No Bees? Not Just Strange, But Scary
Where are the bees?
As an unwilling and disgruntled suburbanite, I take great pride in my dandelion crop. Over the decade that I have owned my 2.3-acre lot in Maple Glen, just north of Philadelphia, I have watched as the dandelion population in my lawn has grown year on year.
One reason I’ve enjoyed the display is that I know these bright-yellow-flowered plants, which bloom early and continue blooming well into fall, are popular with honeybees. Given all the problems the bees have been having with insecticides, destruction of natural habitat, and the like, I’m happy to give them some help.
I remember that when I was a kid growing up in rural Connecticut, getting stung by a honeybee was almost a weekly occurrence that went along with going barefoot in the lawn. (My parents liked dandelions, too.)
Today, though, you could walk all day barefoot around my yard and never get stung. There’s not a honeybee to be seen.
I walked two miles recently around the neighborhood, past plenty of dandelions, including through a feral field full of them, and didn’t see a single bee. Not one. This is particularly strange because in the first warm days of spring, the hives are usually out in full force trying to replenish supplies after a long winter and in anticipation of a big period of egg-laying and hatching of larvae.
And it’s not just dandelions.
Behind my house is a wild cherry tree. A few days ago, it was in full bloom. Ordinarily, this would be an occasion for a true bee fiesta. The tree at this time in prior years was virtually a cloud of buzzing insects, all zipping from flower to flower.
This year, there was not a bee to be seen on the entire tree.
This is beyond strange. It’s downright scary.
When you consider that perhaps half the plants in nature depend upon pollinators like bees to reproduce, you have to wonder what a future without bees holds - not just for the animals that live on those plants, but for human beings.
And it’s not just honeybees that are missing. Honeybees, after all, are immigrants from Europe, and the Americas survived quite nicely without them before their arrival with the colonists. But the native bees - ground bees and bumblebees, for example - are gone, too. The only bees I’ve seen since the spring began are wood bees - large, clumsy-looking, bumblebee-like creatures that bore neat circular holes into the wood of the house and lay their eggs in solitary nests. Thank heavens for them, or there wouldn’t be a bee on my property.
But even several hundred wood bees can hardly compensate for the total absence of other pollinators.
What’s happening here?
There are a lot of possible culprits: climate change, ubiquitous microwave radiation, overuse of herbicides and pesticides, stress, and lowered immunity to fungal, viral, bacterial and mite infections, or perhaps a combination of all of the above.
My feeling, though, is one of dark foreboding.
When something as basic as bees vanishes from the scene as quickly as this, you know we’re in Big Trouble.
Dave Lindorff’s most recent book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net.
©2007 The Philadelphia Inquirer
There have also been reports that the global frog population is declining precipitously.
When I was a small boy, more than half a century ago, I was fascinated with critters. I would prowl through bushes looking for caterpillers and aphids, ants and wasps, lizards and toads, snails and slugs, dragonflies and damselflies — and I would find them. The world seemed teeming with busy little lifeforms, going about their business. It doesn’t seem that way to me any more.
The news about bees reminds me of Paul Erlich’s theory of the lynchpin species — kill off the one creature whose function holds whole ecosystems together, like the one loose bolt that gives way causing the spaceship to crash. Honeybees could well be that creature.
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/wildlife/article2449968.ece
this links to a news story regarding cell phones and “colony collapse disorder”
ready to give up your phone to save the bees and by extension all that depends pn them as pollinators
The global ecological crisis takes many forms and the least expected results can be the most disasterous. No bees mean empty shelves in the produce section. This is compounded by tighter border controls so that even the crops that get pollinated may rot in the fields for lack of pickers. Our fragile web of life is breaking and addressing it will take a national and worldwide focus unlike anything we’ve ever had to deal with before.
Cell phones? That’s ridiculous, because Asian nations, and many in Europe aren’t having bee problems, and cell phone use is more widespread in those areas.
