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A bee-less world wouldn't just mean the end of honey - Einstein said that if the honeybee became extinct, then so would mankind. Alison Benjamin reports on a very real threat
Dave Hackenberg's bees have been on the road for four days. To reach the almond orchards of California's Central Valley, they pass through the fertile plains of the Mississippi, huge cattle ranches and oilfields in Texas, and the dusty towns of New Mexico on their 2,600-mile journey from Florida. The bees will have seen little of the dramatic landscape, being cooped up in hives stacked four high on the back of trucks. Each truck carries close to 500 hives, tethered with strong harnesses and covered with black netting to prevent the millions of passengers from escaping. When the drivers pull over to sleep, the bees have a break from the constant movement and wind speed, but there's no opportunity to look around and stretch their wings.Their final destination is some two hours north of Los Angeles. As the sun begins to fade over the vast, flat terrain, the convoy slowly snakes through orchards filled with row upon row of almond trees stretching as far as the eye can see. Every February, the valley plays host to billions of honeybees as trees burst into blossom, blanketing the landscape in a soft, pinkish hue which extends to the horizon.
The sandy loam and Mediterranean climate are perfect for the cultivation of almonds, but that's where any comparisons to picturesque orchards of Spain or Italy end. Here, there are no verdant weeds, wild flowers or grass verges to please the eye, just never-ending trees that form what looks like an outdoor production line.
In the cool hours after sunset and before sunrise, more than one million hives are unloaded at regular intervals between the trees by commercial beekeepers such as Dave Hackenberg, who have travelled from the far corners of the US to take part in the world's largest managed pollination event. The mammoth orchards of Central Valley stretch the distance from London to Aberdeen, and the 60 million almond trees planted with monotonous uniformity along the 400-mile route require half of all the honeybees in the US to pollinate them - a staggering 40 billion.
By February 16, National Almond Day in the US, the trees are usually covered in flowers and humming with the sound of busy bees. Attracted by the sweet nectar that each flower offers, the bees crawl around on the petals to find the perfect sucking position. As they do so, their furry bodies are dusted with beads of pollen. As they fly from blossom to blossom in search of more of the sweet energy drink, they transfer pollen from the male part of the flower to the female part, and so fertilise it. Not long afterwards, the plant's ovaries swell into fruit, which by late August turn into precious, oval-shaped nuts.
Without this army of migrant pollinators paying a visit for three weeks every year, the trees would fail to bear the almonds that are California's most valuable horticultural export. Last year, they earned the state more than $1.9bn, double the revenue from its Napa Valley vineyards. Moreover, 80% of the world's almonds now come from this pocket of the planet. But the supply of almonds in confectionery, cakes and packets of nuts is now threatened by a mysterious malady that is causing honeybees to disappear.
Hackenberg was the first beekeeper to report that his bees had vanished. On a November day 18 months ago, he checked the hives in his Florida bee yard to find they were empty. "They weren't dead, they were just gone," he recalls.
Since then, close on two million colonies of honeybees across the US have been wiped out. The strange phenomenon, dubbed colony collapse disorder (CCD), is also thought to have claimed the lives of billions of honeybees around the world. In Taiwan, 10 million honeybees were reported to have disappeared in just two weeks, and throughout Europe honeybees are in peril.
In Britain, John Chapple was the first to raise the alarm. In January 2007, he lost all of the 14 colonies in his garden in west London. "It's too cold at that time of year to open the hives," he says, "so I always check on the bees by giving the hive a thump and waiting for what sounds like a roaring sound to come back. But there was nothing, just silence." When he opened the hives to see what had happened, he found them practically empty. Examination of a further 26 hives scattered across the capital revealed that two-thirds had perished.
"I was completely shocked," says Chapple, who chairs the London Beekeepers' Association. "I could attribute some losses to a failing queen bee or wax moths, but there were a few I could find no reason for. There was a healthy queen and a few bees, but nothing else." Chapple's inquiries as to whether the parks where he kept some of his hives had sprayed new pesticides also drew a blank.
He was not alone. Beekeepers in north-west London also reported strange losses. Chapple calls the disappearance the "Mary Celeste syndrome". A year later, a survey of hives by government bee inspectors across Britain has found that one in five colonies has perished this winter.
There are some 270,000 honeybee hives in Britain run by 44,000 keepers, more than 90% of them amateurs. According to estimates by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), bees contribute £165m a year to the economy through their pollination of fruit trees, field beans and other crops. In addition, the 5,000 tonnes of British honey sold in UK stores generates a further £12m.
UK farming minister Lord Rooker, however, warned last year that honeybees are in acute danger: "If nothing is done about it, the honeybee population could be wiped out in 10 years," he said. Last month, he launched a consultation on a national strategy to improve and protect honeybee health.
People's initial response to the idea of a bee-less world is often either, "That's a shame, I'll have no honey to spread on my toast" or, "Good - one less insect that can sting me." In fact, honeybees are vital for the pollination of around 90 crops worldwide. In addition to almonds, most fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds are dependent on honeybees. Crops that are used as cattle and pig feed also rely on honeybee pollination, as does the cotton plant. So if all the honeybees disappeared, we would have to switch our diet to cereals and grain, and give our wardrobes a drastic makeover.
According to Albert Einstein, our very existence is inextricably linked to bees - he is reputed to have said: "If the bee disappears off the surface of the globe, then man would only have four years of life left."
Bees are a barometer of what man is doing to the environment, say beekeepers; the canary in the coalmine. Just as animals behave weirdly before an earthquake or a hurricane, cowering in a corner or howling in the wind, so the silent, empty hives are a harbinger of a looming ecological crisis. But what is causing them to vanish - pesticides, parasites, pests, viruses? No one knows for sure. The more fanciful theories when CCD was first detected included an al-Qaida plot to wreck US agriculture, radiation from mobile phones and even celestial intervention in the form of honeybee rapture.
Scientists around the world are trying to pinpoint the culprit, but it is proving elusive. They have even set up an international network to monitor honeybee losses - a sort of Interpol for bees - which is operating out of Switzerland. Its coordinator, bee pathologist Dr Peter Neumann, blames a bloodsucking mite called varroa. Little bigger than a pinhead, it has preyed on honeybees in Europe and the US since its arrival 30 years ago. Under a microscope, the reddish-brown mite looks like a cross between a jellyfish and a Frisbee. It activates lethal viruses in honeybees and carries them from bee to bee when it feeds on their blood, like a dirty syringe spreading HIV/Aids. "It has to be the backbone of the problem," Neumann says. "But it is probably not acting alone."
In the US, where the genetic code of the honeybee was unravelled by scientists two years ago, they have been employing advanced technology to discover if a new virus is responsible for killing the bees. Genome sequencing techniques uncovered the DNA of a virus called Israeli acute paralysis virus (IAPV) that was found in almost all of the hives suffering from CCD. The discovery, published in Science, was hailed as a major breakthrough in the investigation. But honeybees are riddled with latent viruses. They become a problem and cause disease only when the bee's immune system is shot. Like humans, they are prone to illness when they are stressed and run-down. So the real question is, what is making the bees too weak to fight a virus?
