Meet Aakash Manaswi, the Florida student whose CO2 mite blower made bees healthier, increased honey across 60 hives

Honey bees are one of the most important insects across the globe. The buzzing bees do more than just make sweet nectar, they pollinate crops, maintain ecosystems and produce natural goods. According to the UN Environment Programme, they directly contribute to food security and a third of the world's food production depends on bees. However, bees and other pollinators such as butterflies, bats and hummingbirds are increasingly under threat from human activities. Bee populations have been declining globally over recent decades due to habitat loss, intensive farming practices, changes in weather patterns and the excessive use of agrochemicals such as pesticides. This in turn poses a threat to a variety of plants critical to human well-being and livelihoods.This is a problem that Aakash Manaswi, a student at Lake Highland Preparatory School aimed to solve. He noted that Apis mellifera are essential pollinators, contributing to 80% of global food crop pollination and $183 billion annually to the global economy. However, around 40-50% of their hives collapse annually, with the ectoparasitic mite Varroa destructor identified as the number one cause of this decline. The Varroa mite is a p...