Honeybee Die-Off Threatens Food Supply
BELTSVILLE, Md. - Unless someone or something stops it soon, the mysterious killer that is wiping out many of the nation’s honeybees could have a devastating effect on America’s dinner plate, perhaps even reducing us to a glorified bread-and-water diet.
Honeybees don’t just make honey; they pollinate more than 90 of the tastiest flowering crops we have. Among them: apples, nuts, avocados, soybeans, asparagus, broccoli, celery, squash and cucumbers. And lots of the really sweet and tart stuff, too, including citrus fruit, peaches, kiwi, cherries, blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, cantaloupe and other melons. 
In fact, about one-third of the human diet comes from insect-pollinated plants, and the honeybee is responsible for 80 percent of that pollination, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Even cattle, which feed on alfalfa, depend on bees. So if the collapse worsens, we could end up being “stuck with grains and water,” said Kevin Hackett, the national program leader for USDA’s bee and pollination program.
“This is the biggest general threat to our food supply,” Hackett said.
While not all scientists foresee a food crisis, noting that large-scale bee die-offs have happened before, this one seems particularly baffling and alarming.
U.S. beekeepers in the past few months have lost one-quarter of their colonies - or about five times the normal winter losses - because of what scientists have dubbed Colony Collapse Disorder. The problem started in November and seems to have spread to 27 states, with similar collapses reported in Brazil, Canada and parts of Europe.
Scientists are struggling to figure out what is killing the honeybees, and early results of a key study this week point to some kind of disease or parasite.
Even before this disorder struck, America’s honeybees were in trouble. Their numbers were steadily shrinking, because their genes do not equip them to fight poisons and disease very well, and because their gregarious nature exposes them to ailments that afflict thousands of their close cousins.
“Quite frankly, the question is whether the bees can weather this perfect storm,” Hackett said. “Do they have the resilience to bounce back? We’ll know probably by the end of the summer.”
Experts from Brazil and Europe have joined in the detective work at USDA’s bee lab in suburban Washington. In recent weeks, Hackett briefed Vice President Cheney’s office on the problem. Congress has held hearings on the matter.
“This crisis threatens to wipe out production of crops dependent on bees for pollination,” Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said in a statement.
A congressional study said honeybees add about $15 billion a year in value to our food supply.
Of the 17,000 species of bees that scientists know about, “honeybees are, for many reasons, the pollinator of choice for most North American crops,” a National Academy of Sciences study said last year. They pollinate many types of plants, repeatedly visit the same plant, and recruit other honeybees to visit, too.
Pulitzer Prize-winning insect biologist E.O. Wilson of Harvard said the honeybee is nature’s “workhorse - and we took it for granted.”
“We’ve hung our own future on a thread,” Wilson, author of the book “The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth,” told The Associated Press on Monday.
Beginning this past fall, beekeepers would open up their hives and find no workers, just newborn bees and the queen. Unlike past bee die-offs, where dead bees would be found near the hive, this time they just disappeared. The die-off takes just one to three weeks.
USDA’s top bee scientist, Jeff Pettis, who is coordinating the detective work on this die-off, has more suspected causes than time, people and money to look into them.
The top suspects are a parasite, an unknown virus, some kind of bacteria, pesticides, or a one-two combination of the top four, with one weakening the honeybee and the second killing it.
A quick experiment with some of the devastated hives makes pesticides seem less likely. In the recent experiment, Pettis and colleagues irradiated some hard-hit hives and reintroduced new bee colonies. More bees thrived in the irradiated hives than in the non-irradiated ones, pointing toward some kind of disease or parasite that was killed by radiation.
The parasite hypothesis has history and some new findings to give it a boost: A mite practically wiped out the wild honeybee in the U.S. in the 1990s. And another new one-celled parasitic fungus was found last week in a tiny sample of dead bees by University of California San Francisco molecular biologist Joe DeRisi, who isolated the human SARS virus.
However, Pettis and others said while the parasite nosema ceranae may be a factor, it cannot be the sole cause. The fungus has been seen before, sometimes in colonies that were healthy.
Recently, scientists have begun to wonder if mankind is too dependent on honeybees. The scientific warning signs came in two reports last October.