This article doesn’t have the answer, but brings up some interesting issues:
http://www.celsias.com/blog/2007/03/29/european-bees-taking-a-nosedive/
“The study in question is a small research project conducted at the University of Jena from 2001 to 2004. The researchers examined the effects of pollen from a genetically modified maize variant called ‘Bt corn’ on bees. A gene from a soil bacterium had been inserted into the corn that enabled the plant to produce an agent that is toxic to insect pests. The study concluded that there was no evidence of a ‘toxic effect of Bt corn on healthy honeybee populations.’ But when, by sheer chance, the bees used in the experiments were infested with a parasite, something eerie happened. According to the Jena study, a ’significantly stronger decline in the number of bees’ occurred among the insects that had been fed a highly concentrated Bt poison feed.
According to Hans-Hinrich Kaatz, a professor at the University of Halle in eastern Germany and the director of the study, the bacterial toxin in the genetically modified corn may have ‘altered the surface of the bee’s intestines, sufficiently weakening the bees to allow the parasites to gain entry — or perhaps it was the other way around. We don’t know.’
Of course, the concentration of the toxin was ten times higher in the experiments than in normal Bt corn pollen. In addition, the bee feed was administered over a relatively lengthy six-week period.
Kaatz would have preferred to continue studying the phenomenon but lacked the necessary funding. ‘Those who have the money are not interested in this sort of research,’ says the professor, ‘and those who are interested don’t have the money.’”
What’s interesting in CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder) is that all bugs, even bugs that steal honey, treat the bees’ honey like poison. I don’t think cell phones would do that.
Right now there’s just speculation, but who is going to investigate if the 40% of corn that is Genetically Modified in the U.S. is the cause of the bees dying? Who will investigate if a new pesticide allowed in the U.S. is to blame for CCD, when powerful interests would never fund such a study?
The answer is that NO ONE will. Beekeepers on the west coast report that 70% of their colonies are lost, and in our corporate controlled society the funding doesn’t exist to find out why. They’ll just blame it on cell phones or fungus and never ask the question ‘what has been introduced into the environment that wasn’t around 10 years ago?’ Bees have been around for millions of years, obviously something is wiping them out. Unfortunately I feel the bee-die-off is just the beginning, things are going to get worse for the environment.
Its not nice to fool with Mother Nature.
You know I thought our Frankencrops might have some blame about these missing Bees. I mean remember the Butterfly kill off a few years ago right near one of the Experimental cornfields.
Cellphone Radiation? Why not? How can we really be sure it doesn’t make the bees lose their homing device?
There was some studies done about Bees acting confused around power lines.
Einstein once gave humans 4 years if the bees were to disappear. I would guess with all the weapons of mass destruction this world has and the dependence on a few countries to feed the rest.Most likely in less then 2 years all out wars will start for whatever is left of our food supplies.
Of course there will probably also be Soylent Green.Imagine that old Sci Fi book NO ROOM NO ROOM actually becoming reality?
I once read an interview with that Author Harry something.
He said he actually wrote that book in hope that something like Soylent Green would never come to pass.
Well Harry dispite your efforts Soylent Green is here.
I too miss those little bees ,but soon we will be among the missing. I doubt the creatures that are left will miss us.
Well animal research or vivisection on insects isnt going to answer the question–always a mistake to assume that a problem science creates can be solved by more science.
Would be ironic though if humans faced their downfall from bees.
Also ironic that humans like to consider worms as worthless when ecologically speaking, they are far more essnetial to the planet than a certain biped species with delusions of supremacy.
We have been raping and violating the earth that is mother to us all and she is now returning the favor. What’s so mysterious about that?
Those who don’t learn to become concerned with dying canaries or disappearing frogs and bees will soon enough get the opportunity to be dinner for the scavenger species who dine on dead flesh.
Check out UC Berkely’s urban bee web page. The page is specific to the San Francisco Bay Area but many of the plants listed grow well in most of the nation. http://nature.berkeley.edu/urbanbeegardens/
On my walk this morning in N. California I saw several bushes with both feral bees and honeybees. This was about a mile into a wild preserve.
The numbers of ferals seem to be up compared to my memory of past years. Maybe I’m just used to masses of honeybees.
Maybe when Christ was talking about how treating the least among us would reflect on us he REALLY meant least.
