Growers Fear the Sting of Bee Die-Off
LONG BEACH, Pacific County - The moon rose fat and full, and evening mist was licking the cranberry bogs as Eric Olson and his “girls,” as he calls them - several million of them - arrived for work late last month.
“I’m glad to see them,” said cranberry grower Bob Weyl, 79, as Olson unloaded pallet upon pallet of honey-bee hives. 
“Without bees,” Weyl said matter-of-factly, “I wouldn’t have a crop.”
No matter how large or modern agricultural operations become, for many growers like Weyl, success - or failure - still mostly comes down to Apis mellifera, the European honey bee. The simple act of pollination remains the magic touch of agriculture.
Fully a third of the entire U.S. food supply depends on bees for pollination, from melons to cucumbers, cranberries to apples, and nearly the entire world supply of almonds, according to the National Research Council. Six of Washington’s top 10 crops depend at least indirectly on honey bees, state agricultural statistics show. And those six were worth nearly $3 billion last year.
So it’s little wonder that farmers and beekeepers here are watching with trepidation as experts around the world try to find out what’s behind a sudden and massive honey-bee die-off. Called colony-collapse disorder, it has resulted in bees vanishing from hives in more than 30 states, including Washington, according to one survey.
In Washington, the situation is not serious - at least not yet, beekeepers here say. But if the situation worsens, it will spell trouble for agriculture.
“And we are suspicious that it is spreading,” said Jerry Tate, president of the Washington State Beekeepers Association.
It’s far from the first bee die-off. In 1975, so-called Disappearing Disease hit 27 states. But the newest crisis, combined with growth in crops that require bee pollination, has some experts warning against putting so much on the slender back of the beleaguered honey bee.
A range of trouble
Beekeepers began reporting mysterious and unusually high losses in 2006. When they checked their hives, they found the queen, a small retinue of attendants and plenty of food. But nobody else was home. No guard bees, no house bees, no worker bees, not even drones.
Colony-collapse disorder is only the latest in a plague of problems for bees, from bloodsucking mites to fungal and viral diseases, pesticide kills, and loss of habitat leaving bees with little to eat. Beekeepers are working harder than ever to find blossoms for their bees as highway medians are being mowed, suburbia is being paved, and towns are enacting anti-bee ordinances that restrict placement of hives.
Over the past 60 years, the number of bee colonies nationally has fallen from 5.9 million in 1947 to 2.4 million in 2005, according to the National Research Council. Meanwhile the amount of acreage planted in nuts, fruits and vegetables that depend on bees for pollination is going up.
So far, farmers in Washington have experienced no shortage of bees to pollinate their crops, Tate said. Not so in California.
Beginning in 2005, California growers resorted to importing bees from New Zealand and Australia to pollinate the $2.5 billion California almond crop. And that has raised the specter of inviting in a whole new bunch of problems and diseases yet unknown.
At the rate of decline documented since 1989, European honey bees may cease to exist in the U.S. by 2035, according to the National Research Council, which warned even before the rise of colony-collapse disorder that over-reliance on one highly managed, nonnative species is inherently unstable.
Facts missing
Some beekeepers think the disorder could have started as early as three years ago, but “we just didn’t know it yet,” Tate said.
But despite a welter of scientists working on the problem, no one knows exactly what’s causing it, or even if it’s really a new problem.
No one even knows how many hives have been lost to colony-collapse disorder across the country or in Washington. Jerry Bromenshenk, a bee expert at the University of Montana, surveyed more than 600 beekeepers around the country from December 2006 until June 1 of this year and found that 38 percent had losses of 75 percent or more, and 28 percent of those beekeepers thought colony-collapse disorder was to blame.
In Washington, losses typically have been between 10 and 20 percent, compared to 60 and 70 percent in other states.
But Olson lost more than 30 percent of his bees in 2005. Maybe it was the new-fangled disease, he says. Or perhaps, it was just poor nutrition and inadequate attention.