First, the National Academy of Sciences said pollinators, especially America’s honeybee, were under threat of collapse because of a variety of factors. Captive colonies in the United States shrank from 5.9 million in 1947 to 2.4 million in 2005.
Then, scientists finished mapping the honeybee genome and found that the insect did not have the normal complement of genes that take poisons out of their systems or many immune-disease-fighting genes. A fruitfly or a mosquito has twice the number of genes to fight toxins, University of Illinois entomologist May Berenbaum.
What the genome mapping revealed was “that honeybees may be peculiarly vulnerable to disease and toxins,” Berenbaum said.
University of Montana bee expert Jerry Bromenshenk has surveyed more than 500 beekeepers and found that 38 percent of them had losses of 75 percent or more. A few weeks back, Bromenshenk was visiting California beekeepers and saw a hive that was thriving. Two days later, it had completely collapsed.
Yet Bromenshenk said, “I’m not ready to panic yet.” He said he doesn’t think a food crisis is looming.
Even though experts this year gave what’s happening a new name and think this is a new type of die-off, it may have happened before.
Bromenshenk said cited die-offs in the 1960s and 1970s that sound somewhat the same. There were reports of something like this in the United States in spots in 2004, Pettis said. And Germany had something similar in 2004, said Peter Neumann, co-chairman of a 17-country European research group studying the problem.
“The problem is that everyone wants a simple answer,” Pettis said. “And it may not be a simple answer.”
Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press.
Pesticides should be at the top of the list, along with genetically altered crops, which contain BT insecticide and other poisons in every cell of their being, including their pollen. G-E corn and soybeans are now ubiquitous, and corn pollen spreads over everything, gets caught in the wind, and has contaminated wild corn strains in the Andes.
Bees cannot avoid bringing poisoned pollen and nectar back to the hive.
We need to buy out-take over the chemical-pharmaceutical-pesticide corporations (all the same companies - Monsanto, DuPont, Bayer, et al) and manage them so we and our only habitat - Earth - can survive and thrive.
Areas where bees are still okay should not allow unhealthy bees to be trucked in to infest the healthy colonies with whatever parasite-virus is taking advantage of the bees’ unhealthy immune systems, caused by exposure to toxic chemicals (pesticides) or g-e crops, so alien to nature and our own bodies.
G-E crops need to be banned, along with most pesticides, so we can work with nature, instead of trying to kill nature for corporate profits.
Is this only in the US or is there anywhere else this is taking place? My reasons for asking are that we are not the only ones who have fouled our nests with poisons and/or pollution, and we are certinly not the only ones who use cell phones.
Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, “man would have only four years of life left”.
It would be ironic, if the edifice collapsed due to the removal of the least conspicuous stone in its foundation.
an epidemiology study should be done to compare areas which do not have cell towers with those that do and compare it with bee death. Bees are closely monitored for years in the US. I had a hive, my neighbors have hives, a beeinspector comes around every Spring. Take the raw data and run it threw the computer to see if the celltowers have anything to do with the bee communication and homing skills.
In addition, bees are getting trucked around possibly too much and it is a tipping point of megaagriculture - we should compare the small and the big bee farmers.
Thanks for having this important story in Common Dreams
A likely course of action, according to a beekeeping friend here in Southern Arizona, will be to encourage the Northward spread of African bees. Nearly all of our native hives here have been replaced by the African strain, which are more aggressive (though not nearly as lethal as the “Killer Bee” bugaboo our sensationalist media has cooked up for us), hardier and more resistant to parasites and toxins. African hives are doing fine here. Pollination and honey production are getting handled by the new “invasive” species. The immediate vicinity of an African hive is not, however, a place you want to be, so more precautions will be necessary.
This is not to say we shouldn’t be alarmed at the disappearance of frogs and bees and other mine canaries that tell us something is awry with the environment. Disruption of food production may put a concern for the environment onto our radar screens. Certainly some level of pain is required, in lieu of intelligence, to rouse Americans from torpor and denial.
BTW Einstein never said that. Just for information. Still a telling prediction no matter who said it, probably a beekeeper. This is just one more eco disaster that is going to bite us (humanity) in the butt. Our destruction will come out of an unwatched quarter and surprise everyone. Well, maybe not everyone but most of the sheeple who will then cry and lament for a government fix. SOrry, no fix this time.