Foamweapons: thank you for the pithy explanation. You know the adage about the blind man and the elephant? His SENSE and description of the creature ensues from where he makes contact. Thus more than one explanation can exist simultaneously. Edgar Cayce, known as America’s “Sleeping prophet” spoke about the fall of Atlantis. Even if we take his work as a fable, its lesson is appropos. Cayce explained that the forces of nature, which he termed “the elementals” work with people so long as they follow Divine law. When too many laws are broken, nature says, NO THANKS. I happen to believe the genetic “shot gun wedding” of herbicides WITH the authentic plant tissue is pushing creatures away. We have no idea how their senses operate, these creatures can hear, smell, and taste things way beyond OUR human range. Think dog whistle! Or the fact our eyes are not trained to see color across the entire spectrum (i.e. infrared and ultraviolet). There is a NATURAL CAPITALISM based on all the gifts Mother Nature bequeathes to her children… but when those children, like the allegory about the old woman who lives in the shoe, finds herself needing to repair the laces, the sole/soul, the heel, etc ALL AT ONCE, she borders on collapse. Cayce said the Atlanteans had returned to America and brought their genetic technology along. He also cited another reason for the fall of Atlantis (Plato speaks about it, as does the Bible’s “great flood”) was the division among people… it was either Law of One (progressives like us, who believe life IS a shared creation and must be predicated on laws fair to all) or the sons and daughters of Belial, very much in their thinking like neocons and/or rightwing Republicans who ONLY consider their own advancement and “prosperity” without looking farther to what their footprint means, or how it impacts others (including other ecosystems). The web of life is imploding… did citizens of Pompeii realize when their last hour had come? I may sound like an Old Testament Prophet, but the people vacationing in Thailand that Christmas sure didn’t expect the big wave. The Buddhists teach the impermanence of life… that we HONOR living today and HARM none. It’s a very cost-effective spiritual philosophy, and if more practiced it, we might extend our lifespan while preserving what’s left of the intricately woven web of interconnected species.
To bee or not to bee…
Bees? Who needs them? Obnoxious, poisonous things. Good riddance.
Anything that needs pollination gets that done by the wind. As luck will have it, winds are on the increase. Plus, food we can get from supermarkets and third world countries anyway.
Soon someone will invent some nano-bees to take care of everything bees were needed for, and without the fuzz and buzz.
If one link in an eco-chain goes, not to worry - there are plenty of others. Now breeding bees and transporting them around in big trucks will become a growth-industry. It’s win-win all around.
This is nothing, doesn’t matter, just another eco-doom rumor. Oops, gotta go, my cell’s ringing.
It bothers me that so many people conflate what should be considered very different issues: (1) the over-all impact of the large human population on the planet; (2) the implications of the use of science in altering the environment consistent with human interests; and (3) the implications of capitalists pursuing activities for short-term profit without consideration of sustainability of the activities or of the ecosystems and human populations they affect.
Really no one has a right to complain about (1) because no one here would have been born if not for the high human population and they and their interests would not exist, regardless of what those interests are.
As for (2), it is inappropriate to complain unless one would prefer to live in poverty, ignorance, and with constant disease and other illness, i.e. accept a Hobbesian existence — “poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
As for (3), virtually all progressives understand that there are other ways to organize human society besides corporate capitalism and many of them could lead to a much higher quality of life for the great majority of the population and to more sustainable and healthy productive activities, e.g. not activities that lead to a precipitous decline in the bee population!
No Bees?
GM crop?
Dallas, Texas checking in - no bees here, either. No wasps, hornets, yellow jackets, mud daubers. Last year, stingers everywhere, hive in the attic, nests all over the neighborhood. As a matter of fact, the bug count generally is so seriously low, it’s become like Los Angeles. No butterflies, no dragonflies… scary indeed….
Here in Hawaii we are in danger of losing our bee population to a particular mite that has snuck in from the mainland. Already this is a huge problem on Oahu, but if it hits the Big Island, we will be in serious trouble, as we have several large queen bee farms here, a growing honey trade and Kona coffee that is pollinanted almost exclusively by the bees. My farm was buzzing with thousands of them this morning, but if the mites make it to this island, it will be a mess.
There is a mite–brown varroa mite–that is devastating bee hives in Hawaii. These mites are reported as being responsible for “destroying more than half of some mainland beekeepers’ hives and wiping out most wild honeybees.” Related?