Olson knows this: He would have gone out of business if his bank hadn’t bailed him out.
“Sweatshop for bees”
Based in Yakima, Olson is part of a small cadre of migratory beekeepers who pollinate crops across the West. As the region urbanizes, he is in a constant scramble for bee pasture for his more than 13,000 hives. From fireweed in logged-over timberlands to blackberry brambles on the suburban fringe, Olson will take every acre of blossoms he can find.
The work of modern agriculture demands millions of managed bees like his, farmed like teeny livestock and trucked like precision instruments to the assembly lines of industrial-scale agriculture. Some bee experts wonder whether humans are working the bees to death.
“We are stressing these bees out,” said Bromenshenk, the bee expert. “They normally occupy a tree and feed off local crops.
“Now we are moving them vast distances and dropping them into new crops, and some of them don’t even give them a good diet. You are not done a moment out of the almonds and you are racing into the cherries, and then it’s into the apples and crops after crop after crop. This is a whole different way than bees evolved.
“This is kind of like the sweatshop for bees.”
Yet colony-collapse disorder has been reported by beekeepers large and small, by keepers who truck their hives long distances and those who keep them at home. The only thing they seem to have in common are the spectacular losses.
For his part, Olson thinks bee health comes down to nutrition, and just plain paying attention. The year he lost so many bees, he says, he let himself get too busy to go out and “go talk to the bees.”
“They’ll tell you what’s wrong,” says Olson, who claims he can tell by the pitch of his bees’ hum if they are stressed out or thriving. So now, once a week he has been talking to them. And he says he’s having his best year ever.
But he is troubled by the trends. “I am not optimistic about the future,” he said. “And I’m an optimist by nature.”
Busy as a bee
There are morning people, and there are farmers.
Olson springs up at 3:30 most mornings, ready to have at it, coffee in one hand and a slug of his homemade honey in the other to sweeten his brew. This morning, after a short night at a local hotel, he was ready to place the rest of his hives in the cranberry bogs.
By first light, he was bouncing down rutted farm lanes in his truck, finding the electrified fences that enclose the hives and keep bears out. Winnie-the-Pooh notwithstanding, it’s actually not the honey that bears crave. It’s the bee larvae, deep in the hive.
“Once they taste that, you’ll never keep them out,” Olson said.
When he gingerly lifts the lid off one of his hives, bees tickle his face, his ears, his neck. He’s been stung so many times in his life he hardly notices it.
“Be nice, girls,” he said softly. The smell of honey hangs sweet, thick, almost intoxicating around the hive.
Olson and his bees still have miles to go this season. When the cranberries are pollinated, it’s off to vegetable crops in Moses Lake. Then the bees will head east, to the vast pastures of clover in North Dakota that will be transformed into honey and the bulk of Olson’s profit.
Olson, married to a very patient spouse, figures he’ll be away from home traveling with the girls four to five months of the year. And at 63, he said he’s ready to slow down, maybe even sell the business.
But as morning sun warms the hives, he watches with unveiled pride as his bees zip off to surf the waves of blooms.
“They are bugs,” Olson said. “But they are loveable bugs.”
Lynda V. Mapes: 206-464-2736 or lmapes@seattletimes.com
Copyright © 2007 The Seattle Times Company
Interesting, that Silent Spring would ring so true, too bad humans haven’t figured out what is really important…like clean air, water, soil, and a healthy biodiversity.
All spring I have been looking for Bees. So far its just bumble bees, yellow jackets and hornets. Several of my friends have reported the same thing in the Portland Oregon area.
Remember when they were every where?
Can you folks give me reports on what you are seeing in your areas?
Peace
Wilo
No Bees here in The Metro Denver area, it used to be by The Middle of dandelion season (end of April, first of May) the place was all a buzz, Have not seem one.
Odd that these articles by the MSM never mention that few organic bee keepers are experiencing this die-off.