The Einstein “quote” is urban legend, and despite a huge amount of effort, no-one has found a source. At best, the only mention of this quote was in 1994 in a pamphlet distributed by the National Union of French Apiculture, which may have been self-serving.
http://www.snopes.com/quotes/einstein/bees.asp
In westminster Maryland my wife and I watched with growing alarm as the number of honey bees visiting our gardens dwindled year after year. We spoke with bee keepers; we read, we researched, all to little avail as there seemed to be no comnprehensive view. The disappearing honeybees were apparently the beekeepers’ problem. And now we read about colony collapse disorder and we shake our heads in dismay. We could see it coming, but we couldn’t do anything about it. Maybe the bees have grown tired of us.
Not that it isn’t a tragedy and ecological disaster, but the European honeybee did not exist in this hemisphere before the invaders came. Indigenous crops (70% of the food crop species we use today) did not rely on the honeybee for polination, but on a diversity of bee varieties.
The lesson here: diversity is everything when it comes to the ecology of our planet. When you foster a mono-crop (vegetable or insect) you set the course for catastrophe.
those who are doing small-cell organic apiculture appear to be seeing lower losses. one of the stressors on honeybees is commercial breeding (”optimisation”) for larger bees and for unnatural behaviours like a preference for nectar over pollen to increase honey stores at the expense of pollen stores (the hives then fed “pollen substitute” made of soy powder from, you guessed it, commercial GMO soy). another stressor is trying to accelerate colony growth and forcing queens to overproduce eggs, thus ‘burning out’ a queen in far less than her natural lifetime (similar to the abuse of dairy cows which has driven down the “commercial lifespan,” and up the price, of heifers nationwide).
it is about time we realised that in many cases, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it — and that Better may be the enemy of Good, or even the enemy of life itself. nit that innovation is bad or that Mendel and his sweet peas were the root of all evil, but… trying to treat living systems like machines to be tuned, re-engineered, and optimised for our convenience is a fundamental error — turning co-evolution into domination and micromanagement…
Probably, the bee industry is sourcing new bees from incubators that are not exposed to the pathogens/toxins so the bees can’t develop a natural defense. It’s best to cooperate with nature, and allow natural adaptation to work, so the bees should be reproducing in a natural environment, exposed to the threats.
If you grow your own food in your back yard and keep a bee hive, and if your bees are killed, the regional bee population will come to the rescue. The regional genetic diversity is the bees strongest defense against pathogens/toxins. We stand to benefit greatly from nature’s solutions, and the genetic diversity of wild food and heirloom cultivars.
“We need to buy out-take over the chemical-pharmaceutical-pesticide corporations (all the same companies - Monsanto, DuPont, Bayer, et al) and manage them so we and our only habitat - Earth - can survive and thrive.”
Cleanearth I appreciate the thought.
Corporations are considered to have the rights of humans, along with that goes moral responsibility a concept that is reviled by those that populate such institutions.
Put corrupt corporations on trial for crimes against humanity and the planet - if found guilty impose the death sentence. The corporations you mentioned fill the bill - liquidate them.
I was born & raised on a working farm, though I don’t live on a farm anymore…
CAN I just say one word about this? One word:
“Mon-satan-o”
I know they must think they’re doing good things there with their corporate ‘improvements’ to how things get grown and farming is done. Hmmm?
But because Monsanto is primarily motivated by greed… what they actually produce is EVIL.
“The avalanch has begun. Too late for the pebbles to vote.” Kosh, Babylon5 Season1, Episode #10, ‘93. True then. Truer now.
Live as well as you can and take the red pill, very za-Zen. It won’t make you safe, nothing ever will ever again, but you might just gain the flexibility to be able to dodge a couple of those bullets, for a while. And then who knows, maybe if you last long enough, you’ll discover you don’t have to.
But none of this world will be left standing when you do. Corporate pre-human monsters will not own your daily lives or this planet. Corporations will be seen as the parasitic sociopaths that they have long demonstrated themselves to be. And our Psychotic Killer Ruling Class with their family & clan, top down, authoritarian, feudalistic 4000 yo flat earth model of life as murder, rape, and plunder - will be an artifact of the times when we ate gravel in our food and used our appendix to hold it. Very different place. Right now, we are running triple time just to survive the predations that our Masters have inflicted on us - and we are losing badly, along with the bees, the trees, and a lot of other critters we share this place with. The operative word here being ’share’. Our collective reaction to that word tells you all you need to know to understand about why we’ve got about 30 minutes left. We don’t like to ’share’ with anyone or anything. WINNER TAKES ALL! - LOSERS ARE LUNCH! Will make a fine epitaph.