The answer is probably overwork, coupled with various environmental factors that are the flipside of pollination on an industrial scale and intensified food production. After Hackenberg's bees have pollinated the almonds in California, they head north to the apple orchards of Washington State, then east for the cranberries and pumpkins, before reaching Maine in May to pollinate blueberries. In a year, they can cover 11,000 miles. It's a well-worn route that's travelled by many of the 1,000 commercial beekeepers in America who between them own 90% of the country's 2.4 million honeybee colonies. It is pollination, rather than honey production, that keeps US beekeepers in business. In 2007, honey production was worth $160m to the US economy, compared with pollination services that have been estimated at $15bn.
Joe Traynor is a California bee broker. From a small office in a quiet side street in downtown Bakersfield, on the southern tip of Central Valley, he runs a lucrative business matching almond growers with beekeepers. I put to him that surely all this moving around of bees, confined to their hives for long periods, must be stressful for them. He admits that too much travel is not good for their health: "When you're trucking bees, they need sleep, just as humans do, and the bumping around in the truck for two to three days keeps them awake, and this lowers their resistance to pests and disease."
Hackenberg, however, disagrees: "I've been doing this 40-odd years. We've done all the same things, but the rules have changed. Something's messing up."
Hackenberg, 59, wears cowboy boots, a checked shirt and blue jeans. He even has a hard hat in the shape of a Stetson, with netting attached that he wears when unloading beehives. He began his own investigations into what killed 2,000 of his honeybees at the end of 2006, by talking to growers and reading up on pesticide use and research into their effects on bees. "It's those new neonicotinoid pesticides that growers are using," he says. "That's what's messing up the bees' navigation system so they can't find their way home."
Honeybees have a sophisticated dance language they use to communicate with each other in the hive. Until Karl von Frisch unlocked the mysteries of this dance - his discovery won him a Nobel prize in 1973 - we didn't fully appreciate that bees returning to the hive laden with nectar and pollen will tell their sisters (all worker bees are female) where they got their supplies by doing a dance that points to the location of the flowers in relation to the sun's position.
Tests have shown that the pesticides Hackenberg refers to can interfere with the bees' communication and orientation skills, and also impair memory.
With innocuous brand names such as Gaucho, Assail and Merit, these pesticides are used worldwide, from sunflower fields to apple orchards, lawns to golf courses. The chemicals they contain are an artificial type of nicotine that acts as a neurotoxin that attacks insects' nervous systems on contact or ingestion. Because it is systemic, the chemical moves throughout a plant, so if it is applied as a seed dressing, it will travel to the shoots, stem, leaves and flowers where bees can come into contact with small doses. Many of these widely used pesticides are classified by the US Environmental Protection Agency as "highly toxic to bees" and come with a warning label intended to help prevent their exposure to the pollinators.
"It's in such small print that the growers don't see it," Hackenberg says. He accuses farmers of "stacking" - or mixing - pesticides, herbicides and fungicides. "No one has ever tested what happens to the toxicity if they do mix, simply because the chemical companies are not required to by law, but this combination could be a thousand times more lethal than if the chemicals are applied separately."
In Britain, beekeeping is very small-scale compared with the US. There are a few hundred professional beekeepers, who run an average of 100 hives each; only around 50 of them transport bees to orchards, usually over distances of 25 or so miles, rather than across a continent. Many orchards provide a year-round home for hives kept by amateur beekeepers, so there is no need for migratory beekeepers. But in this country, as in the rest of Europe, it is hard to escape pesticides and the varroa mite.
In France, beekeepers have for more than a decade waged a war against the chemical giant Bayer CropScience. They hold responsible the company's bestselling pesticide, imidacloprid, trade name Gaucho, for killing a third of the country's 1.5 million colonies. In 1999, the French government banned the use of Gaucho on sunflower crops after thousands took to the streets in protest. Two further pesticides were banned because of their potential link to bee deaths. It appeared to stem the massive bee die-offs for a time, even though the manufacturers' own tests demonstrated there is no correlation, and a long-term study by the French food safety agency revealed no significant differences in death rates before and after pesticides were banned. This winter, bee deaths across France are reported to have shot up again to 60%.
Bayer is also being blamed by German beekeepers for the eerie silence along the Rhine valley, where the buzzing of bees is a common sound at this time of year. They say two-thirds of honeybees have been killed this month by the pesticide clothianidin, sold under the trade name Poncho, which has been widely applied on sweet corn. As a result of the bee deaths, eight pesticides, including clothianidin, have been temporarily suspended in Germany. Anecdotal evidence of pesticide-related bee deaths in Italy and Holland is also piling up.
European beekeepers accuse scientists and government agencies of being in the pocket of the chemical companies. It's a similar story in the US, where scientists maintain that there is no correlation between the bees' disappearance and pesticide use. According to Hackenberg: "Big Ag has control of the USDA [the US Department of Agriculture] from the secretary right down to the lowest guy on the totem pole."
Jeff Pettis is not sure where he comes on the pole. The senior manager at the federal bee laboratory in Maryland, he's the man responsible for coordinating the US government's response to CCD. Pettis advises some beekeepers may do well to forgo the almond pollination and rest their bees. "You are getting them ready for February when the sunlight hours and the temperature are telling them it's too early in the year to be foraging at full strength," he says.
Deceiving bees is an essential part of the business. Beekeepers dupe them into thinking it's already summer by moving them to warm locations in winter and feeding them an array of protein and energy supplements. The more food that comes into the hive, the more eggs the queen lays, to create more of the worker bees to go out and pollinate.
The bee broker Joe Traynor says the deception goes much further than trucking bees south. "We're interfering with their natural cycle because we want strong colonies for almond pollination. We're stimulating hives in August, September and October, and making the queens do a lot more laying. As a result the queens are suffering burnout. It used to be that a beekeeper could pretty much leave his bees alone during winter. That's no longer the case."
Moreover, scientists funded by the Almond Board of California are now experimenting with artificial pheromones that trick bees into thinking there are more larvae in the hive that need feeding, so they forage more, and in the process pollinate more almond blossom.
This is the Almond Board's profit-driven response to a potential shortfall of honeybees: to work even harder those that remain. Bees are being treated as a machine with no consideration for their life cycle and downtimes. And any machine pushed to its limits and not well maintained will break.
Environmentalists argue for conservation measures on land planted with single crops that will both improve honeybee nutrition and attract wild pollinators that could shoulder some of the honeybees' workload. Monoculture, the hallmark of modern agriculture, covers much of the world's 1.5bn hectares of arable land. Single-crop plantations and orchards can stretch for hundreds of kilometres. The advantages for the farmer are manifold: the crop blooms at the same time, can be treated with the same pesticides and can be harvested together for maximum efficiency. But for honeybees, pollen collected from one crop does not provide a balanced, nutritious diet. Scientists agree that malnourished bees are more susceptible to disease and pesticide poisoning, while the best-fed are the hardiest.
