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TechnoratiUS beekeepers have been stung in recent months by the mysterious disappearance of millions of bees threatening honey supplies as well as crops which depend on the insects for pollination.Bee numbers on parts of the east coast and in Texas have fallen by more than 70 percent, while California has seen colonies drop by 30 to 60 percent. 
According to estimates from the US Department of Agriculture, bees are vanishing across a total of 22 states, and for the time being no one really knows why.
"Approximately 40 percent of my 2,000 colonies are currently dead and this is the greatest winter colony mortality I have ever experienced in my 30 years of beekeeping," apiarist Gene Brandi, from the California State Beekeepers Association, told Congress recently.
It is normal for hives to see populations fall by some 20 percent during the winter, but the sharp loss of bees is causing concern, especially as domestic US bee colonies have been steadily decreasing since 1980.
There are some 2.4 million professional hives in the country, according to the Agriculture Department, 25 percent fewer than at the start of the 1980s.
And the number of beekeepers has halved.
The situation is so bad, that beekeepers are now calling for some kind of government intervention, warning the flight of the bees could be catastrophic for crop growers.
Domestic bees are essential for pollinating some 90 varieties of vegetables and fruits, such as apples, avocados, and blueberries and cherries.
"The pollination work of honey bees increases the yield and quality of United States crops by approximately 15 billion dollars annually including six billion in California," Brandi said.
California's almond industry alone contributes two billion dollars to the local economy, and depends on 1.4 million bees which are brought from around the US every year to help pollinate the trees, he added.
The phenomenon now being witnessed across the United States has been dubbed "colony collapse disorder," or CCD, by scientists as they seek to explain what is causing the bees to literally disappear in droves.
The usual suspects to which bees are known to be vulnerable such as the varroa mite, an external parasite which attacks honey bees and which can wipe out a hive, appear not to be the main cause.
"CCD is associated with unique symptoms, not seen in normal collapses associated with varroa mites and honey bee viruses or in colony deaths due to winter kill," entomologist Diana Cox-Foster told the Congress committee.
In cases of colony collapse disorder, flourishing hives are suddenly depopulated leaving few, if any, surviving bees behind.
The queen bee, which is the only one in the hive allowed to reproduce, is found with just a handful of young worker bees and a reserve of food.
Curiously though no dead bees are found either inside or outside the hive.
The fact that other bees or parasites seem to shun the emptied hives raises suspicions that some kind of toxin or chemical is keeping the insects away, Cox-Foster said.
Those bees found in such devastated colonies also all seem to be infected with multiple micro-organisms, many of which are known to be behind stress-related illness in bees.
Scientists working to unravel the mysteries behind CCD believe a new pathogen may be the cause, or a new kind of chemical product which could be weakening the insects' immune systems.
The finger of suspicion is being pointed at agriculture pesticides such as the widely-used neonicotinoides, which are already known to be poisonous to bees.
France saw a huge fall in its bee population in the 1990s, blamed on the insecticide Gaucho which has now been banned in the country.
Copyright © 2007 AFP.
16 Comments so far
Show AllThe bees returned to my yard three days ago...too late for my citrus, but nonetheless they're back!
We have heard discussion recently that the cell phone towers are affecting the bees and they are now wondering if the huge windmill vibrations will harm them also.
From the stories done on this sad phenomenon thus far, it's clear there are two major factors with obvious consequences:
1) {as noted above} bees are now being trucked around the country from pollinating job to the next; whatever bee-susceptible viruses might be around are now being transmitted around the country rather than confined to a single area;
2) most important: bees are being bred to pollinate but not produce honey. To feed them they're being fed CORN SYRUP. What are bees supposed to feed on? I think it's called HONEY; a sterile, complete food. Corn syrup is having the same effect on them that it has on many other species; it weakens them and leaves them susceptible to various opportunistic infections and metabolic changes. But hey: what's good for ADM is good for....
For the last three years my neighborhood have been gassed to kill the hyped-up menace of the aedes agyptus and the west nile mostquito, the carriers of the hyped-up dengue and West Nile fever menaces. I could hear the truck driving around almost every night, spraying. I read articles stating these sprays were harmless to bees. Were they?
Makes us wonder if Monsanto or some other chemical company made a real killing hyping the diseases and selling the chemicals.
Uracan
I know that the suggestion that I am going to make will cause some to become upset, but it is possible that in addition to all of the above suggestions, chemtrails may be poisoning and/or forcing the bees from their natural habitats.
Chemtrails are for real. For those interested, http://www.carnicom.com/contrails.htm , this is a good site to begin to learn.
We don't know what is being sprayed into our atmosphere and into the air we breath, the water we drink and the soil in which we grow our food. Whatever it is, could also be killing the wildlife.