And yes, if you were looking for a poster boy representation of a corporation acting as an aggessive melanoma - Mon-satan-o would be a truly excellent choice, although, in fairness, the competition out there is fierce for the number 1 draft pick for “Killer Corporation of the Year”. Their perfidies beggar the imagination and the digestion. Always have. We just didn’t care. Wasn’t our ass being chewed up. Now it is. Chewed on real good about now.
Peace.
There is an element to this problem that I have not yet seen in articles, “MAN” or to be politically correct the human factor.
Bee keepers truck their bees across the country to orchards and farms that pay a premium price for their services. From what I have read bee keepers also selectively breed bees in order to optimize their productivity.
I gather that this type of intervention in the life of a bee is stressful and also we know from the domestication of any species that selective breeding goes against the most important law of nature “natural selection”. The “bee industry” has possibly created a inferior bee species that has a suppressed immune system.
This seems to be a classic case of man’s attempt to control nature instead of working with nature in a natural way.
GMO Corn produces great clouds of transgenic pollen. Corporate agriculture has unleashed this genetic experiment on the rest of the ecosystem without a complete understanding of the consequences.
The potential risk of trangenic pollen so completely outweighs the benefit of increased corn production that no rational society would permit it.
The mechanisms by which we govern ourselves are themselves entirely governed by the monstrous greed of the already rich. We are not a rational society.
We are not a rational society.
psychopaths are extremely rational — w/in their own private coordinate system.
technocrats, financiers, marketeers and capitalist bosses are extremely rationa — w/in their own privatised, monetised, reductionist coordinate system.
problem is that when psychopath and reality diverge seriously, reality usually wins. in the end.
umm to Poet :
Yes it is taking place elsewhere. Though it is a typically Americentric article ( it IS Associated Press after all) there appear to be several references to other countries including this one…
“The problem started in November and seems to have spread to 27 states, with similar collapses reported in Brazil, Canada and parts of Europe.”
Interesting link about a possible Bt cause. It’s GMO Bt which causes that bacteria to be present year round.
http://www.celsias.com/blog/2007/03/29/european-bees-taking-a-nosedive/
I agree with mark: monsanto. And I’ll bet you anything they have immunity already written in some obscure part of some obscure legislation.
Lucky, you’re great! Keep posting every day. It’s good to laugh when everything seems so overwhelming.
Key things I picked up from the posts here:
Biodiversity is key. It took Mother Nature a very long time to make all this stuff work. And balance is the key.
Related to this is the fact that humans, in their arrogance, greed, and impatience, shouldn’t be messin’ with any genomes. Just because it can be done, doesn’t mean it’s very smart. GE stuff is really stupid. Crossing corn with a virus, strawberrys with fish, and plants that can be sprayed with herbicides is pretty weird. Even the Europeans know that. They won’t buy the stuff and their farmers still have a lot of clout (not to mention tractors that they can use as tanks in the streets). Remember, it was a farmer in France that did the damage to the McDonalds.
As I see it, local food sovereignty is the only route to our future survival. This is going to put a major dent in your eating habits. No more stuff out of season that has to be shipped in from a gazillion miles away. This is especially true during the period of time it will take to develop local diversity in food crops and all the bugs we’re going to need to sustain them. Not to mention the web of distribution networks and neighbors that need to be established.
So, here’s the plan….Start working your way toward a local diet. It doesn’t have to be organic if you know what your local farmer is doing. This is a great time to start because the local Farmer’s Markets are just getting started for the year. Join a CSA. Get together with your neighbors and see what you can grow together and trade amongst yourselves. (WARNING! Don’t let everybody grow zucchini even if they want to!) Plant a row for the hungry! Get your hands dirty! Learn to love bugs and critters. (Slugs and ground squirrels are an exception for me personally). This doesn’t mean you have to be vegan or vegetarian. It does mean that you will have to cut down on meat though.