See:
Honey Bees– Few organic bee keepers have reported bee losses, which suggests that natural and organic bee keeping methods may be the solution. . . .
www.organicconsumers.org/bees.cfm - Jun 9, 2007
Friends in CA with backyard hives say they haven’t been hit yet.
Here in New Mexico I haven’t seen a honey bee since at least last year. We have yellowjackets!
I noticed fewer houseflys and more gnats.
These changes I believe are attributed to habitat destruction and pesticides.
We should be saving habitat instead of worrying about the health of each species!
Let me join Pippilin and suggest that if you want to encourage bees plant some clover and maybe run a honeysuckle vine along your fence.
Then plant your own non-petroleum based gardens (fruit, veggies, legumes, even flowers). Rotate your “crops” and rest your soil and see if you have any problems with attracting and keeping bees around.
Bee “pimps” like Eric Olsen and the agribusiness “Johns” who patronize his “girl’s services” like Bob Weyl, deserve what they are getting in the same way that slave and sweatshop owners deserve to have their miserable facilities burned to the ground by the disgruntled masses they mercilessly exploit.
Another canary in the coal mine.
Haven’t seen honeybees in South Florida in years. I wonder if Africanized bees have been affected also?
By most accounts, colony collapse disorder is not yet a problem here in Louisiana. Honeybees and alfalfa bees have been out and about locally. I haven’t seen any examples of our native stingless bees in my area for years, but my sister still has an active colony near her house. I haven’t seen either of our local solitary bee species in better than a year, either, but that doesn’t mean much - I haven’t really been looking until recently.
For a summary of research on bee CCD, see:
http://maarec.cas.psu.edu/
Regarding the “bee pimps”, I should point out that feral bees might have so few diagnoses of CCD for the same reason that I’ve had so few sightings of solitary bees - nobody’s been looking until recently. Local populations of native species could also be decimated in affected areas right alongside the domestic honeybees, and the data to prove it might not be available for years. Drawing conclusions about wild bees based on comparisons with beekeeping based on traditional/organic practices is logical, but it’s not supported yet, either.
Eric Olsen probably will reap what he has sown, but the odds are unacceptably high that he hasn’t finished laying in his crop yet.
Some earlier articles on this subject have said that cell phone transmissions may disorient bees, not allowing them to get back to their hives. Synthetic chemicals in the environment have also been mentioned as a possible cause. Other articles have claimed that there isn’t any proof that either of these is causing the effect.
My father - FOX news and Rush Limbaugh listener - says that the problem is caused by Mexican bees that we are allowing to come across the border that are killing the honey bees.
Leave aside the “allowing to come” comment. I haven’t read anything about Mexican bees. Anybody else who is more up on this issue heard about this.
Or is it just another Fox news diversion?
Here in Central Florida the bees are getting scarcer also. In years past when the orange trees were blooming they would be abuzz with hundreds of bees. This year on a sunny morning I saw ONE little honeybee, a butterfly and a bumblebee trying to do their job. The result: very few oranges. What a sad situation!
Perhaps they can’t find their ways home due to increased solar UV blinding resulting from a diminishing ozone layer. Even I’ve begun to suffer “snow blindness” in its brilliance at midday in central Florida.
a little known fact is that organic bee keeping is unaffected by the Collapse Disorder:
‘I know this won’t come as a surprise to many of our readers, nor to the many organic beekeepers that have been commenting on our posts, but there have been several reports of organic bee colonies surviving where the ‘industrial’ bee colonies are collapsing. Here is the latest to come to my attention:
Pollination, as practised for 1000s of years?
Sharon Labchuk is a longtime environmental activist and part-time organic beekeeper from Prince Edward Island…. In a widely circulated email, she wrote:
I’m on an organic beekeeping list of about 1,000 people, mostly Americans, and no one in the organic beekeeping world, including commercial beekeepers, is reporting colony collapse on this list. The problem with the big commercial guys is that they put pesticides in their hives to fumigate for varroa mites, and they feed antibiotics to the bees. They also haul the hives by truck all over the place to make more money with pollination services, which stresses the colonies.
etc
http://www.celsias.com/blog/2007/05/15/organic-bees-surviving-colony-collapse-disorder-ccd/
“the problem is caused by Mexican bees that we are allowing to come across the border that are killing the honey bees.”
