EMAIL SIGN UP!
Most Popular This Week
- 'Beyond Orwellian': Outrage Follows Revelations of Vast Domestic Spying Program
- The Bill of Rights Exists: An Open Letter to Dianne Feinstein
- Major Loss to Organic Farmers as Court Rules in Favor of Monsanto
- Naomi Klein: 'Anti-Shock Doctrines' Show the Way to Resist
- NSA Whistleblower Revealed: Q&A with Edward Snowden
Popular content
Today's Top News
Fears for Crops as Shock Figures From America Show Scale of Bee Catastrophe
The world may be on the brink of biological disaster after news that a third of US bee colonies did not survive the winter
Disturbing evidence that honeybees are in terminal decline has emerged from the United States where, for the fourth year in a row, more than a third of colonies have failed to survive the winter.
Bernard Vallat, the World Organisation for Animal Health's director-general, warned: "Bees contribute to global food security, and their extinction would represent a terrible biological disaster." (photo by Flickr user Steve Punter) The decline of the country's estimated 2.4 million beehives began in 2006, when a phenomenon dubbed colony collapse disorder (CCD) led to the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of colonies. Since then more than three million colonies in the US and billions of honeybees worldwide have died and scientists are no nearer to knowing what is causing the catastrophic fall in numbers.
The number of managed honeybee colonies in the US fell by 33.8% last winter, according to the annual survey by the Apiary Inspectors of America and the US government's Agricultural Research Service (ARS).
The collapse in the global honeybee population is a major threat to crops. It is estimated that a third of everything we eat depends upon honeybee pollination, which means that bees contribute some £26bn to the global economy.
Potential causes range from parasites, such as the bloodsucking varroa mite, to viral and bacterial infections, pesticides and poor nutrition stemming from intensive farming methods. The disappearance of so many colonies has also been dubbed "Mary Celeste syndrome" due to the absence of dead bees in many of the empty hives.
US scientists have found 121 different pesticides in samples of bees, wax and pollen, lending credence to the notion that pesticides are a key problem. "We believe that some subtle interactions between nutrition, pesticide exposure and other stressors are converging to kill colonies," said Jeffery Pettis, of the ARS's bee research laboratory.
A global review of honeybee deaths by the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) reported last week that there was no one single cause, but pointed the finger at the "irresponsible use" of pesticides that may damage bee health and make them more susceptible to diseases. Bernard Vallat, the OIE's director-general, warned: "Bees contribute to global food security, and their extinction would represent a terrible biological disaster."
Dave Hackenberg of Hackenberg Apiaries, the Pennsylvania-based commercial beekeeper who first raised the alarm about CCD, said that last year had been the worst yet for bee losses, with 62% of his 2,600 hives dying between May 2009 and April 2010. "It's getting worse," he said. "The AIA survey doesn't give you the full picture because it is only measuring losses through the winter. In the summer the bees are exposed to lots of pesticides. Farmers mix them together and no one has any idea what the effects might be."
Pettis agreed that losses in some commercial operations are running at 50% or greater. "Continued losses of this magnitude are not economically sustainable for commercial beekeepers," he said, adding that a solution may be years away. "Look at Aids, they have billions in research dollars and a causative agent and still no cure. Research takes time and beehives are complex organisms."
In the UK it is still too early to judge how Britain's estimated 250,000 honeybee colonies have fared during the long winter. Tim Lovett, president of the British Beekeepers' Association, said: "Anecdotally, it is hugely variable. There are reports of some beekeepers losing almost a third of their hives and others losing none." Results from a survey of the association's 15,000 members are expected this month.
John Chapple, chairman of the London Beekeepers' Association, put losses among his 150 members at between a fifth and a quarter. Eight of his 36 hives across the capital did not survive. "There are still a lot of mysterious disappearances," he said. "We are no nearer to knowing what is causing them."
Bee farmers in Scotland have reported losses on the American scale for the past three years. Andrew Scarlett, a Perthshire-based bee farmer and honey packer, lost 80% of his 1,200 hives this winter. But he attributed the massive decline to a virulent bacterial infection that quickly spread because of a lack of bee inspectors, coupled with sustained poor weather that prevented honeybees from building up sufficient pollen and nectar stores.
The government's National Bee Unit has always denied the existence of CCD in Britain, despite honeybee losses of 20% during the winter of 2008-09 and close to a third the previous year. It attributes the demise to the varroa mite – which is found in almost every UK hive – and rainy summers that stop bees foraging for food.