Now, bigger picture….Start worker cooperative farms. Do everything you can to preserve good, farmable soils in your area. This is tough because all your city planners, developers, and greedy folks are planting asphalt and houses on every acre they can find. Promote small farms in your area. This includes ranchers. Become a small farmer or rancher(but don’t give up your day job). Also, see if you can get your schools to use more local food for the kids. And do everything you can to EDUCATE yourself and others.
This is not pie-in-the-sky stuff. The grass roots effort has been going on for years. It’s just that now, we need to speed it up. Go on over to www.organicconsumers.org and join the “Millions Against Monsanto”, read the articles, get involved. Make sure that the Farm Bill that is up this year makes money available for small farmers and reduces subsidies to the big guys. Get truth in labeling for GMO’s and rgbh dairy products. Make Congress get Country of Orgin Labeling (COOL) off the ground.
Then when we get done with the food thing, we can move on to Community Energy and Transportation Sovereignty!! Solar panels on every roof top! Plug-in electric cars.
A possible cause?
http://tinyurl.com/2kw2f5
Do the bees and other pollinators a favor and mulch over your lawn and plant gardens and wildflowers.
Over the last year or two I have been trying to gradually allow my grass to “grow wild” (or at least most of it). I only use an old-style “human-powered” push mover for the grass I do cut and I have a compost bin which I have thoroughly enjoyed learning how to use. I live on less than an acre but have been amazed at the diversity and density of life that arises all on its own if fostered and given a chance.
I have noticed several types of bees in my yard — in particular carpenter bees but also an incredibly small bee that seems to specialize on certain wild flowers and carnations that are growing in my yard.
Most of my neighbors seem to want a homogenous lawn that looks nice if all conditions are correct and/or a bunch of money is spent on various treatment chemicals. This does not seem natural to me. Plus if there is a dry spell or too much rain these homogenous lawns don’t hold up.
I also have a “vegetable and little tree” garden going and have “designated” them as such — See my website WWW.KJH-ES.COM for more information on this and a bunch of other things including an idea I have for a “solar power contest” and some preliminary thoughts on CO2-trading, both of which I intend on expounding upon in the near future.
In my little tree garden, I’m growing tulip poplars which are an incredibly fast growing and hardy tree that I think more people should try to grow (at least where I live in the southeastern US). The tulip poplars in my little tree garden are all saplings that were just scattered throughout my yard. I found them and decided to plant them together and it literally only took me a few hours to dig them up and tranplant them. Except for one I think they all transplanted without any problems - I think it helps to transplant them after a good rain and to quickly get them back in the ground. There are others that I just left alone to grow on thier own. Its a bit sad in a way because I’m sure over the years, I have probably mowed over or “weeded out” many tulip poplar saplings, and I wish I hadn’t done this, but I suppose we all have to “live and learn”. Now I know better.
I also have numerous small live oaks, maples, ornamental trees, and others growing that I have planted in the last few years. It is very easy to plant the saplings, and these trees are of immense value. At least they are to me.
In all humbleness (IAH),
Ken
One of the major concern is the proliferation of food crops used for “BIOFUEL”. These crops escape OGM control and are sprayed intensively with pesticides and fungicides while in full bloom, since they are not destined for food consumption. This means the fields are sprayed while the bees are harvesting. Major bee die offs have been witnessed lately in Germany, where flowering yellow rapefields (Raps in German, colza in French) have spread over the landscapes to produce “bio” fuel. What makes matters even worse, is that rotating agriculture( which allowed the earth to recover and gave a sanctuary to wildlife, birds, indigenous plants and insects) is now replaced by such crops used today for “bio fuel”. The only way to stop the insanity of using food crops for fuel, is to replace the combustion engines with cleaner technology. The bees seem to be very much a victim of such ill fated “bio” policy. Not even mentioning the ethic issue of “bio” fuel for cars etc in a world where people still die of starvation. The yellow rape oil, for example, is a omega 3 rich valuable delicious nutritious oil and the rape honey a delicacy.
I recently went to Nafplio, Greece recently and there they have intentionally introduced a small yellow bug from Germany which exudes a whitish hairy protective coating from the sap from pine trees. We were told that this was done to increase the honey production here. The whitish (call it a nest) of the bug is ugly and the pine trees are gradually dying. I saw this recently on Lycabettos Hill in Athens, too.