Planting hedgerows of wild flowers would give honeybees a more varied menu. While this has happened in Europe, US almond growers have proved resistant to the idea, concerned that the bees would make fewer visits to the almond blossom if they had a choice. But hedgerows would also provide food and habitat for other pollinators such as butterflies, bumblebees and solitary bees. There are 4,500 wild bee species in North America that are capable of pollinating myriad fruits and vegetables - some more efficiently than honeybees.
Could they prevent a pollination crisis if honeybees become extinct? Only if they have somewhere to make a home in the orchards and fields, and something to eat after the single crop has bloomed. Monoculture deprives them on both counts.
The Xerces Society runs a pollinator conservation project in northern California. Farms in Yolo County receive a mixture of plants that flower throughout the year and nest blocks for wild bees, and they keep large areas of soil untilled for native bees to live on. They say they have seen the return of native bees and benefited from their pollination services. But final details being hammered out in a farm bill on Capitol Hill look like trimming conservation budgets and reducing financial incentives for farmers to manage their land in a more pollinator-friendly way.
So growers will continue to be increasingly reliant on honeybees to do a job once performed by a host of different insects. Their profits now hinge as much on honeybees' availability to pollinate fields as they do on the sun and rain. This is why there is such urgency in solving the mystery of disappearing and dying bees.
This is not the first time that honeybees have disappeared. The first recorded unexplained loss was in the US 150 years ago and ever since large numbers have vanished at intervals throughout North America, Europe and Australia. An epidemic first reported on the Isle of Wight wiped out 90% of honeybee colonies in the UK at the beginning of the 20th century. Then, as now, the main suspects were deficiencies in the bees' diet, pollution in the environment, pests and parasites and mismanagement by beekeepers, but the killer was never identified.
When bees die, beekeepers can restock their hives quickly by buying a new queen who lays 2,000 eggs a day at her peak. Across the world, most have chosen to fill their apiaries with a type of honeybee renowned for its gentle nature and prodigious honey production skills. This race of bee, originally from Italy, now dominates beekeeping. The downside is that the honeybee gene pool has been diminished and with it traits that may have helped bees fend off mites and other parasites, such as a new fungal bacteria, Nosema ceranae, that attacks its gut.
There are fears that mites are becoming increasingly resistant to chemicals administered by beekeepers to kill them. Pettis says we are controlling too many bee ailments with drugs and a more organic approach is needed that includes stocking apiaries with locally reared bees better adapted to local climate and environmental conditions.
Meanwhile scientists are hoping to use the mapping of the honeybee genome to engineer in the laboratory a super bee that has the resilience to withstand varroa but retains all the qualities of the Italian bee. Biologists will tell you, however, that it will be only a matter of time before a super bee breeds a super parasite. Geneticists also discovered that honeybees have fewer genes providing resistance to disease than other insects. In particular, the number of genes responsible for detoxification appear to be smaller, making it unusually sensitive to pesticides and poisons. Its large-scale disappearance across the US and high death rates in Europe are signalling that industrialised farming makes demands on honeybees that are not sustainable.
Central Valley has been described as a big brothel where billions of honeybees from all over the US can pick up a contagious illness and take it home. It's spread by mites from infected to healthy colonies. And there are plans to expand Central Valley's almond orchards to the point where, by 2011, they will require 1.6 million honeybee colonies for pollination.
Despite around a third of all US honeybees being wiped out last year, and again this year after beekeepers had restocked their hives, the almond pollination has yet to suffer. Why?
There are two answers. The shortage of honeybees has pushed up the price of hive rentals for almond pollination to an all-time high of $140 per hive, so more and more beekeepers are making the trip west, and the Almond Board's requirement of two hives each containing 20,000-30,000 bees per acre to pollinate the almonds is excessive, but provides a buffer should some of the hives be empty.
As the sun rises over the almond orchards after another nocturnal delivery of east coast hives, Hackenberg says it's only the money that brings him and his waning bees to California each year. "I'd rather be back in Florida with my bees. They'd be feeding on the maple and willow. It's paradise down there. Why would anyone come to this godforsaken place? But something's got to pay the bills. I'm here for a $150,000 cheque."
· A World Without Bees, by Alison Benjamin and Brian McCallum, is published by Guardian Books. Go to guardianbooks.co.uk
© 2008 The Guardian
76 Comments so far
Show AllMaybe a good approach for small orchards is to build some bee shelters for wild swarms in a variety of locations around the orchard and plant a variety of local native flowering species in the orchard to keep the bees fed when the orchard isn't flowering.
I live in California's Central Valley and there was more information in this article from England than in anything I've seen printed in the local newspaper - ironically named "The Bee". Go figure. I doubt the local almond growers would be happy to see in print a story about them working the remaining bees even harder just to turn a buck. One item the article didn't touch on is the possibility that the chemicals in air pollution are reacting with the scent molecules of flowers in ways that limit the distance they travel through the air and thus making it harder for bees to find the flowers (See Air Pollution Impedes Bees' Ability to Find Flowers).
Unlike Anita Linker who hasn't seen a bee all year, I've seen a few buzzing around the yard, but only a few and only at certain times of the day, not like in years past where there would be dozens buzzing around at any given time of day. There have been fewer bumble bees, wasps and dragonflies too. Oh, but there's plenty of spiders still. Black widows in fact.
the bees are sick of being shipped around in their hives and of course the human race is fucked, bees dying out is just one of the many ways.
now to say somthing alien like for KEM PATRICK hmmm
BEES ARE MASSING SECRETLY TO DESTROY THE HUMAN RACE
sorry im wasted
Isn't it obvious -KEM-?
The bees in your area have all split to head to the Arctic and combat that Killer Gas from the North that would otherwise do us all in!
Thank you, noble bee brigades, for your sacrifice.
Plenty of bees up here in Washington, and other insects too.
I think this problem maybe both more specific and more general than we tend to make it out to be.
Meaning that Climate Change or other global factors may also be at work here, though mitigating factors at the local level may determine actual pollinator population health and survival (such as not being truck cross-continent or not being let loose in February).
Seems like it would be most logical to look into what is different in bee life today from when they were doing better, and then start eliminating the new stuff until they recover.
Or stop eating almonds.
Have fun,
-matti.
I fear that some aliens also blog comments here.
Several possibilities
Our magnetic fieled is fading as it heads toward a reversal
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/09/0909_040909_earthmagfield.html
"A number of Earth's creatures, including some birds, turtles, and bees, rely on Earth's magnetic field to navigate." Could be an interesting time whent he poles reversem and North becomes South. Russia worries HAARP may cause this to occur prematurely.
HAARP
http://www.hyperstealth.com/haarp/index.htm
"Large Scale CCD began in the summer of 2006, HAARP went to full power in the summer of 2006. Initial research shows bees are sensitive to electromagnetics and/or specific frequencies outside of the visual spectrum, HAARP transmits over a broad range of frequencies. Bees are sensitive to changes in the visual spectrum. HAARP can induce changes in the same visual spectrum that bees utilize. CCD is taking place in a limited regional locations of North American and Europe, HAARP testing has shown the greatest reception of their transmissions are within North America and Europe."