Umm…this sounds like the idiotic right’s game of turning every issue into one that supports their twisted ideology. There is no science in that; just racist rhetoric to go along with their views on immigration; “now not only are mexican immigrants stealing our jobs and living off welfare, their bees are coming over the border and killing our bees; so the next time you see a hispanic person, hit them over the head with a club.” Why would bees kill each other? But ultimately, bees are bees, and if they are “crossing the border” now, then they always have; so this isn’t an issue. Don’t listen to your dad.
We have one strong colony here in NE GA. We keep them as much as pets as anything. Treat for Varroa mites, inspect periodically. Last year they swarmed twice. Caught both swarms but couldn’t convince them to stay “down on the farm”.
I’ve yet to hear of anyone ignoring the mites treatment.
Dallas, TX update: still no bees, wasps, etc. Last year, hives everywhere. Also, only one butterfly spotted so far, and there’s an obvious lack of most other bugs - nothing flying around the lights at night, even the roaches appear to have left the building. Very weird…
We live in a small city in central Pennsylvania. There had been a hive of bees living inside one of the hollow wooden posts on our front porch. We liked them being there; I used to sit nearby with my four year old son and watch them come and go. I don’t think they were regular honeybees; rather, they were some other kind of smaller, more grayish, wild bee…
About ten days ago, though, they just seemed to stop coming and going… I have no idea why… The only thing I noticed, is that the little hole at the bottom of the post that they used as a door, now seems to have been blocked up with little pellets of dirt.
I don’t know much about bees, or why they might decide to block up the door to their hive at the beginning of summer, but I wish I knew what became of these ones. It made me sad…
I wrote a piece on Colony Collapse Disorder and recent mass bird deaths for Reality Sandwich, if anyone is interested in more information on this. You can find the article here: http://www.realitysandwich.com/node/+133
-ST
A few weeks ago in Massachusetts (west of Boston but not western MA) I was out canoeing and saw one honey bee. It was on its back in the water smack in the middle of the lake. I fished it out, it dried itself off, and eventually flew away when I wasn’t looking.
I’m in Missouri, not far from Kansas City. I had seen no honeybees at all this year until about a week ago, when I saw one or two (maybe the same one twice?) while picking the red clover blossoms that grow in the ditches near my house. (Red clover blossoms make a lovely herbal tea.) This was a few days before the road crew came along and mowed the clover from the sides of the road.
I’ve seen no bumblebees at all. Like DavePA, last year I had a colony of some type of small bee under my house. They seemed to be living in the crawl space and going in and out through a hole about the size of a dime. They are gone this year.
About the only pollinators I’ve seen this year are tiny unidentified insects swarming over the parsnip flowers in the garden.
Like Frank1569, I have seen only one wasp this year–and wasps have been something of a problem in years past, chiefly the mud-daubers nesting under the eaves, in the crawl space, and in the attic.
Frank1569’s comment caused me to glance at my light fixtures tonight and notice that–perhaps for the first time ever–there are no bugs flitting around them.
Those who were children in the 1950s, as I was, probably remember that bug populations used to be exponentially greater than they are these days–even exponentially greater than they were 10 or 20 years ago.
Even 45 years after the fact, I can still remember the insects that were attracted by the outdoor light on the side of my uncle’s house in the country–the outside light used for nighttime barbeques. The whole side of the house, all the way up to the top of the gable, was covered by armies of moths, mantises, and enormous walking-sticks.
In the 50s, after you had driven 30 miles through the countryside, it was usually difficult to see out your windshield because of the dead bugs, and the grille on the front of the car resembled a very untidy butterfly collection.