Makes me wonder if the decline of honeybees in Europe might be related to some sort of a similar bug which may be a host for bacterial or viral infections that affect honeybees in the USA, as well.
I have photos of the nest, but not a clear photo of the bug.
If somebody might have a contact with any research facility related to this problem, email me if interested in the photos and what we have here in Greece… plenum222@yahoo.com
Maybe it is terrorism.
Last night I wrote an e-mail to a scientific work group that is trying to find solutions to this recent bee colony collapse, asking if they had performed any research with or had any studies involving grapefruit seed extract. Grapefruit Seed Extract (GSE) is an extremely potent and effective broad-spectrum bactericide, fungicide, antiviral and antiparasitic compound. More information can be found here;
http://www.gseinformation.com/
Since most scientists seem to agree that “the top suspects are a parasite (Nosema ceranae), an unknown virus, some kind of bacteria, pesticides, or a one-two combination of the top four, with one weakening the honeybee and the second killing it,” it would seem reasonable to at least consider the effects GSE could have on a healthy colony, guarding it from parasites, bacteria, and viruses without the need for harmful pesticides or antibiotics.
Folks,
Immediately assuming any cause for the bee die-offs will not solve the problem. Once again, we rely upon science rather than religion, fantasy, economics, or tea-leaf readings to solve such problems. Jumping to conclusions eliminates all the important work–figuring out the causal story.
And the Einstein quote is false. Somebody made it up. Yes, it sounds intelligent and reasonable so we assume it’s accurate. But that’s a weak way to shape our discussions.
Let’s not abandon rationality like the NeoCons and their ilk have.
There is growing evidence that the Honeybee die off may be caused by cell phones - that the Honeybees exposure to electromagnetic radiation is causing worker bees to abruptly abandon their hives, and become lost.
Here is the link on an article run by the Independent just a couple weeks ago on this:
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/wildlife/article2449968.ece.
If you do a little searching, you can find the report about the study - it’s in PDF form (the two doctor’s names are Dr. Jochen Kuhn, and a Professor Dr. Hermann Stever of the University of Koblenz-Landau in Germany). Page 9 of the report gets right to the heart of the matter.
Electromagnetic radiation is very disruptive to certain species. With Honeybees, who don’t have a sense of hearing, they instead rely, in large part, on vibration. Beekeepers know that hive agitation happens before lightning and is a farmer’s hallmark of when thunderstorms are imminent; Honeybees perform a “waggle dance” where they beat their wings to create vibrations that other bees translate into locations of flowers, threats, etc. Some species of bees even surround invaders in their hive and beat their wings simultaneously to raise the body temperature of the invader and killing it (which may prove that the vibrations cause thermal disruption not only in their predators, but must affect the bees in some part). Most relevantly though, there is much scientific data to show that Honeybees navigate by sensing electromagnetic fields in the Earth.
Another thought is that since the Earth’s magnetic fields are shifting right now and creating anomolous zones of activity far outside the poles, Honeybee die offs may have something to do with this. PBS Online has an archive of a program called “Pole Shift” that talks about our “wobbly” magnetic field and how this has occurred many, many times before in the past. I don’t know, just theorizing on a link.
Crossing my fingers that this somehow resolves itself with thriving, happy populations of Honeybees. It will be a tragic and ominous day for us all if we fail in finding the culprit or are remiss in reversing it.
We’ll all be eating chemically produced artificial fruit made by Mon-Satan-o in a few years, another triumph for corporatismo. Who needs bees when you got capitalism, the greatest religion on earth?
Been seeing more bumble bees - native solitary bees at our place. Last year blueberry crop was great.
Hope these nuts in corporate bee business stop trucking bees all over the country until we know the problem. Transportation of bees world wide complicates problem immensely.
Gee, folks !
Sit back for a moment and ask yourselves:
What ubiquitous, very obvious, daily-recurring and intensifying, tax-subsidized, environmental toxins could be killing our honey bees ?
Why is it that despite a regular, most apparent hi-tech application of life-destroying poisons to our entire land, only a relatively few seem to care ?