GMO Terminator seeds
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20080325&articleId=8436
"Lastly, "leaked documents seen by the Guardian show that Canada wants all governments to accept the testing and commercialization of "Terminator" crop varieties. These seeds are genetically engineered to produce only infertile seeds, which farmers cannot replant, also to mention that the bees that are trying to collect pollen, found to have their digestive tract diseases, such as amoeba and nosema disease"12. These diseases are mainly located in the digestive tract system. After studies of the autopsy, the most alarming trait is that the lower intestine and stinger have discolored to black vs. the normal opaque color, Synominus with colon cancer in humans."
Aliens
Aliens are living amongst us and may have a sweet tooth for honey bees. The weather in Washington State might not be too their liking, so the bees do fine there, but they seem to like California, Texas, and much of the south, whose bees are being devoured by the hungry aliens. This is a personal theory that has no link. I know Cheney was very concerned about the bee shortage, and have long believed him to be an alien. He seems to be losing weight as well.
Gene Pool
As the article suggests, in breeding may have caused issues with the gene pool that has caused a race of bees that are defective. This also deserves serious consideration, although not as exciting as my alien theory.
The are a number of feral honeybee colonies in my neighborhood that seem to be thriving (and I live in the inner city). Seems like they do a lot better once they escape human captivity...
Odd it is that al quida so doesn't get who the enemy is.
And it's why they're withering as an organization.
Their methods suck. Killing their own. They, the planet,
needs to turn their gun sights on who is killing the planet.
It's about the WTO, CEO's of ADM, Halliburton, News Corp., et al, etc. But let's not let extremists do the work of ordinary people; it is this latter group who needs to ween itself from the corporate tit, shrink them into the same bankruptcy al quiada duped the little monkey into by bankrupting the US. We need cheap consumer goods from China like a 9mm to the temple. We don't need apples from New Zealand, lettuce from Mexico. We don't need what's not local. The salvation of the citizens of the US will come with 10 dollar a gallon gasoline.
The bees here on my place are doing fine. I guess it's all in how you treat them. The wasps seem to be doing fine too. The humming birds are back. I use no poisons and allow indigenous plants to grow wild. Nature seems to do best on it's own.
I really enjoyed reading everyone's comments... Agave, you said it perfectly. And thanks Kem for the info.
I also think what Apokolypsis had to say is critical. There are numbers of manipulations to the environment that are occurring without responsible oversight...
I too live in SF Bay Area. We have seen VERY few bees and almost no other insects. There are very few on the trails as well.
And, there is apparently a planned program to spray this area regularly for a problem that may not even exist...
The same spraying was done in nearby Santa Cruz and though there were numbers of community protests, the spraying went forward.
Something wacky is going on. We have swallows that return each year on nearly the exact same day, give or take 2 or 3 days. This year they showed up 6 weeks late. We assumed they just weren't going to return. I'm glad they did, but 6 weeks late? I suspect we could be messing up innate navigation with all the artificial electromagnetic fields we're saturating the planet with.
I question where the author heard that Einstein had made the comment. since Einstein is so well documented and since I used to keep bees myself I was intensely interested in this when I heard it last fall, and wondered in what context he made this statement. Does anyone know?
To Bee or not to Bee... is becoming the question.
Rockerbabe1, you just asked the very question that kept running through my mind the whole time I was reading this article. "Why can't California develop and maintain their own beehives in the numbers needed to keep the pollination going and reduce travel times for the overworked bees?" I mean, surely there are bees in California???
Another poster up-thread said it, in essence: We torture, mis-use, and abuse every animal, bird, and insect that gifts man with a better life. We are destroying the oceans, the rivers, even plants that can provide life-saving medicines. Just how much will that post-environmental almighty dollar buy?
Beekeeper - when you say "RIP" I hope you just mean the capitalists and the monoculturist. If I understood what you were saying it sounds as if we would be best off just encouraging those bees that are living naturally in our area. I suppose for those without bees other actions might be necessary, but nothing will "work" unless it makes sense ecologically.
Anyhow, thanks for providing your insight.
Neither does Moonachie, New Jersey, or Bergen county. Maybe some would believev the author of this article doesn't know what he's talking about? I beieve he does though.
Orange County, California reports no problems with their honey bees
HI ~Anita Linker~, excellent post at 5.14pm. What you, I and others are seeing is being reported across the entire country in most areas.
On previous like articles here, many have reported the same type of situation, from Maine to Florida, Michigan to California. A few have said they don't see it happening where they live. Wonder why that is? Gotta be a good reason and it is not just commercial honey bees that have suddenly "hidden out".
As I first posted twice, before the rude interuption, we have not seen any bees of "ANY TYPE", last year or this year and that covers hundreds of square miles of the southwest. And it is not only bees that have suddenly disappeared, it is all types of inscects and bats, birds and lizards, etc.
We don't even have any house flies this year to speak of, and no one around here sprays with pesticides. We don't have any nearby neighbors and it's 20 miles to the nearest town and the "BEE MAN" in town who used to snatch up swarms of killer bees is going broke. That's not commercial honey bees we are talking about, it's wild bees. There is a serious problem.
I guess I should check in on this one. Buffalo Ken, I appreciate the shout out.
An interesting fact about honey. Many people have allergies to honey--but not all honey--only honey not from their locality. Biologically, we grow up in a sea of pollen floating around us in the air, in the food we eat, and in the honey we consume. Thus, most of us develop a resistance to local allergens. But when we eat honey from other areas, from plants foreign to our environment, we are likely to have allergic reactions because we lack the antibodies for some of the phytochemicals found in honey, direct products of the plants from which the pollen and nectar are taken.
Well, the very idea of moving bees around proves ecologically idiotic for similar reasons. Bees become accustomed to localities. When we move them around, we subject them to new plant chemicals, new pesticides, and new diseases. Think about the New York City resident who travels to some part of the world where ebola exists. The human and the bees lack the biological resources to survive that new environment.
Now think about those bees or that ebola victim returning home, bringing the disease to their neighbors.
The interstate moving of bees is another irresponsible product of capitalism where dollars trump any sensible actions. And what do beekeepers do? They rely on a whole new batch of pharmaceuticals to keep their colonies healthy, creating a new generation of crack-head bees addicted to who-knows-what.
Yes, honeybees are doomed. We will be running amok looking for their replacements, whom we have also killed off with our rampant use of pesticides on monoculture crops.
We are a suicidal race of capitalists. RIP.
Cancer, heart disease, Dementia: If we don't stop the escalating use of poisons, supposedly to make life easier (ON WHO?... somebody's wallet?), we will do as civilizations before us have done, annihilate, not just the bees, but most of life on earth.
More on the destruction of life is available if you search "Hillary and Monsanto." Mom and Pops, local farms, independants, they are all small, and maybe slow, but corps will kill us.
>>Anita Linker- I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, home of beautiful blooming flowers and plenty of fruit trees. And this year I have not seen one honeybee. I repeat: Not one. This is unprecedented in all my 57 years on this planet. <<
I live in the Bay Area too. On the coast. I have seen bees this year like every year. Our neighbor keeps hives and friends in the Palo Alto area as well. The local beekeepers don't seem to have any problems at all. I think the main problem comes in the monoculture areas like the Central Valley and that is an obvious problem. Hive Collapse seems to be very complex and it doesn't effect all the areas the same way. Like I say. I am happy to report bees aplenty here in the Bay Area.