Could it be genetic engineering? The overuse of chemicals, antibiotics, and hormones in our agriculture? The use of high fructose corn syrup as bee food? Cell phones and other electronics screwing up the bees’ super sophiticated navigation system? A new virus? Some combination of two or more of these plagues? Something else?
Eco-Eating: Eating as if the Earth Matters
www.brook.com/veg
Let a little corner of your yard go wild, if you have one, and don’t apologize for it. Get rid of the lawn or at least stop spraying it for weeds. Meadows are very nice and usually have clover and dandelions, both of which support bees.
It also wouldn’t hurt to put out a dish of water for wildlife, including insects and the beleagured songbirds. In our neighborhood, there are several yards with large swimming pools but we are the only house which puts out a water dish. It’s so bad this year, the deer are jumping the fence so they can get to the little bit of water they can drink.
Folks, let’s give the other creatures who live on this planet a break. It’s one thing to moan about what others are or are not doing — putting out a water dish and keeping it fresh is something almost everyone can do. Please.
(BTW, our California organic flower garden, surrounded by wild meadow that is only mowed a few times a year, is swarming with at least three types of bees, though the European honey bee is not as numerous as the bumblebees. Go organic. There’s no need to spread poison around for flowers. If a plant won’t do well in your area without pesticides and herbicides, tear it up and grow another type that will.)
Poet:
I liked your suggestion about planting nectar-rich plants but wanted to warn about honeysuckle. Lovely though it is, the birds eat the seeds and scatter them into the wild where they crowd out native plants. It’s not as bad as kudzu vine but it’s close. If you are in the middle of the suburbs, with no wildland around at all, you might try it but if you are within even twenty miles of open territory, another vine would be better.
The honeybee is not native to the US. It was brought here by the Europeans. And it has become a slave to agribusiness. I suggest that the bees have grown tired of America and are making their own way home (aka Rufus Wainwright’s “Going to a Town”). Rudolf Steiner, in 1923, predicted the death of the honeybee within 100 years. And here we are. If you are interested in a perspective that incorporates a spiritual as well as a scientific understanding of the bees read “Bees” by Rudolf Steiner.
Yes, organics and small farms are doing okay in many ways. There are pockets of sanity in this madness of bigness and commercialization. Small, family owned farms do exist, and they’re saving everything from bees to chickens to seeds. CNN doesn’t tell us this, but I know because I live in just such a place. The agribusiness will collapse on itself one day and it will be the hardworking and traditional small farmers, ranchers and orchardists (and their bees and their undocumented workers - dang they work hard!) who will save us.
see an article by Gunther Hauk on ccd:
http://www.acresusa.com/toolbox/reprints/May07_HaukBees.pdf
or www.spikenardfarm.org
or www.acresusa.com
It’s great that Mr Olson talks to the bees, they like that. ~ Shame about the vile chemical intrusions though. It’s also good that he listens to their collective voice; the bees appreciate that too.
But what is _generally_ lacking in our race is our ability to **listen** to bees - as well as all other aspects of the once immaculately ordered natural world.
We are now too cocksure to listen properly, and so when the bees go on strike, we flounder. Food costs will escalate beyond measure if we soon have to employ vast bands of workers to go out into the fields with tiny paintbrushes to pollinate our food crops by hand…
Our scientists have come up with a name: “Colony Collapse Disorder”, - will they now dispense miniature Ritalin pills to the insects suffering ‘CCD’ and all will then be cured?
I believe materialist-based science is often as much a part of the problem, as part of the solution.
“There’s more to heaven and earth Horatio, than this world dreams of…” wrote the initiate Mr Shakespeare, -he who also wrote in The Tempest: “Where the bee sucks, there suck I, ”
Scientists scratch their heads and look for the prosaic, whereas a little more ‘poetry in their souls’ would likely provide deeper answers.
We need not to act in such a predominantly careless, heedless ‘anti-biotic’ way. Being anti-nature is no way to treat our Mother.