Why are the widely scattered observers, who DO believe their own eyes (not unlike the little children who asserted that the emperor had no clothes), taken-lightly, chortled-at and even ridiculed by the historically/economically/militarily/politically-illiterate, university-graduated sophists who embody the mass mind in UHmuriKa ?
And -if these ‘little children’ are correct- should not the perpetrators of such a coldly-calculated, highly-coordinated and very effective chemical/biological attack on -not merely the honey bee, but- planet earth’s very fecundity, be tarred and feathered and run out of our country ?
We see and acknowledge the ABSENCE of honey bees in our clover fields and lawns, our flowers, our fruit blossoms and our aviaries.
We neither see nor acknowledge the PRESENCE of its probable cause… We are dumbed-down, worse’n “Dumb and Dumber”.
LOOK UP!
SEE ‘em chem-trails ? What in tarnation do you suppose those hundreds of daily-overhead military pilots… of passengerless…. avowedly-purposeless-except-for-some-sort-of-unspecified-’training exercises’ up to ?
Why is this saturation toxin-spraying taking place… by mass formations of parallel jet planes, regularly crossing and criss-crossing the entire United States, in rural blue skies… which never -until about 10 years ago- saw a solitary commercial passenger jet, let alone legions of military planes ?
Ask your local city councilman, or your county supervisor, or your state representative. Ask you congressman. Let me know if you get a coherent answer.
Do you suppose there is any correlation between these despoilers in the sky and the gradual demise of heretofore thriving flora… e.g., blackberries, dogwoods, pine trees, etc.: all government-proclaimed victims of ‘blight’… not to mention the lamented honey bee ?
Wake up, folks! It very well COULD be your Malthusian commissars in Washington. Along with their international counterparts, they believe that -as state deities- they have the awesome responsibility to note that planet earth’s population is increasing faster than its food supply [owing solely to their buddies and their iniquitous monopolies and their profit-motivated distribution of foodstuffs/lack thereof, of course, and NOT to any disability of planet earth’s natural fecundidy and ability to produce a surplus food supply for the world population… absent war, depleted uranium, state oppression, weather modification via HARP, etc.-ed.]… and that poverty and misery are inevitable unless this population growth is checked by war, famine, birth control and other means. Have they -as self-designated disciples of Tom Malthus and as mammonite gods- decided to use ‘other means’ (public policy) to ensure the requisite and GRADUAL population control, HERE, via aborticide, de-industrialization, unremitting monetary inflation, massive unemployment, collapse of all welfare programs, social collapse, ethnic discord, moral, economic and financial bankruptcy ? These inevitiblities seem now apparent to most curmudgeons.
Oh, yes… and “famine”… a term which most have only casually associated with the demise of the honey bee…
Are them chem-trails part of the famine strategy ?
Just askin’ !
yes Spirit,
i feel that it is the chemtrails. and i also connected that to the population reduction plan, even before i read about the bees’ disappearance. yet, what is one somebody/nobody to do?
well a little comic relief, mayhaps? et voila:
He asked, “What about the Rapture?”
She answered, “It came. It saw. It took the honeybees!”
I am a beekeeper–hobby beekeeper that is, of the urban beekeepers of San Francisco. What does a hobby beekeeper do? We provide a hive for a colony (often a swarm) and tend to it–sometimes medicating against various diseases, watching the queen to make sure she is also healthy, and taking the stored honey (which can be a lot, since there is no true winter in S.F.–there is usually something blooming all year long for the bees to collect from). One can’t really “tame” bees. One can only hope that a queen that was bought from a breeder expresses certain types of genetic predispositions. But one might discover as hardy or hardier bees from a swarm in your neighbor’s yard.
Although it was briefly mentioned, the varroa mite has caused a lot more devistation to wild and “domestic” bees than indicated in the article. The mite causes bees to become deformed and weak, and will multiply quickly enough to destroy a hive in short order.
The original methods of control included Apistan–which is a mild insecticide. None of us in the club were very happy with this method, and continued to experiment with different controls, including a powdered sugar treatment (the starch seems to dislodge the mite) combined with a mesh bottom board, mechanical controls which encourage a change in bee storage cell size (i think the idea is that mite prefer to lay eggs in drone brood which tends to be laid in larger cells), and breeding of bees for cleanliness traits.