I live on what used to be a small farm with a few acres of woods in back and use no chemicals on my land or in my house. I mow a little bit around the house and outbuildings, but the rest I let go--yes, everyone thinks I'm deranged because I ruined the beautiful "park-like" setting that the asshole that owned this place before I did spent practically every waking hour "maintaining," i.e., mowing, edging, applying chemical fertilizers, herbicides, insectides, etc.--and folks think I'M deranged?? In the five years since I came here, the variety and quantities of wildflowers, berries, trees, birds, and yes, bees have increased. There aren't a huge number of honey bees, but I usually see a few every time I go outside, and there are lots of bumble bees and other smaller bees. Like most of you, I get upset when I hear about these huge factory farming enterprises, and like most of you, I understand why they're here--because there's a demand for the stuff they produce. And if there's a demand, there will be a supply, no matter what the consequences, which is what we've been seeing since the birth of cities and commerce. I stopped eating honey a long time ago because I didn't like the idea of enslaving bees and stealing their hard-won food, and I'll be adding almonds to my boycott list, even though I hardly ever ate them anyway. I know I won't exactly make waves, but who knows, it might catch on when people figure out that collectively, we really do have the power to effect big changes.
with all due respect to all life, our fellow organisms inhabiting the atmospheric realm are all under direct assault, giving up their lives and it appears for nothing for and on behalf of their supposed higher evolved brain stemmed organisms.
ladies and gentlemen, there is a war fully engaged and it is upon the very air we all were given by creation.
Open Air Chemical & Biological Testing on private
American inhabitants, Legal without YOUR FULLY INFORMED CONSENT!
If you find the law as it stands for legal sanctioned governmental genocide an outrage and/or a complete violation of human liberties, please DO spread it forward, thank you.
Been sick lately?
Recurring Sinus, Respiratory, Bronchial Infections that don't go away, endocrine/stomach aches?
Out of the blue, typically healthy?
Weather acting funny, droughts, tornado's, radical temperature fluctuations?
Next, shouldn't we ask ourselves, does ANY matter of activism we pursue, political, environmental, social, religious, tax, legal, civil, immigration, etc., EVEN matter if American families inherent liberty to LIFE without trespass and violation without REMEDY, upon the soil of your State, is being destroyed, lawfully, by a federal government?
Democrat, Republican, Independent, Green, Yellow, Purple or Black, how can it even begin to matter, when all of the above ordain and sanction genocidal Law as below?
TITLE 50 > CHAPTER 32 > § 1515
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§ 1515. Suspension; Presidential authorization
After November 19, 1969, the operation of this chapter, or any portion thereof, may be suspended by the President during the period of any war declared by Congress and during the period of any national emergency declared by Congress or by the President.
TITLE 50 > CHAPTER 32 > § 1520a
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§ 1520a. Restrictions on use of human subjects for testing of chemical or biological agents
(a) Prohibited activities
The Secretary of Defense may not conduct (directly or by contract)—
(1) any test or experiment involving the use of a chemical agent or biological agent on a civilian population; or
(2) any other testing of a chemical agent or biological agent on human subjects.
(b) Exceptions
Subject to subsections (c), (d), and (e) of this section, the prohibition in subsection (a) of this section does not apply to a test or experiment carried out for any of the following purposes:
(1) Any peaceful purpose that is related to a medical, therapeutic, pharmaceutical, agricultural, industrial, or research activity.
(2) Any purpose that is directly related to protection against toxic chemicals or biological weapons and agents.
(3) Any law enforcement purpose, including any purpose related to riot control.
(c) Informed consent required
The Secretary of Defense may conduct a test or experiment described in subsection (b) of this section only if informed consent to the testing was obtained from each human subject in advance of the testing on that subject.
(d) Prior notice to Congress
Not later than 30 days after the date of final approval within the Department of Defense of plans for any experiment or study to be conducted by the Department of Defense (whether directly or under contract) involving the use of human subjects for the testing of a chemical agent or a biological agent, the Secretary of Defense shall submit to the Committee on Armed Services of the Senate and the Committee on Armed Services of the House of Representatives a report setting forth a full accounting of those plans, and the experiment or study may then be conducted only after the end of the 30-day period beginning on the date such report is received by those committees.
(e) "Biological agent" defined
In this section, the term "biological agent" means any micro-organism (including bacteria, viruses, fungi, rickettsiac, or protozoa), pathogen, or infectious substance, and any naturally occurring, bioengineered, or synthesized component of any such micro-organism, pathogen, or infectious substance, whatever its origin or method of production, that is capable of causing—
(1) death, disease, or other biological malfunction in a human, an animal, a plant, or another living organism;
(2) deterioration of food, water, equipment, supplies, or materials of any kind; or
(3) deleterious alteration of the environment.
June 2007, National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell gained White House approval to update a 1981 presidential order on how US spy agencies operate. Potentially up for review in the highly secretive overhaul, referred to as Order 12333, is the topic of human experimentation.
Cay anyone say PERPETUAL WAR on t*rror? and upon whom?
For an indepth discussion of the topic of the disappearing bees go to the commentary by WildSideNews Host Sidney Wildesmith on YouTube. Here's the link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjXD5gzq2DI
I want to thank Agave for the words of wisdom.
Others of you - and you know who you are - are wasting precious time arguing with each other in cyberspace. This is the same ego-to-ego fight-to-the-death contest that is killing our planet right now. We were discussing honeybees - a necessary part of the Web of Life that protects us all. Let's try to stay on topic.
I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, home of beautiful blooming flowers and plenty of fruit trees. And this year I have not seen one honeybee. I repeat: Not one. This is unprecedented in all my 57 years on this planet. Most people I know are in denial; They either say they haven't noticed whether there are honeybees around or not, or they say vaguely that they've seen "a couple." We are in real trouble, folks. Honeybees have been on this planet for eons. What would make them suddenly disappear? The only answer is that this year artificial technology finally kicked in and killed them. I don't care if it's pesticides, GMO crops, or moving colonies from Point A to Point B. Humans have to learn everything the hard way, it seems: No pollinators, no flowers. No flowers, no fruit. No fruit, no us. Do you get it know? It's not nice to fool with Mother Nature!
P.S.: Thank you for your words of wisdom, Agave. You said it best.
Why can't California develop and maintain their own beehives in the numbers needed to keep the pollination going and reduce travel times for the overworked bees? It seems we are just working them to death and they've [the bees]decided to take this job and shove it.
alison benjamin for the informative timely article, in our 'world' there are few that have 'eyes to see' with ability to share it. thank you
wild
agave - thank-you for your beautiful post. Thank-you and be at peace.
If we approach life on this planet with more servitude and give what we take, instead of living with a sense of entitlement, maybe things could improve. We should be serving the bees, not expecting them to serve us. If we want the bees to help us, we need to help them. Treating the plants and animals like they are slaves and machines is going to hurt us and everything around us in the end. The planet will survive, and I'm sure bees will make a come back eventually, but I don't think we will live to see paradise return to the the planet.