What bumptious, renegade children we have become of late.
______________
Bumble bee, or humble bee? –Either way, a bee or ant colony is a wonderful lesson to we humans as to the value of how to work *cooperatively* –and in *harmony* together.
There are no arrogant bees in a colony, and if such arose, they would be ejected.
~ What a great example they set for we humans! Arrogance, greed and selfishness do not make for harmony.
“There is enough in the world for everyone’s need, not everyone’s greed” -said Mr Ghandi.
If we followed the honey bee’s example we would never elect brash, braying crooks and fools into high office, they would instead be sent off to places where they would be obliged to learn just why it was they were so maladjusted.
“Man Know Thyself” read the wise inscription over the main temple in ancient Delphi.
+++++++++++++++++++
Dear Spanick:
- love you to bits for rescuing that bee in the middle of the lake! -that’s exactly the sort of thing my friends, my kids and I each do!
(BTW: the grateful bee sends her thanks too!)
Such a caring attitude for nature shows we are not wholly a lost race. For as long as we care for living things in that sensitive way, there is good reason to hope, and to carry on working to educate our fellow human bee-ings about the importance of working WITH nature, ~ and not against her.
Bee well all.
xx
I left my clover blooms in my yard an extra week to see how many anykind of bees it would attract.
I live in a rural type area in Central Pa.
The Bee score was maybe 4 wild bees and 2 European bees . That was watching atleast 3 times a day for two weeks.Even The Wasps Hornets And Yellow Jackets just aren’t hhere in Numbers this year.
Oh by the way, it seems many of you didn’t get the gist of this article.
It is Humankind taking away places for bees to feed and now making it against the law to keep hives in certain areas. Now throw in all our power lawn mowers which kill countless millions of bees every year. It is Us again to be blamed.
“We are stressing these bees out,” No shit!
Symbiosis - interaction between two different organisms living in close physical association, typically to the advantage of both.
Human intervention and the need or greed of beekeepers. Here we go again with the simple fact that we as a species continue to ignore the bigger picture that nature has created. We are taking advantage of the bees.
Agricultural industry is always taking advantage of something, indentured servitude, forced slavery, immigrant farm workers, bees… (tongue in cheek)
Two bees all summer near Trenton NJ - but one died in my room (I normally let the bugs out). And I’ve been sitting in the backyard all spring - I work at home.
Of course suburbia is a kind of desert - parking lots and roads, yes, but the lawn is also a desert - non-native species which invade the local ecosystem, pesticides and fertilizer, both of which produce run-off, grass mown with barely-regulated gas mowers which kill much of the insect life. In NJ we pay hunters to off the deer and bears and recently are quite panicked about the coyotes. Of course lawns are a symbol of our control of property, and are enforced by social competition and fear of ostracism. But Americans think lawns are beautiful and peaceful - not surprising that we should surround our dwellings with such ghoulish swatches since we secretly worship death and destruction.
Or at least we do in Jersey.
Humans should stop making babies. YOU should. If you do reproduce, your child should be at the mercy of the coyotes, not the other way around.
We have bees here. We have worms and all kinds of bigs and spiders. That’s because we NEVER use that stupid “better living through chemistry” stuff.
The fact is that if anyone uses pesticides then you’re guaranteed to have pests. That’s because prey develop resistance and recover more quickly than predators - those higher up the food chain. So, the use of pesticides gurantees that you will have more pests than ever. Get it now?
Same with herbicides: you’re guaranteed to have more weeds than ever. People who use broad spectrum -cides are just plain stupid and ignorant. There’s no excuse for it. Sorry, but stop using them already.