Kivals: I appreciate and recognize your 3 major points, but still, there is room to expand our version of life and our relationship to this planet. I am not sure science has gotten rid of illness via immunization, as much as people now are cleaner, don’t live WITH their garbage and/or animals, at least in modern America.
I remember years ago that there was a lot of research on what was called “Indicator Species”. These were the canaries in the mine. If there was a die off of these species it created a domino effect throughout the ecosystem. As I recall, frogs were especially suseptible to the thinning of the ozone level. I’m no scientist, but I know that it took Mother Nature a very long time to get all the parts of the earth’s ecosystems working in balance for the good of the whole system. Anything that cannot occur naturally in nature should not be attempted by the arrogance of humans. Just because scientists can inject a virus into a corn genome or potatoe doesn’t mean it’s a good thing. Fish in strawberries so they don’t freeze? Any wonder the bees are dying off? The enemy is Monsanto! Go on over to organicconsumers.org to find out more and join actions like “Millions Against Monsanto”. You want a chance for the bees so you can have food? You have to support organic and local agriculture and small farms!
Partial Information is not helping determine what is happening to the bees. Yesterday I read an article from a small beekeeper about foundation comb, the manufactured product that beekeepers put in the hives to give something for the bees to build their cells on, in a way that is suitable for harvest by the beekeeper. It seems that bees in the wild use a cell size of 4.9mm, while commercial beekeepers use a cell size about half again larger. Size of the cell determines the size of the bee and of course the larger bees can do more work. The down side seems to be that the larger cell size takes at least a day more to prepare and cap after the queen lays the egg inside. The result of that longer open cell time is the mites, etc have much longer to invade the cell. The small beekeeper stated he had NO mite problems, did not have to use insecticides (Insecticides in a home used by insects!!?) and his hives have become healty instead of being a constant struggle. I would imagine anyone with an interest could chase this down via Google. What it tells me, is we keep on fooling with Mother Nature and she is not amused. Mystery? Not so much.
I thought Katrina had wiped out bees here on the Miss. Gulf Coast, but recent stories like this one and the fact that they’re still not back after almost two years has me worried. I let my yard go this year, and it has been a riot of wildflowers, still no bees except for the wood bees…
There are so many potential culprits for the declining bee population. I would consider the use and manufacture of sucralose(Splenda) as a possible explanation. Marketed as “safe for the whole family because it’s made from sugar”, Splenda actually replaces three naturally occurring hydroxyl groups with chlorine atoms. The resultant structure is chemically similar to DDT and other pesticides.
Unfortunatly 99% of the civilised world will think that being able to walk barefoot without risking a bee sting is pretty cool…tells you how much of a chance we have to use this kind of argument to address the dangers of species and biodiversity destruction.
Rebel Farmer: Good points. I’ve kept up with very illuminating articles from Mother Jones on Monsanto. Readers may or may not know about a diagnostic test called “body burden” which shows how many toxic/industrial chemicals WE humans now have in our bodies. The assumption on the part of industrial polluters is that everything is safe; and due to the way our legal system operates the burden of proof is on those being harmed. If we have 100 chemicals in our bodies (not what Nature intended) and these eventually lead to cellular breakdown, how is it possible to isolate the SINGULAR offender? In other words, in a climate of trespass, the trespassers effectively provide one another with a free pass. I remember when frogs were growing extra genitals, too. Some of these chemicals leeching into the water table have estrogen-like influences. children today are entering puberty too early. Years back when I lived in Puerto Rico, boys were growing breasts! Now that wakes up the crowd fast in a machismo culture! It eventually was proven that the culprit was the hormones in the chicken which they also ingested! As someone else said, and it’s bottom line, “It’s not nice to fool with Mother nature.” Imagine the hubris: that the Great mother has spent eons in HER laboratory working through trial and error to establish the complex relationships, many based on chemical triggers, that link animal, plant and human kingdoms. And here come geneticists and chemical engineers with a FEW years of training, taking the whole miraculous web apart. Bees may be one first sign, like canaries in the coal mine… but when the web implodes, it takes a lot of species along for the ride.