In a hard-hitting report last year, the National Audit Office suggested that amateur beekeepers who failed to spot diseases in bees were a threat to honeybees' survival and called for the National Bee Unit to carry out more inspections and train more beekeepers. Last summer MPs on the influential cross-party public accounts committee called on the government to fund more research into what it called the "alarming" decline of honeybees.
The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has contributed £2.5m towards a £10m fund for research on pollinators. The public accounts committee has called for a significant proportion of this funding to be "ring-fenced" for honeybees. Decisions on which research projects to back are expected this month.
WHY BEES MATTER
Flowering plants require insects for pollination. The most effective is the honeybee, which pollinates 90 commercial crops worldwide. As well as most fruits and vegetables – including apples, oranges, strawberries, onions and carrots – they pollinate nuts, sunflowers and oil-seed rape. Coffee, soya beans, clovers – like alfafa, which is used for cattle feed – and even cotton are all dependent on honeybee pollination to increase yields.
In the UK alone, honeybee pollination is valued at £200m. Mankind has been managing and transporting bees for centuries to pollinate food and produce honey, nature's natural sweetener and antiseptic. Their extinction would mean not only a colourless, meatless diet of cereals and rice, and cottonless clothes, but a landscape without orchards, allotments and meadows of wildflowers – and the collapse of the food chain that sustains wild birds and animals.
- Posted in
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
97 Comments so far
Show AllModern ag is monoculture. Big fields of one type of crop for miles and miles. No diversity. To use bees for these large monoculture fields, the bees have to be treated the same way. They are mono-cultured. "Bee farmers" is the wrong concept. "Bee keepers" is the historical name. Maybe we need a national ordinance to plant things like lavender in every yard. Sort of extend the idea of "victory garden" to something along the line of "survival of life garden".
The next time you count your blessings, include the number of bees in your yard, back and front.
Since the world's three largest seed vendors are chemical companies the monoculture problem keeps getting worse.
"US scientists have found 121 different pesticides in samples of bees, wax and pollen, lending credence to the notion that pesticides are a key problem."
Geeeze, so pesticides, petrochemical toxic poison, can harm living creatures. Who knew?
Bees are socialist. Some are even communist. Their die-off is a profound victory for the free market system. Let freedom ring!
Good one!
The bees that are doing all the work are females.
Sioux Rose
HUMBABA: Figures...
Back in 2004 when I went trekking in Nepal I saw the WOMEN out on all levels of the tiers of mountain land carrying enormous packs of hay on their backs. These ladies had GREAT legs to their credit! And where were all the men? In town drinking where possible, or making noise about politics otherwise. Labor pains... they don't stop at the culimination of the birth of any child... ask Gaia!
STOP SHOPPING. JUST STOP SHOPPING!!!
Absolutely first rate comment! And I agree! Where's our Military Industrial Complex when you need it? Couldn't they take some of the key bees to one of those black sites and torture them until they order their compatriots to get back to work like they are supposed to?
This is clearly part of a large picture which is spelling out a major disaster for humanity. The only way we will survive it is if intelligence and knowledge triumphs over greed and selfishness. Any bets?
I appreciate your comments here, MichaelC.
And if you don't mind, i would like to add that wisdom trumps everything. Without wisdom, (the balance of the heart and mind), understanding the bigger picture, all the intelligence and knowledge aren't going to be of much use.
There are many intelligent and knowledgeable individuals in our world. They can also be greedy and selfish. Because they don't understand that what you do to another or others, you do to yourself. Selfishness is simply unsustainable.
We are seeing it in spades lately. Now. If everyone says, "well, that is what we deserve"...and i am tempted to be one of those humans.....then. We are doomed.
"No problem can be solved by the consciouness that created it".
Translated. We need to get outside the box and 'see' the bigger picture and get damn creative really fast. This implies re envisioning the human condition itself.
rita
Sioux Rose
READY: I agree with many of your points, however, the corporate model has learned to control message and therefore in the mainstream media voices that understand the big picture and CARE are rendered invisible. Should these brave, intelligent souls navigated by an internal commitment to not only Truth, but LOVE for Creation and its creatures, manage to get any press time... to the degree their message is damning to the corporate powers that be, will be the degree to which the right wing hate machine will aim its attack machine their way.
