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The White House has unveiled a plan to reverse an alarming decline in the populations of bees and other pollinators that play a critical role in agriculture and the environment.
Honey bee pollination alone adds US$15 billion in value to US crops each year, wrote John Holdren, one of President Barack Obama's main science advisers.
Bees and other pollinators are responsible for pollinating more than a third of the US food supply, according to the Natural Resources Defence Council, a conservation group.
But pollinators are struggling for a variety of reasons, and over the past 12 months beekeepers lost 42 per cent of their honey bee colonies mostly in winter, the US Department of Agriculture estimated last week.
That loss marked the second worst year on record for bee mortality in the United States, according to the USDA. The worst was the 2012-13 season, with the loss of 45 per cent of colonies.
This mysterious phenomenon has been observed since 2006, mainly in North America but also in Europe, and is known as "colony collapse disorder" - the more or less sudden death of millions of insects in beehives.
Scientists point to a series of factors: sickness, parasites, dwindling food and pesticides.
The new US plan, unveiled on Tuesday, also seeks to rebuild populations of Monarch butterflies, other pollinators that are also in sharp decline.
Over the past two decades, the number of Monarchs migrating south, mainly to Mexico, in winter to escape the cold has dropped by 90 per cent.
To address the problem, the White House aims to limit bee mortality in winter to a maximum of 15 per cent over 10 years.
It also aims to restore 2.8 million hectares of habitat for these insects over five years through federal intervention and public-private sectors partnerships.
Many US government agencies will be called on to find ways to grow, on federal land, plants that are more varied and better suited to honey bees and other pollinators.
Scientists say growing just one crop on a large stretch of land denies bees a source of food.


Shocking decline in bee population prompts White House plan

Kimberly Gentzel, co-owner of J & P Apiary and Gentzel's Bees, Honey and Pollination Company, poses with a message she wrote in a honeycomb, reading" save the bee",  in Homestead, Florida. Photo: AFP

Honeybees are seen at the J & P Apiary and Gentzel's Bees, Honey and Pollination Company in Homestead, Florida.  Photo: AFP

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