And then there’s the prelim research showing that GMO corn has played a strong role in CCD. Apparently it leaves bees very susceptible to mites and other diseases. It suppresses their immune systems. And interestingly enough, ants avoid GMO honey as if it were poison. Oh yeah, it is.
gwazdor: Where I live there are a lot of retirees, and although there’s been no rain, they are so braindead and in need of controling something that the get aboard those AWFUL lawn machines and go, go, go! I call them “lawn warriors,” and it’s insane because we’re talking small plots of land! As part satire and because the sound of motor driven 24/7 mantras of machinery is onerous to my senses, I have taken to cutting my lawn… it’s only clumps here and there of overgrown (due to no rain) weeds. Cutting with a machete!
Uncommon dreams, in 2005 I finally had a chance to write a book for children that I’d wanted to write for years. (I circulated the idea to agents and watched as Bug’s Life and Antz soon were produced, could be coincidence, I’m not sure.) The book involves a young girl (21st century Alice) who is introduced to the quintessential 12 rays–each an insect–by her grandfather’s pet parrot, Ezekiel. In this fictional account I brought 30 years of astrological study into play to determine which insect would best suit each sign. I chose the BEE for Leo (my sign), and what is interesting is the synchronicity factor. In astrology Saturn is known as the planet of losses, and it’s also quite karmic. Saturn’s orbit is 29 years. It has been in Leo for 2005-2006 when this BEE loss has been underway. The last time this happened, in l975, Saturn was also in LEO. Nature definitely communicates, and it’s also under the same law of cycles that we humans are. This comment in no way is intended to take away from the obvious factors: loss of habitants, abominable spraying of all manner of lethal chemicals, working bees like 4th world labor camps, biogenetic monstrosities, etc. Edgar Cayce spoke of these forces as the elementals, and he recognized that when human beings depart substantially from Higher Law (harm none, as basic precept), nature’s elementals rebel and bring mankind lessons. As a bee (Leo) I certainly understand Her sentiments currently!
What happened to the Africanized honey bees migration? For years they talked about it. Maybe its related.
Humans just cant respct nature. They are so stupid they believe that they are better than whatever forces created them. They like to look down on other life forms. Bees and insects in general are far more important to the planet’s stweardship than humans ever will be.
But give humans credit–they definitely have vivid imaginations.
I have seen 1 honey bee this season in the DC area. Last and previous years I could not walk barefoot in the grass for fear of stepping on bees.
Mosquitoes are as bad as ever! When are the boffins going to figure out how to make this little bugger go away?
I’m in Canada and we are supposedly unaffected here, so far. I’ve talked to a few beekeepers who say they have had only the
more usual problems of mites and fungus. However, I’ve seen very, very few honeybees compared to past years. I’ve heard a few
good radio pieces on this and one compelling theory is that bees require an ENORMOUS variety of pollens, nectars, resins and so
on to maintain a healthy hive. Trucking them around to monocultured crops doesn’t begin to give them what they need and is very
stressful for them besides. Also, fields are sprayed with herbicides to keep the weeds down and the bees need those weeds. Variety
is crucial to their well-being. So, yeah, as someone suggested above: let a corner of your yard go wild (or the whole bloody thing)
and stop spraying pesticides, herbicides, etc. all over everything.
Hi Siouxrose:
Re: Edgar Cayce, elementals, karma (et al),
-am aware of all of these and more. You and I ought talk sometime, we have quite a lot in un-common!
(-and I don’t trust publishers anymore either)
______________
Re ‘bug watch’: in the UK insects are being decimated in much the same way as in the USA, -and for the same reasons, (bad agri-practice, insecticides etc etc).
Once upon a time, a window left open on a Summer’s evening would have a lit room humming and flitting with loads of insects. Last night I observed to my wife: after a whole evening with windows open and a light on, we had only _one_ small moth and another wee creature venture in. -And we live rural!
= Not good.
~And not good for all the bird species that rely on winged-thingamies for breakfast, lunch and supper.
I recall Chairman Mao Tse-Tung / Zedong, declaring that the people should kill lots of ‘pest’ flies.
~ The people dutifully killed off loads of flies.
