问答题 "Bayer is strictly committed to bee health," said Gillian Mansfield, an official specializing in strategic messaging at the company"s Bayer CropScience division. She was sitting at the center"s semicircular coffee bar, which has a formidable espresso maker and, if you ask, homegrown Bayer honey. On the surrounding walls, bee fun facts are written in English, like "A bee can fly at roughly 16 miles an hour" or, it takes "nectar from some two million flowers in order to produce a pound of honey."
While others point at pesticides, Bayer has funded research that blames mites for the bee die-off. And the center combines resources from two of the company"s divisions, Bayer CropScience and Bayer Animal Health, to further study the mite menace.
"The varroa is the biggest threat we have," said Manuel Tritschler, 28, a third-generation beekeeper who works for Bayer. "It"s very easy to see them, the mites, on the bees," he said, holding a test tube with dead mites suspended in liquid. "They suck the bee blood, from the adults and from the larvae, and in this way they transport a lot of different pathogens, virus, bacteria, fungus to the bees," he said.