As human beings we all have flaws. If a great thinker captures an audience and begins to pluck their collective chords of conscience, the attack machine will find out that this individual once had a mistress, or once invested in a bad stock, or perhaps has some obsessive compulsive behaviors. (Access to all our emails and credit card records helps this "mission" substantially.) They will use any number of stealth weapons to discredit the one who tries to wake up the public. Perhaps they have not yet found a way to burn witches, but they are as eager to punish "heretics" today as they were yesterday; and today's heretic is ANYONE with intelligence who sounds the alarm bells about where the corporate bankrupt ethos and its deep-pocketed supporters are leading us.
There is NO shortage of thoughtful, well-educated, inspired potential leaders... the problem is getting air time! Remember that even a group like the Dixie Chicks couldn't criticize our last prez. Neil Young (I believe) submitted an article to CD stating that had he come of age as a musician in THESE times, his anti-war songs would NOT have been aired.
Control of message which the Pentagon views as part of its war against terrorism is a fact of mainstream media in the U.S. The war on terror is just one of countless wars that this make-war twisted national leadership is invested in. The merger of corporations with our government means that with profit its chief aspiration, a war against nature is also VERY much underway. All around us are growing signs of catastrophic casualties... from the Gulf of Mexico to the dying bees, from the lost mountain sanctuaries of West Virginia, to the dead zones that span continents, from the loss of species, to the loss of beauty, basic sacred recovery zones for the soul. This model is, as the film The Matrix pointed out, no different from a virus... it will eat everything until the host (our earth) cannot support life. It is armed and deadly. THIS model is what must be disabled. And it will have to be a worldwide movement. Thankfully many are waking up and signs of coming together are evident in Europe and South America.
I completely agree with your comments (what else is new?), Sioux. And artfully expressed at that....
Consciousness shifting is occurring in many arenas. Indeed. It can't help but happen wherever there are people who love Truth and Creativity.
The cycle we are ending/beginning is so much larger than anyone can imagine. And of course, regarding the article itself. Talk about the out of balance masculine polarity. Killing nature. I think that ecocide is precisely an expression of this.
It is a pathological hatred based upon fear of nature itself. And if it can't be controlled to the point of remaking it in their own souless/lifeless image (gmo, etc.), then they will just destroy it all. These are the sickest of the sickest.
rita
Sioux Rose
Hi Rita: I've tried to represent these lessons and teachings in amusing parodies and comical movie scripts since l996. Having ventured out to California in March for a writer's convention, I met a producer who asked to see one of the scripts and it's being read NOW. It begins with the voice of a masculine God, depicted as a stream of golden light moving across space, saying "Let there be light." However, then a stream of silver light comes across space from the opposite direction, speaking as the voice of The Goddess... essentially, they court eachother and in the gyrations of their projections blending together, new universes are formed.
It was a blast getting my boyfriend's take on the opening. He's been so programmed by Christianity that when I started to talk about the OTHER voice, he really couldn't handle even HEARING that.
The script begins with this idea of Creation as an ongoing mating dance between Yin and Yang, and ends back there... of course in respecting the inviolate, "As above, so below" Divine equation, the rest of the script demonstrates how matters are evolving not only on earth, but also among the Olympians.
Traditional scripts call for focus on ONE hero (or heroine) and a linear plot line that involves said individual meeting obstacles; and in overcoming these, evidencing some sort of growth that audience members can identify with.
My plot line braids events on Olympus with their parallels on earth, and as a mockery to the idea that Jesus was the ONLY son of God ever sent, my story sends Iatisse, a male god of erotic love conceived by Aphrodite (with Zeus) but concealed over the centuries so that the masculine entity would NOT be raised to accord with any patriarchal (i.e. sexist) beliefs or behaviors. And at a time ripe for his arrival, Aphrodite sends her only begotten son (of Zeus) into the mortal world to minister to the "sexually challenged and romantically dispossessed"... who are many.
I envision Robin Williams playing the part of this "god" and since he comes equipped with "immortal parts," the sexual demands on his time are easily met.
I wrote this when I was about 40, and found myself alone without a good mate. A number of my female friends were in the same boat... so it was of course cathartic to write something funny to transmute the angst.
I would be SHOCKED if the producer takes this one as it is so feminist in its orientation... towards the end of the story Zeus encounters this unknown son and learns from him, begins to consider a model of governance on Olympus where power is shared. In the final scene he elects to cook for his wife, appreciating this idea of balance in his own marital tie.
And in the closing scene when we return to the Alpha and the Omega, and the Male God says "and now it's good," SHE answers, "Only took 100 million years." (meaning to get the balance right both in "heaven" and on earth.)