This move really upset various other aspects of the natural world, so the authorities had to rescind the fly-killing dictum…
“Please Respect your Mother” -is a much politer way of saying to humankind, ‘don’t be an arrogant m—-f—- coz she wop yu sassy ass for you’s!
uncommon dreams: I am open to new friendships. My website is: www.siouxrose.com and from there the email address. I hesitate to put too much on line.
In case it’s of interest to anyone, when I decided to link insects with Zodiac signs for the allegory on the 12 originals, the 12 rays… the ants (Virgo, 6th ray) explain to Cassandra, the central character that there are also unriddables, i.e. NOT Divine creation type insects. Madame Blavatsky and some Theosophists believed that flies and gnats and the really obnoxious insects that have no function (except as being organic bird food?) came about from the buzz of negative human thoughts… traveling over stagnant waters, etc. Sometimes I think mosquitos, their only function to suck blood and carry disease, are the end result of all the thoughts of vengeance in our world. And it’s interesting that flies ultimately like shit… so maybe when people “talk shit,” or do subtle character assassination of others via gossip, it breeds flies. One of Darwin’s peers believed that there was more to evolution than just natural selection, that the choice factor was also inborn to the intelligence of creatures (if I understood Lamarcke’s theory correctly). Of course when weird little bacterial beings showed up in petri-dishes, an original theory was that of “Spontaneous generation.” I still think science makes it up as it goes, even if the guys in white coats can replicate their experimental results. Science is always correcting itself, and as another poster related, it’s a priesthood of its own where heresy is expertly punished and/or silenced. Mystics are often a step ahead of scientists, anyway. My sister has a masters in art and once stated that the early cubist painters split the planes of matter before it was done via physics and the bomb! Fascinating point, isn’t it? In any case… let’s hope the bees return after Saturn leaves Leo this September.
Great ccomments. Here in the Pyrénees mountains all the meadows are cut with sythes (sp), “lawns” are a no-no, and grass is intentionally permitted to grow tall, way beyond its turning to seed — all of this to honor and cherish our insect population, and of course the grazing herds of sheep, goats and cattle.
When I look back at my childhood years in Chicago, and how my parents dumped tons of herbicides on those pesky, “shameful” dandelions, I shutter. Much later, after studyng botany and herbal remedies I remember asking them what they had against dandelions. In fact, it was/is considered bad form in the neighborhood to have a single wild weed on the lawn!!! How very, very sad.
Biologists are reporting the disappearance of butterflies as well. Because they are considered “pests” and not “economically useful,” this is not being given the same attention. In our neighborhood in El Paso, Texas we have no shortage of honeybees (and about eight other species of native bees), but most of the people who live around me are elderly Mexican-Americans who cultivate beautiful flower gardens, including herbs that make small aromatic flowers and some that would be considered weeds. I can’t say how the bee population is in other areas of our city, since the newer developments are filled with hybid junipers and hollies and other evergreens that don’t flower (and this in the desert!)
A study in Landau University in Germany determined that cell phone signals interfere with honeybee navigation.
See: “Cell Phones To Blame For Deserted Bee Colonies?”
http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20070315215055data_trunc_sys.shtml
I might like to have some one look at this possibility, I don’t know who to talk to, but, I’m noticing something strange in my front yard. I have a hive in my yard. The bees don’t swarm or go near the hole if someone is around, they just circle until you leave. Its right in my front path to my door. It has multiple entrances I’ve noticed. the bees have a golden body and barely noticeable stripes with a darker front, not the bumblebee type I’ll try to get a photo. The thought occurred to me; if the bees aren’t going to their nests, where are they going? My front yard, in the middle of the city? Are they now afraid of humans and their production quotas? I am too! I would normally have it removed but there is no threat if they don’t bother with people. I first noticed one bee going in a hole on accident and then one came out again and didn’t think anything of it until I have noticed more than one going in the same hole as I sit on my porch and drink my coffee watching the morning rise. I don’t know if they wintered here or what, I don’t think they traveled all winter to get here but they have been here all spring, unnoticed! So cute!