are selfpollinating or wind pollinated to those that depend strictly on animal pollination [10]....
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...defined five classes of pollinator dependence based on a thorough evaluation of the existing literature [10]: class 0, none (production unaffected by exclusion of animal pollinators); class 1, little (0%–10% production reduc-...
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...Included in this fraction is most of the production of several insect-pollinated fruit and nut crops [10], both temperate (e....
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...Much current evidence demonstrates that pollination by unmanaged bees contributes substantially to the production of many crops, particularly in areas of low to moderate agricultural intensification, which provides a mosaic of crops and adjacent remnants of natural and seminatural habitats that offer suitable nest sites [9, 10, 25]....
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...To date, evidence for a global crisis has been drawn from regional or local declines in pollinators themselves [6–9] or insufficient pollination for particular crops [9, 10]....
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"The global stock of domesticated ho..." refers background in this paper
...The main exceptions to this global increase involve long-term declines in the USA and some European countries, but these are outweighed by rapid growth elsewhere (Figure S1 available online)....
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...Most recently, these concerns were voiced in Resolution T6-0579/2008 of the European Parliament, which stated ‘‘.whereas the beekeeping sector throughout the world, and more particularly in Europe, is encountering very serious difficulties....
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...Global Pollinator Decline? Recent concerns of a global decline in pollinator abundance [2, 5, 13] have been raised by the accumulation of related regional evidence, including a drop in the number of domestic honey-bee colonies in the USA [14], a reduction in the abundance and diversity of wild bees in Europe [6], and a plethora of studies from around the world showing local decreases in pollinators due to habitat fragmentation [15] and agricultural intensification [9]....
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...For example, the recent resolution of the European Parliament includes the revealing phrases ‘‘.whereas the (beekeeping) sector suffers unfair competition from products originating in third countries and imported into the Community market. action should be taken to tackle unfair competition from apiculture products originating in third countries, which is partly the result of lower production costs, particularly as regards the price of sugar and labour’’ [16]....
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...European Parliament....
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