With "Clash of the Titans" back in vogue, and spiritual messages widely embraced from "Avatar," perhaps a path is paved for my work. I'm glad it's getting read. If he passes on this one, I hope he'll read "Fat Chance" as I think that one is more pertinent to our times, obesity and over-consumption representing abundant evidence of the heavy gravity of our times!
I have enjoyed reading your back-and-forth exchange, READY and SIOUX. Thank you.
Let there be Light, indeed! Humanity needs to be awakened . . . and fast!
This morning on NPR, a BP oil executive was quoted as saying - this is word for word, I swear I am not making this up - "we are pouring every resource into the cleanup effort" in the Gulf. The sick irony of that statement is killing me . . . not to mention killing the flora and fauna of the region. Thank you, Mr. BP Executive Man, but methinks you have poured quite enough resources into the area already.
Sioux Rose
SEVENTH SON: In my 2nd movie script I create a plausible (I think) story line wherein a drowned boy, rescued by dolphin becomes one. My story evolves from the premise that dolphin today are the remnant of the Atlantean high priests who, according to Edgar Cayce, worked with genetics. Had they, like our Dr. Hansen, seen the inevitability of climate change and turned themselves into an intelligent creature that could survive the coming great floods? In any case, I relate this as I only wish I owned that faculty and could lead a flotilla of boats into the Gulf, creating a communication bridge with the dolphin and thereby directing them away from all contact with the "black gold," the modern world's curse. Remember when a major Arab leader called oil a "soft loan" from Allah? I believe prayer does hold power, especially when millions pray together. So I can only imagine the symphony of prayers echoing from the Muslim world and its countless bludgeoned citizens... in their view, perhaps Allah has answered.
And thank you for enjoying the civil exchanges on this thread. It's a pleasure to NOT have a few names on board to do what they can to upend intelligent dialog, while turning the forum into a fraternity food fight.
SIOUX,
As you know, I have read your book, since you sent me a copy. I didn't realize you have also written movie scripts. I like both of the ones you have mentioned.
Speaking of dolphins, have you ever read "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series by Douglas Adams, or at least seen the first movie? Hilarious novels!! And they poke fun at so much of human hypocrisy and insanity. Anyway, in the first one, he says dolphins are more intelligent than humans and actually from another planet entirely. All the dolphins on Earth depart at the same time, right before it gets demolished to make a hyperspatial expressway. Here is his wonderful paragraph:
"On the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man - for precisely the same reasons. The last ever dolphin message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a double-backwards-somersault through a hoop whilst whistling the 'Star Spangled Banner', but in fact the message was this: So long and thanks for all the fish."
Sioux Rose
SEVENTH: Hi. Thanks for an interesting post. I will put that book on my list as I have NOT read it, but I did see Lily Tomlin perform her friend's play which took a similar thematic track, something along the lines of aliens working with a homeless bag lady who acted as a sort of translator for them. One line goes something like, "Trudy, the human being is a very strange item," to which she answers, "You should see the sex organs."
Gotta find reasons to smile... the monster in the Gulf is devastating on too many levels to ponder.
Sioux Rose
Science, like money, is fast becoming the new root of evil because it has been put in service to mammon, as opposed to a balanced spiritual perspective, one that respects the understanding that ALL life is connected. The profligate use of pesticides added to the MENACE presented by genetically modified "agriculture" and its chief procurer and benefactor, Monsanto, point to an ethos that is bankrupt when it comes to a respect for life. The same calamitous rush for profit without due regard for collective consequences is on view for all to see in the now bloody (with oil, the dark blood of the earth) Gulf of Mexico, illustrating a level of ecocide that truly represents a metaphorical holocaust against the natural world.
So it's not just the bees, or the sea creatures, or the forests, or the mountains leveled and denuded of all living beings... this footprint of death marches into what once were the last virgin forests and deepest underwater communities.
Hopefully citizens WORLDWIDE will manage to come together to stop the march of Mars (war and those who profit from global trafficking in armaments) and mammon (profit trumping EVERY other consideration when it comes to decisions reached by those self-appointed chairmen of the boards who wreak havoc everywhere). Truly, the corporate model which has married these two ungodly powers together is guilty of murder, theft, wonton destruction, and depraved indifference to life. They invent faux instruments of wealth to use as bludgeons as they buy politicians while wrecking ecosystems. They skim off obscene profits to further an ethos that leaves more and more to misery, slow death, and stressful uncertainties.