In the meantime I want to plant as many varieties of local native plants as I can, that will attract native bees. The bees have been so good to us. It is the least I could do. We need to be stewards of the Earth and help to tend and care for God's most beautiful creation. God gave us the ability to care. Let's not throw that away
I never was a fighter or bomber pilot ASS-umer. It was mostly cargo or rescue I was a crew member of. And I don't START shit with others, I will respond to it. Yes I debate others and there is nothing wrong with anyone here posting varied or opposed opinions. As to your charge of me being pompus, I don't ever intend to be. I'm just an average person and I know it. If you read it that way that's your perogative.
I read that you are sick in the head and that's my personal perogative. I would never have offered that opinonn if you hadn't started this stupid crap. If one combined all of your eleven posts here, it would make less sense than that of a Looney Toon comic book and I'm not the only one you have insulted for no reason.
You start crap like you did here for no reason whatsoever. Just ignore my posts and I will do the same of you. I don't attempt to convince YOU of anything, was just replying to your obscene and unnecessay crap to me, which no one wants to see here BTW. I will not likely reply to you again.
Kem - can you not acknowledge that sometimes you are pompous. Just recently on another thread someone offered up some ideas that were incredible in my opinion, but you were such an asshole and had to knock them down.
Listen here you. You think you can call me brain-damaged, but what makes you so smart. Shove it up your ass.
Like I said, I would sink you in a heartbeat, and it would be easier because I don't know you. Don't you understand that you figher pilot you. You bomb dropping fool.
Later Kem. You will never get it, or maybe you will, but I doubt you will ever convince me.
Kem - just be a lover, that is what you are best at.
Ken
agave - i bet you those amazon tribe folks recently photographed from above will not perish. They understand, and I wish no-one had photographed them. Leave them alone will ya.
Anyhow, I think we are smart enough to say to ourselves, gracious we have this crazy ego, what does that mean? I think it speak to potential.
Regardless, the bees are probably way smarter than we give them credit and they know that it is not in their interest to help us out at this moment.
~BUFFALO KEN~. You wrote that you would sink my ass in a heartbeat and you don't even know me. What got your chain pulled ~BUFFALO~? You wrote the bugs are just hiding out and I jokingly thanked you for that "astute" information, because I could not believe you were that incredibly stupid or serious and you jump in my shit.
Now I have posted nothing much here, except that which I personally have observed concerning the birds and the bees. WHy do you accuse me of attempting to be a know-it-all?
You don't have to waste any of your time with me asshole, and I'd much prefer you didn't, because it is clearly obvious that you're brain damaged. You didn't have to ever reply to any of my comments. This is a learning site, where we can share experiences and information and post credible links for others. It is totally unnecessary for you to start a shit fight with me again and disrupt a good thread.
What we are doing to the planet and ourselves kind of reminds me of plastic surgery. You cut it all up, rearrange it to look "better", and then you have something that looks completely different, almost unrecognizable. And you will NEVER be able to go back to the way it looked before you cut it all up. and rearranged it.
Man's worse enemy is his own Ego. He thinks he can one-up God, or outsmart God, or do better than God. Watch out, the Ego is a monster who is coming to kill you. Man has created his own "Forbidden Planet" and all will perish in his presence.
and I will add this because I can, the only reason I spoke as such is because sometimes you act as if you have nothing left to learn....
that is what gets on my nerves..
Listen Kem, I don't know why I'm wasting my time with you becuase if you were in the middle of the ocean I would sink your ass in a heartbeat.
Nonetheless, you don't know nearly what you think you do.
Most of the species on this planet are way smarter than humanity. At least they are collectively.
You say I am "fun", and that may be true, but I am not playing around.
Peace,
Ken
Yep ~Ebishirl~ no bats here this year either, or very many birds and three years ago we had a bird paradise on our land. Guess they are just "hiding out".
I see ~Buffalo~. For the past two years the inscets have been "hiding out". Got it, thanks.
I was a little concerned.
The plight of the honeybees is truly disturbing, but I just wanted to point out that the oft-quoted Einstein reference is unconfirmed at best. (See Snopes.)
Nonetheless, I have no doubt life would become extremely different and more difficult for us humans were the bee to disappear. There are lots of other pollinators out there, but not all choose the same plants as bees, and a lot of pollinators (birds and bats, for example) are also seeing large population declines and/or mysterious die-offs.
Bats in the Northeast U.S., for instance, are dropping dead in large numbers due to a strange malady called "white-nose syndrome." No one's sure what's causing the disease, which means -- as with colony collapse disorder -- no one's yet sure how to cure it and stop the die-off.
Scary stuff for sure.
hey crumb - you cartoon dood! There is plenty of life to go around!
Yeah...it's OVER!...period...too bad..if yo grew up in the 50's-60's or 70's/80's...consider yourself lucky....you are the last to reach adult hood...we are so fucked..w may have less than 10 years left...it is gonna be a BIG shock to allot of morons...and allot of others as well...glad i had SOME life..
Kem - I'm not saying I have any ideas, but just because you are not seeing them -- or even if no-one seems to be seeing them --- doesn't mean they are gone. It might just mean that they are pulling back and hiding out...for their own sake. Going somewhere safe. You know.
Like say you are out on the ocean and all the ships around you have been sunk. What are you going to do?
What about the other 2,000 specie of non commercial bees, anyone have any ideas of how to keep them from dying off?
My understanding- I am not an expert on the topic- is that a dramatic increase in Colony Collapse Disorder happened in 1998. This correlated with the introduction of Australian honeybees to the US, which happened the year prior. Normally "bee flesh" is white, but in bees they have found dead, their insides have turned black. They have identified a virus which is not harmful to Australian bees, but wipes out the European honeybees which now populate the US.
Whatever the cause, you can help by providing a hive- Get a low-maintenance hive in your own backyard and help stabilize our bee population: backyardhive.com, beeguardian.org, foodfirst.org
It is not ONLY honey bees that are disappearing in many areas of the world.
Commercial bees are recieving press because they are an important commodity. It's not just caged birds in a mine shaft that are warning us our atmosphere is contaminated with poison.
4 more years. Thanks, Monsanto.
Unless we quickly learn how we fit in. We do not call the shots. We being humanity. We are just a part of the whole.
here is the thing though.....with or without the beekeepers, i think the "bees" or whatever will find what i have at my place, or at least, what others are trying to grow at their places. They will survive. We, on the other hand, may or may not.
An interesting article from The Mother Earth News in 1979 about "Stop the Pesticide Conspiracy"...
http://tinyurl.com/52e2pk
We were more advanced as a people in 1979 than now thanks to all the idiocy since Reagan. Even Mother Earth New is a commercial rag since politics dragged us away from conservation and taking care of the planet. It used to be THE place to find serious information to solve problems for anyone willing to read and deal with their own existence.
Unfortunately, the interview is with a scientist who died in 1978 but understood what we are facing now.
Once the bees are gone there will be no way to feed the planet. This is way more urgent than global warming...
wilmoor, maybe, but i hope not. I don't know about you, but i want to stick around...