For a while though, the wild bees have been depleted by the mite, and the demand for commerical bees has risen accordingly. If you’ve noticed, the price of honey has also become pretty high. Many commercial beekeepers have found it much more profitable to truck their bees to farmers than to work on the labor intensive (and somewhat messy) honey extraction.
The disappearances don’t seem to have bothered us hobby beekeepers as much yet. Our bees will collect from the flora in people’s yards as well as from the eucalyptus trees, rosemary and fennel. Perhaps it’s because we don’t truck to commercial farms that our bees seem to be unaffected.
For more information about hobby beekeepers, try www.sfbee.org
girlofsteel makes sense. In the recent issue of the Hightower Lowdown it was suggested that part of the die off of the bees could be caused by weakened immune systems. The industrialization of bees who are bred to be “super pollinators” being trucked around in 18 wheelers while diversity is bred out of them may be a cause for die off. Rather than nector they are fed on cheap high fructose corn syrup. It would be interesting to see a study done comparing these industrilized bees to “backyard hoobby bees” and see which have the most resistance to the mites and fungi.
Does this remind you guys of anything like chicken stuffed in litte cages with beaks chopped off and pumped full of antibiotics and hormones while the chicken in the cage above defecates on them. Our whole food system is being systematically undermined. You can put Monsonto at the top of the list of food diversity destroyers. If you really want to see corporate world domination in action take a look at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=849146694200968214&hl=en. Monsonto does not just want to make a profit they want to control the world food supply starting with the seeds. The first thing that needs to be done is to overthrow laws that make it possible to patent living things, otherwise there will be no stopping them. I belive Kucinich is working on such a bill which is another good reason to support him beside stopping the war and impeaching Cheney.
I can live on bread and water, if forced to - we all could. My concern is of ethical, not of gastronomical, nature. Ethical in a sence John Trudell tried to advance but which corporations killed in all of us. It’s primarily about corporations killing our sence of responsibility and stewardship, not only about killing biodiversity.
I doubt the speculation about cell phone causing the honeybee die-off. China has the largest wireless phone netwok in the world, yet there are no reports of Colony Collapse Disorder from over there. The problem’s evident only in the countries with industrial food production.
One more sentence beginning with “I”: I AM RESPONSIBLE! No hiding behind corporate interrests being imposed on me.
I wonder if this Dr Jerry Bromenshenk feels in anyway that his dealings with the Pentagon on bees for National Security in sniffing out bombs, or substances could be a little bit responsible.
Have these bees truly ‘disappeared’ or just on their ‘tour of duty’
http://www.ebeehoney.com/bombsniffingbees.pdf
I’ve seen more than a few of the Luddite persuasion trying to blame GM crops for the bee dieoff. Their position makes no sense for the following reasons. Bees don’t visit corn because corn pollen is wind carried and thus there is no nectar. The claim that the bees are exposed to the pollen anyhow is ludicrous because the amount of corn pollen that blows onto the flowers that the bees actually visit is immeasurably miniscule. The second reason is that the hives are going under in the fall, a couple bee generations after corn has matured so that the bees that die have never been exposed to Bt. The third reason is that spraying insecticides spreads insecticides a lot further and at greater concentrations than corn pollen goes and has been going on for decades without this problem.
The mindset that blames GM for this problem is the same religious, magical thinking evinced by the intelligent design element. While the ID’ers are relatively harmless because belief in ID doesn’t interfere with real science by real scientists, the ignorant peasants who are trying to slay this Frankenstein’s “monster” are actually impeding progress toward solving the real problem with subsequent greater suffering. For those of you who have actually read Shelley’s book, you know that the “monster” was a benevolent creation that would have benefited the peasantry but was driven to the Arctic by superstitious nonsense. The parallel with present day fears about GM is obvious.
Another reason that should make it obvious that GM has nothing to do with it is that Europe is also having the problem and GM is forbidden there.
To DKM… Don’t be so sure. Bees collect and consume pollen as well as nectar. They feed the pollen to their larvae. Bt bacterium has been found in the guts of honey bees. Look it up.
Concern about GMO is certainly legitimate. Unless you are a geneticist or entomologist you might want to curb your certainty about what you think you know about the bee problem.
DKM - you need to have your head examined!