Life must be seen as a web. Perhaps the mythology of "spider woman" as cause that holds all the strands together makes for a useful allusion. Too many have been trained to focus on ONE ecosystem or note what ONE species is doing. Often such a focus leads to an incapacity to recognize the big picture and the full scope of what's being torn asunder.
Will our grandchildren have a world, a living world, to inherit?
A poem written for Chalmers Johnson.
NEIGHBORHOOD GIRL
By John Shreffler
She's new to the neighborhood, her family just moved in
From Greece or somewhere, she's a great, tall, gawky girl
With braces and earrings and uneven skin:
Hormones and acne, her change is coming in,
And today, she's playing hooky. January fog.
Orange lights on the school zone sign beat out their tattoo
And caution the Homeland's socked-in morning rush
With their strobe-light samba: Condition Amber,
As she sits invisible, swinging her legs to the beat,
Perched up high on aluminum over
The uncanny Day-Glo of the key-lime fluorescence
That says: School at the top of this composition.
I see her and she lets me. I'm an old family friend:
Sometimes I play poker with her Aunt Erato.
Her name is Nemesis and she's just moved in,
She's new to the neighborhood, she's checking it out.
*****************************************************
I put this in the other post about the oil spill but as I have indicated, Nemesis is gonna straighten things out and so it goes with the poor old honeybees.
This is so interesting. Yet, I'm not inclined to disparage all science - but the corporatization and commericialization of science, with much of everything else (which has been happening for a while now).
There are other kinds of science needed, just as scientific - if not more so, seen in the work of Barbara McClintock - who brought to science a perspective similar to that embodied in that of "Grandmother Spider" which you reference.
As such, you may like McClintock's work and perspective.
Not by coincidence, McClintock was dismissed as an eccentric crank much of her life because she wouldn't just go along with the boys and their limited and narrow vision behind the "Central Dogma" of their increasingly "commercialized" science.
Yet, because of the rich perspective she acquired through that refusal, the world opened itself up to her, spectifically through the maize she carefully listened to and loved so.
Similar to C.S. Peirce, an unknown predecessor who shared her perspective, she affirmed from her scientific observation(s) that plants - even genes - have "consciousness." This perspective allowed her to see more into the dynamics of what was happening within the genetic code - yielding observations that would much, much later result in a Nobel Prize in medicine.
This is speculation on my part, but I have a feeling that the current GMO scientists used and perverted her life's work, after her death, to create their current GMO seeds.
Yet, as she would have noted - that too will blowup in their faces.
See:
The Hidden Connections: Integrating the Biological, Cognitive, and Social Dimensions of Life into a Science of Sustainability by Fritjof Capra (2002)
and moreso the fascinating story of her life, her work, and her perspective
A Feeling for the Organism: The Life and Work of Barbara McClintock by Evelyn Fox Keller (1983)
Sioux Rose
RBC: Thank you for a most interesting post with sources I would like to explore.
You read me quite astutely. I have infinite respect for the sort of science that does not lay its imprimatur on only those things that reflect a mechanistic view of the universe and its sentient, living parts.
I feel a lot of rage at the moment witnessing so much being destroyed thanks to the muscle of technology. It's like a monster that should never been let out of Pandora's box unless and until its insatiable greed was somehow defused.
The mystic Rudolph Steiner said this, "Science reflects the consensus of mostly mediocre minds." Now someone like Einstein, who I see as equal parts poet, mystic AND scientist, represents the ilk I think quite highly of. And it makes sense that female researchers who find the courage to not march lock step with the boys inside their ivory chamber boys' clubs, would also march to their own more astute and intuitively guided drummer.
Thank you for the wisdom in your post.
And, thank you, for the wisdom in your post here (and elsewhere) which inspired me.
Steiner, from what I remember, wrote about the Bees too - and their industrialized "colonization" by humans (not to even mention the effect of that same industrialized colonization on the humans ourselves.)
That's probably why you mentioned him I imagine.
I have a score of honeybees and bumblebees and various other bugs. Reason - I dont cut my grass, in fact I have no grass. I have mostly native Wisconsin flowers in my front and back yard. If we get rid of the lawn, bees would have more places to hang out. The other thing is bees being kept for monoculture crops are basically factory farmed. The same issues of disease and crowding that we see with mega hog and chicken and cattle farms we can see in bees. We have to think small for farms and eliminate monoculture whether it is farm or lawn.
Agreed.
I am in the process of getting rid of my lawn too. I am using permaculture as a guide and along with perennials, am planting things that will attract and nourish bees and birds.