People like Ullern and there more of them than any of us know, think there will always something that will come out of nowere to save us.Just take a look around,every thing we are doing to the good earth that has been so good to us fore so long gust can’t take it anymore.My grandfather told me that the human race is a cancer to this earth.To save this planet would be like trying to stop the bomb they droped over Japan after the bomb has left the bay.
I saw one bee this year so far. One bee.
I used to kill them when I was a kid since one stung me on my foot once. Now I’m ashamed of myself.
I saw that one fat, furry little bumblebee, and I got a lump in my throat. We’re so afraid of them stinging us, yet they help keep us all alive.
And people make fun of me for not owning a cell phone. Can’t they just ban them? What the hell did people do before cell phones anyway? People feel as if they have to be available 24/7 to others.
It all seems to me that the solutions are so simple.
I guess the elites will have plenty of food for themselves though when things get bad. God these guys are warlords.
I remember reading an article about the problems of the industialized bee industry. It seems that the problem with the bees is pretty similar to what happens to crops that are over homogenized, therefore more vulnerable to disease that none of them have resistance to. And then they’re way overworked being taken all over to big agribusiness farms that don’t keep their own bees. This doesn’t have anything to do with cell phones or global warming, it has to do with the problems brought on by industialized agriculture. I don’t think the author does us any favors by not doing his homework, and scaring the pants off people.
Ullem, I would like to pay you 25 cents an hour to pollinate my 23′ apple trees. You will need to busier than a bee to get the job done.
In Costa Rica, since 1995, Spider monkeys have declined by 74%, 26,000 to 7,200. Howler monkeys by 64%, from 102,000 to 36,000. Squirrel monkeys by 43% from 7,300 to 4,200 and White-faced Capuchins by 43% from 95,000 to 54,000. This decline occurs in supposedly a country that preserves its forests. And the monkeys that remain are sick from pesticides, and vulnerable to extinction from lack of genetic diversity that comes from loss of habitat. No more bees, no more monkeys, but lots of chemicals. How impoverished this new world.
I am a passionate organic gardener and the thought of no bees is very disturbing to me. Just to check out the reports of no bees on flowering fruit trees, midday today I went around my neighborhood in Fort Collins, Co and stopped at ~ 10 cherry and apple trees. They were all in full bloom in bright sunlight and I didn’t see a single bee.Yikes!
Does anyone know how to find a list of fruits and vegetables which require or do not require pollination?
My childhood insect story is similar to the above. I had a large back yard which was so full of insects that we divided it into sections and named them “beetle city”, “spider city” etc. You could not walk fifty feet into the yard without being barraged by jumping and flying grasshoppers. Two years ago I was visiting a friend in Plymouth, MA. While chatting in her tiny back yard a grasshopper landed on my jersey. It was then that I was reminded that I hadn’t had this happen to me in decades.
One other thought, if you want an education, go to a convention of Republicans and tell them that the bees are dying. Not one of them will understand or care to understand the meaning of your declaration. Your earnestness will be ridiculed and cruel remarks with abusive references to Al Gore will be the response. You will be forgotten in the blink of an eye.
We could certainly use Einstein today. In his day, the most brilliant scientists pursued knowledge for the sake of knowledge. So much of science today is corporate driven, with the best and brightest working for casinos and Monsanto’s There won’t be much time or energy devoted to the bee mystery; we probably won’t ever know the real reason.
jstevens,
Here’s a link that explains why the frogs and bees are disappearing (and eventually us humans)
http://www.ewg.org
The Article “Body Burden” tells how trace toxins are building up in all living creatures around the World, including babies.
There is absolutely no question that the cause is GM crops.
It is essential that there be an immediate worldwide moratorium on GM planting, and the stuff that is already in the ground must be destroyed.
Mites, mobile phones, disease - all bullshit, disinformation put out by the biotech companies.
This is war. Every man jack of us is going to die soon if we don’t stop this madness.
A simple observation narrows the playing field considerably: the hives are empty with no sick and/or dying bees around them. This throws out any possibility of an infestation (mite, virus, fungus, bacteria, etc.) that would cause death at indeterminate times. Something is either confusing the bees so they cannot find their home and die of exhaustion, or killing them in the field (sprays, poisons on plants, etc.). Of course this implication would not be popular to our pesticide friends.