This is just the tip of the iceberg folks. It's like Siouxrose says above - nature is sending us a message. However the bees are just one small part of the message. We here in the US have left the living of life within the rhythms of nature long ago. 1 in every 160 children born in the US is born with Autism today. Children are beset with diabetes and obesity as well as a myriad of strange and rare cancers. The rate of children born with asthma and emphysema has also sky rocketed in the recent past. It is ALL related to the food we eat, and the products we buy and use in our daily lives. If you want to see changes in our environment for the good then we have to become cognizant of what we use and purchase. Where does it come from? How did it get here? Do you think Washington Apples grow in Georgia? They ride trucks burning fossil fuel all the way across the country. What good is an organic food, which uses fossil fuel to get to you? How about an organic Kiwi from New Zealand? Every plane that takes off is equivalent to the same amount of pollution generated in a large city's rush hour traffic. A dentist named Weston Price noticed strange changes in the shapes of people's skulls back in the 1930's when we first began to use processed foods. He dedicated the rest of his life to researching the idea of nutrition and how it affects us as we grow. The Weston Price Foundation http://www.westonaprice.org/ is a good resource regarding the realities of food products and food. For example, many people eat Tofu and soy based products that are essentially poisons. Soy, if not fermented as it is in Tempeh and Miso soups is a poison. The Asians only eat soy in small quantities. Those of you drinking soymilk and eating products with soy flour or soya flour or just soya are using poison in their foods. We have been exposed to the toxins of industrialism and capitalistic greed. We live in an economy of exploitation and oppression. Health care is a for profit business where the patients condition is secondary to the company bottom line. If we don't begin to change on the individual level as people we cannot expect our government or society to change. We have to change the way we live day-to-day and fast before it's too late. The good news is that we already have the technology and the knowledge to do so right now. Electric cars can be made to run as well as gas powered vehicles. It has been done already. http://www.whokilledtheelectriccar.com/ Solar power and wind farms have made great advances in recent years. If we spent half as much money on developing things that we can use within our environments as we have on warfare and divisive policies we could turn things around today. We have to start on the individual level first though. We must be the change we want to see in the world today. Don't wait for someone to lead you, take the steps you want to take today.
Realists know this.
We are running out of natural resources at the same time we are suffering from population explosion and dramatic loss in habitation.
There were two ways to work with this inevitability.
1) The world in a spirit of sharing to avoid conflict would work out a plan to share diminished resources and at the same time find solutions to both controlling population and alternative sources of energy.
2) Or do what we've always done. Seek out what we needed and crush with the use of deceit and brutal force any and all that would get in our way not really caring that the consequences of our actions would seal the world to a horribly, miserable fate.
We picked #2 - again. I've never been a big fan of mankind.
So, we've blown it. We crawled out of the cave and never let go of the club and we wound up beating ourselves to death with it.
It's why I drink and spit on SUV's
The articles look awfully speculative at this point, and have not yet mentioned that bee hives are one of the most naturally anti-bacterial places in the animal world. Due to substances in propolis. This safeguard evolved naturally, since bees are highly social -- and the wrong sort of bacterial could kill an entire hive.
But market capitalism has no patience for evolution, so if some hives should develop problems, apparently there are bee antibiotics, one approved by the FDA in 2005: http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/2005/051219.htm.
This, of course, counters the effect of evolution -- no "thinning of the herd" if the weaker colonies are hand-held along in the name of profits.
The other piece that nobody's mentioned (in addition to GMO crops, pesticides, etc.) is the size of colonies raised for honey production. Does anyone know whether the bee industry is trying to scale them up to a size that breaks the natural bee social order?
It just seems that so many environmental challenges (also political, economic, and moral) are happening at an ever increasing speed. The heat is being turned up (literally and figuratively) on the old prehistoric reptilian actions of mankind (can we really call ourselves kind-men) until some type of transformation lessons are learned and acted on.
We need a synthesis of spirit and science; indigenous man and man-of-the-future, to create truly sustainable system here in the eleventh hour of our demise.
Check out http://nature.berkeley.edu/urbanbeegardens/
This is a group that is promoting garden techniques that support the native bees in your area.
I can confirm that in my area, N. California's almond growing region my local beekeepers are losing most of thier hives. At the same time I have seen a wild bees swarm in the last month and have seen many native bees pollinate a local garden that fits the description on the above website. The local bumblebees are particularly cute.
The bees, global warming and Elizabeth Edwards cancer are all probably linked to the horrible abuse we subject the environment to. When we introduce new chemicas into the enviroment we don't know what the result will be for many years.
Nature bats last.
It's been said that poets and mystics often know what it takes science centuries to PROVE. I "know" the bees are being poisoned either by the the Monsanto "2 for 1" toxic chemical MELDED to plant biology and/or biogenetically engineered products... as a friend of mine said tonight when we passed the charred acres of "controlled burned" forests along the Suwannee (Florida); NATURE has managed these for eons; people come along and slashing & burning becomes "management." Well, maybe when the bees, one of nature's supreme UNPAID elemental forces says "I quit," science will take stock. It's been proven through a new diagnostic test for 'body burden' that we humans carry between 100-300 industrial chemicals now in our blood, skin and hair. The basis for US legal culpability rests on finding a direct link "beyond a reasonable doubt" to hold a party accountable. In the climate of chemical detritus being everywhere produced, leaked, spilled, hidden, poured... which singular party (among a pool of trespassers) can be fingered out as THE ONE. In other words, the push for profit resting on the PRESUMPTION of innocence is bringing harm. It was that way with tobacco... there SEEMED to be reasonable doubts around its link to cancer. This modality worked for years... same with global warming. Just use smoke and mirrors, force the innocent to PROVE the others' trespass and the game gets to go on and on till something cosmic stops the music. Bees leaving? Nature has definitely sent a signal.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the chemicals we use in agriculture could be directly linked to the dead bees.
This problem needs to be addressed NOW...not next year or ten years from now.
Demand that your representatives do something about this. This will effect every aspect of our culture and food supply.
The demise of bees has also been linked to BT crops, that is, crops with their own built-in insecticide.
Monsanta has said that there is no relationship between BT crops and the death of bees. The FDA, of course, supports them.
Thanks for that link, Castro is on of the great progressive geniuses and a selfless leader deserving our respect and attention. As ever, he is right and his insights should be heeded.
Second article that I read about the bees, here Fidel Castro talks about bio-fuel and the bees!
And Other Reflections on the Internationalization of Genocide
Where Have All the Bees Gone?
By FIDEL CASTRO
Monoculture/monopoly capitalism is the likely culprit in the demise of the bees. Nature relies on geographical isolation to limit plagues and catastrophes.