Reading this article, and what is being done to make honey bees into something they're not, just to get even more production from them, and make the owners more money, is like turning a Shetland pony into a plow horse. Or like what the GM monsters has turned our food into.
I was also thinking about what those new pesticides that interfer with the bees memory, communication skills, and orientation will do when humans have consummed enough of the foods being sprayed with them.
Maybe it is time for this round of humanity to suddenly vanish like those before us have. We've certainly been working hard toward that end in the short time we've had brains to think with.
hey, "beekeeper" are you around? What do you think?
Here is an idea - those who have bee colonies should figure out a way to distribute out some of the colonies so that they are not all concentrated.
I'd be willing to accept a colony where I live and I've got plenty of things that will keep the bees interested.
Some of these colonies will most likely live.
We live in a southwest area of the States where there are no commercial bee hives for hundreds of square miles. Two years ago wild "killer" bees were overly abundant, we had to be careful and we always saw several other specie of bees. No bees last year or this year, of the 20,000 specie of bees on the planet we have seen none, zero, nada.
Last year the millions of oak and mesquite trees in the valley, which is primarily BLM land, blossomed but bore no fruit. It is not just honey bees that are telling us we have a serious problem. I can leave a back porch light on after dark now and after three hours there will be (less than ten) bugs flying around the light or sitting on the wall. Three years ago there would have been thousands.
We're beekeepers in SW Washington state and our hives are doing nicely, without any medication for mites or other artificial substances. The secret seems to be in NOT ordering any replacement hives or queens from California, but in gathering swarms of wild bees when they land in a populated area. These bees are survivors and have some built-in immunity to the diseases and pests that ravage the hive of "domestic" bees. We have contacts who call us whenever a swarm needs to be collected and we find a home for them. As a result, our fruit trees are laden with green fruit that we will watch ripen during the summer. And our gardens are very productive. We are not organic, but keep any spraying to an absolute minumum, and that is only herbicides necessary in our tree farming business.
And no foreplay.
were fucked
Mother Nature needs a long rest spell from the ravages of Homo Managerus.
Here's a good book:
Insect Pollination Of Cultivated Crop Plants
The bees are dying because their immune systems are being compromised. Their immune systems are being compromised by pesticides, and by their being shipped from place to place. Our system isn't going to allow us to stop shipping bees from place to place, at least not at this time, but we certainly could ban any pesticides that kill bees. The problem with this is that any pesticide that will kill other insects will also kill bees, so we'd have to ban a lot of pesticides.
The bat situation in NY is similar, although it appears to be mostly affecting bats that are highly colonial in nature and that do not migrate. What is probably happening is that highly colonial, nonmigratory bats come out of hibernation too early because of global warming and fly around looking for insects, which they can't find because it's too early in the year for insects to be out and about. So the bats, which have a very rapid metabolism, end up burning calories they need to survive the winter and keep their immune systems working well, and become susceptible to infections that they wouldn't have normally been susceptible to.
So, global warming, via starvation and immune system weakening, is killing the bats, and pesticides, via immune system weakening, are killing the bees. Of course the bottom line is that oil company profits are killing the bats and pesticide company profits are killing the bees.
Oh, and every single flowering plant in North America was pollinated without the use of honeybees, way back when, because honeybees aren't native to North America. But way back then our system of monoculture agriculture wasn't in place.
It's not just honey bees that can pollinate. That is why it is so important to plant a variety of native wildflowers and flowering shrubs & trees around crops so that you can have a variety of native insects that like to collect nectar. Monoculture in big agricultural areas has supressed native insect populations, and the insecticides have wiped many of them out in those areas.
Monoculture not only exsists in big AG. but also exsists in our own backyards. Many folks go out and buy the same plants from their local nurseries: lawns, roses, rodendrons, azeleas, impatence, mums, etc...(apologies on the spelling). And then they spray their own gardens with chemical fertilizers and insecticides. Public spaces also suffer the same monoculture problem with the same varieties of mainstream landsacaping plants, chemical feritlizers, herbicides and pesticides. Our own landscaping practices directly effect the natural ecosystem around us. Here in California we have a climate where we can grow just about anything, which has brought in a bountiful variety of plants that have adorned some amazing home gardens to botanical gardens. It's a horticulturist's dream out here. But there is also a lot of unsustainable garden practices with overuse of water, fuel for maintenance, and chemicals. However there is also a growing interest in California Natives and organic gardens. CA Natives don't look like the classic garden variety plants, so most people avoid them. In fact some people find them unattractive. A lot of folks who did not grow up in Califonia don't appreciate the natrual beauty around here. Instead they favor the plants that they are familiar with from places like Eastern United States or far away places like China. But there are many plant hobbyists and landscape designers who appreciate the local flora and take seriously the effects landscaping has on the environment and natural ecosystem. Many of them try to blend a variety of plants, native and non-native that are very appropriate for the micro-climates and soil types. Many gardens now attract native birds and insect species. And they use mulch and compost to help make the soil healthy and full of life - rich with variety of insects, microscopic organisims, and fungi, and plenty of organic matter from plant debris.
Bees do play a major role in the web of life, as do many other important insects and other creatures. The web is complex and delicate but made with a strong fiber. We are a part of this web. We can all get busy and start helping to repair it and create strong connections in the strands so that the web can remain intact and the living creatures can move about freely and naturally, doing what they were meant to do, the way God intended it to be. Our time speant out in nature is the gift God gave us. We are throwing it away by living such intensly urban lives. We've lossed our sense of life and our connection to the earth. Spend some time out in nature. Start planting a garden. Teach your children to love nature. Get rid of the T.V.'s, iPods, computers, video games and let your children be outside, breathing the air, feeling the sunshine and rain, getting their hands in the dirt, climbing trees. It is our own positive connection and experience with nature that inspires us to protect it. If we let our children (our future) get smothered and lost in an urban world and tune out from everything around them, our world as we know it is surely doomed.
reporting here from GMO free Mendocino County in Northern Cal. I've been following the bee thang for a couple of years now, and I'm happy to report, at present, that we have happy healthy bees of all types, along with the bats and other pollinating critters. What we LACK here is large pesticide dumping (not counting chemtrails...another story) no GMO crops, and NO MONOCULTURE. I overwinter cole crops to feed the bees in the spring, we always have something blooming in the garden. An old herbalist (reference forgotten, sorry) stated that her bees never had any problem with mites because she planted mints around the hives...oregano, marjoram, peppermint, etc. I have huge bushes of these around the garden, and thriving bees. We have biodiversity, and that's what the bees need. The 'monoculture is unnatural, and should die out. It would not be too hard to interplant, it would just be time consuming, and 'untidy'. Spain manages to have almond crops in a varied ecosystem, and they don't use as much pesticides as our mono crops. If a tiny country like Spain can do it, surely we can? Obviously our agricultural model, while prolific in the short term, is disastrous in the long run, and must be changed.
Solution? We all have to become more involved with our food process, we should all grow some (non GMO) food, some herbs, some flowers, naturally. There are herbs you can interplant with crops to control the pests that corporate farms spray for. In the long run, think how much money the farmers could save if they didn't have to use massive amounts of pesticide on non open pollinated seed that they have to buy to resist the massive amounts of pesticide. Oh wait. What would Monsanto do? Would they have to accede to 'free market capitalism' and go the way of the dodo? Wouldn't that be nice? Considering the insane global corporations almost makes me sympathetic to the alien invasion scenario alluded to in a previous post, but that's another story.
Free the bees! Diversify, go organic!
Goose 2: Thank you. All I know is that I like honey and enjoy a wide variety of foods the bees are in part responsible for. I hope a solution to their problems is found quickly.
One more thing to note is that there is not a shortage of bees year round, there is this collapse that occurs and then beekeepers can replace the bees, which they do. The problem is that the bees die or disappear DURING the pollination season. The actual price of bees for hives has not gone up that anyone is reporting.
>>Rockerbabe1 - Beekeeper: I repeat my question; why doesn't California develop and maintain their own beehives in the numbers needed to keep the pollination going and reduce travel times for the overworked bees?<<
It isn't a bad idea but one of the main problems I believe is the monoculture in the Central Valley. Where I live on the coast, there are a multitude of crops and lots of natural area with various things for bees to get pollen from _that bloom at different times of the year_. In the CV, there are HUGE sections where there are only Almonds or rice or grain or corn or soy. I think that part of the issue is that the bees in these areas have a feast and famine cycle that is not natural.
Keeping bees year round is a start here, but they need to be protected from sprays at the time of year that happens (one of the reason for travelling bees...) and they need to have a diversity of flora in their regions. If farmers started mixing their crops more, they would get a lot of benefit here. As I say, there is variety here on the coast, and no serious CCD problem. I literally have heard of only a few cases here. Overall local estimate is a 15% decrease in bees according to the local beekeepers.
Kem, we also do have lizards and salamanders and insects of all sorts. In fact, we have more dragon flies already than we did last all year. CCD is a problem, but the spread is really patchy and the solutions are complex. There is not one simple cause I believe and the main problem is the travelling bees and monoculture as far as I can tell from the reading.
The big nut and fruit producers in California can't keep beehives to pollinate because there isn't enough pollen year round to keep the bees alive and labor to keep the bees would be too expensive. Think about a few thousand acres of almond trees that flower for a week or two. After that the bees would basically starve. Also, the California crops often are heavily dosed with pesticides that would kill the bees. That's why they spray, wait, and then bring in out-of-state bees to pollinate.
Dogface June 3rd, 2008 9:57 am
"Let's face it, people in this country are so ill informed and uneducated by the system, whether it is a science class, or in literature…people have no awareness of anything else but their own existence."
It seems then that we've come full circle, moving back to the beginnings of civilization, doesn't it?
I had an interesting thought though, maybe not that interesting, but I was thinking that it's not the planet we're going to lose. It will still be here. My rock collection will last forever I'm sure. And it's not all life we're going to lose, since life evolved long before us, it doesn't depend on us.
Also, life on earth already exists in extreme environments, hot and cold, fluid and arid. Life will continue, and if necessary it will evolve FROM what exists already. I saw bright green fungus growing on radioactive reactor equipment, in a documentary on tv, and I realized that was pretty important. Life on earth right NOW is robust enough to withstand radioactivity. Think about that.
So I don't think life is going to end, but things might look a lot different, things might get changed around. Flora and fauna gone and replaced by other or new species to fit new environments. Life will absolutely go on.
I have to say, I think it's likely that not ALL people will die either. Might not be you or me that makes it, or anyone in my state, or even on this continent. Maybe only a few thousand. It's happened before, scientists tell us, humans were once down to numbers in the thousands, was a science story I read in the past year. So maybe chances are good some pockets of humanity will make it.
Seems like it's CIVILIZATION we're going to lose. It's THIS we're going to lose. Internet, mass communication, education, knowledge, free time to spare on less than life-sustaining activities. Like the Dark Ages on steroids. Large communities of people might be what WE lose, and our planet and everything else on it won't care a bit.
Don't get me wrong, I hate the poisonous deaths of so much life, and I always have. But most plants and animals don't depend on our civilization, so if it goes away...what's left won't be so bad off. We're just going to get a lot more...local.
AGAVE: Wonderful postings.
Good discussion, just about everything covered in the way of cause factors. The capitalist ethic applies to bees & nature has finally encountered an equally empowered "protest movement."
I shared this once before. Last year I was sitting with some friends in N. Florida, our own little peace pipe circle, discussing lots of things, possibly even this been phenomenon, when a honey bee dove down into my friend's little dab of pot, carried off a singular seed, and flew off. We all cracked up. So this was the missing link? The buzz the bees needed to keep up with their rigorous production schedule?
In which case legalizing it might prove a boon to other agricultural venues!
Beekeeper: I repeat my question; why doesn't California develop and maintain their own beehives in the numbers needed to keep the pollination going and reduce travel times for the overworked bees?
http://www.democracynow.org/1997/12/29/forgotten_pollinators_americas_bees
Amy Goodman, can you say "Democracy Now", reported on this in 1997. And, before her was "Silent Spring". How long does it take for people to wake up. I got tired a long time ago, trying to explain the great outdoors and it relationship to people's lives and having them get MAD at me for ruining their day with doom and gloom.
Let's face it, people in this country are so ill informed and uneducated by the system, whether it is a science class, or in literature…people have no awareness of anything else but their own existence.
Twenty-four seven, they live within four plastic and steel walls. Most have no concept of what the hell "nature" is and how it is so intertwined with their own lives. To take a person outside and have them stop and look at the simplest plant and animal and that interaction…just blows them away. There are whole universes out there that they are not aware of.
They are about to lose it all and they haven't a clue.
If you live in a C.C.D. affected area,consider Orchard Bee blocks.You can make your own with a 4x4 block or two and a half inch drill bit.You can also get colonies through the mail ,but I don't think it's necessary.Just make them and the bees will come.Then place them in your gardens and orchards and for goodness sake,watch when and what you spray or use on your land.Avoid spraying anything organic ,or not ,when bees are active,don't use Neo-nicatinoides like Iclopromid,don't used micronised granular or dusts that bees may pick up like pollen.Leave buffer zones of flowering natives un mowed,and love your Bees. peas in
One problem is dumbed-down scientific knowledge, even by people who purport to be experts. This article makes mistakes in basic biology, calling Nosema ceranae "a new fungal bacteria". Fungi are one Kingdom of life forms, Bacteria are another Kingdom. An organism is either a fungus, or a bacterium (also note use of plural or singular: bacteria/bacterium). Nosema spp. are fungi.
I like the alien theory. Takes it all out of our hands and our responisibility, eh? Who wants that? (sarcasm)
I haven't seen any decrease in flying/crawling insects or spiders or birds here in Southern Wisconsin. But then again, we have something in bloom almost constantly during the growing seasons. This year, we've actually noticed an INCREASE in the amounts and types of birds in our yard (though perhaps it's b/c the neighbors only grow grass...)
Transporting hives thousands of miles sounds like a sick way to make a living. Obviously Dave H. doesn't love his bees.