Along with small farms, we need gardeners who use organic and regenerative practices. As with plants, any organism that is stressed is more susceptible to disease. The stresses on bees, as with humans, come from several fronts. In order to lessen the stressors, we need to lessen our dependence on the causes of that stress. The more we rely on our own abilities to grow food, and on the local farms around us, the less stress we will contribute to the whole, to Gaia.
"in fact I have no grass."
Cool. I'm working on it myself. Mowing the grass is such a waste of time, effort, and energy. I planted over 100 trees on less than an acre lot last fall. My vegetable garden is almost 70' X 25' now. 75' X 75' is what I plan but it may grow larger. I'm looking forward to having nothing but trees, herbs, vegetables, berries, and flowers.
I mix flowers in with the vegetables. This growing season may be great. It's pleasing that cilantro, larkspur, marigolds, watermelons, tomatoes, borage, caledula, and amaranth are now self seeding. Broccoli and cabbage may start doing that too since I let some of last fall's crop go to seed this spring so I could collect the seed. Some inevitably will end up in the garden with no help from me so those may end up self seeding too. It would be nice to not have to mess with seedlings or transplanting but I'll never be able to eliminate those two chores because crops will always need rotating.
Last year I didn't see many honeybees. The year before they were all over the corn, squash, and melons. I always have more carpenter bees than I want and I have plenty of parasitic wasps and flies. It sounds like I'm starting to get a nice population of chorus frogs too plus there have been little holes all over one end of the yard that I suspect are the from the frogs. I started seeing praying mantises last year. I hope I can develop a nice colony of them too.
The carpenter bees are a pain in the ass sometimes plus they seem like they want to taunt me at times. Maybe they just love me and want to be close to the dude that grows them so many flowers? And ants, I wish I could get their colonies (actually only one so far this year) out of the garden.
The butterflies, birds, and squirrels seem to love the place as much as wasps, bees, and flies do. Each year the variety of life seems to increase. Last year the mantises and hummingbirds were newcomers. This is also the first spring that the sound of frogs was so prolific. I need to build a bathouse to see if I can attract them too.
I do despise the rabbits and mosquitoes though. The rabbits devastated my lettuce crop last year and then started sampling many other plants like watermelon plants and goji berries resulting in their death. I wish the hawks and owls would do a better job on them. The neighbors like leaving water standing that breeds mosquitoes terribly. And the squirrels kill some potted plants every year from digging but other than a few nuisances the animals, birds, frogs, and insects are really a beautiful sight and sound to behold.
My apologies for the long comment but it's good to talk about something beautiful for a change in a world growing so ugly.
A small fenced area for lettuce, etc. is just the ticket.
Note to Stephen Hawkings....
I don't think that extraterrestrials are the greatest threat to human survival. I think you doth 'project' too much.
Nice.
GMOs?? My wife just returned from germany where she had many conversations on Gene manipulated crops and honeybees. Apparently in Bayern [ Munich area ] GMOs are forbidden and 'coincidently ' they have no mysterious loss of honeybees. Hmm, maybe not a coincidence.
But then we have massive losses in the US northeast which doesn't grow GMO's either. Hmmm?
That's a lie. I started seeing GM crops in Massachusetts ten years ago, and you're also smart enough to know there are no regulations on the use of these poisons.
There have been GMO seeds and crops in the northeast for years.
http://www.nofanh.org/node/110
Google is as close to Texas as it is to Maine. Try it.
Like many here I am concerned about the way our world is going. The Bees are just a symptom, and until we start correcting the symptoms, the true illness will not be truly addressed in this case. There is no doubt that pesticides, monoculture, and the natural vacuum this causes where virus can mutate and multiply all play a part. We need to change the way we think in this society and the way we act. Unfortunately, I do not think that many of the younger baby boomers or older GenXers are willing to do that, so I have a proposal: concentrate on the next generation of children by educating them differently than we do now or how we are headed into the future.
I am planning on spending the next year raising money to start a new kind of school. At my website, Let Freedom Ring National Community Foundation, I have posted a new kind of curriculum for a new kind of school. It is designed to teach children to think and to reconnect with nature and their communities. It will be a place where people can come together with students and learn to not only feed themselves, but develop skills that do not require fossil fuels in order to create community resilience and freedom. It will teach children to think differently about their world and the living things that must coexist in that world for us all to be healthy. It is a place where if you have a skill or an understanding about something you can come and share it with the children and the people of the community. In short, it is a school for mankind and its future, a different future where nature and man live in harmony. Please go to the website, and view the mission video "Common Sense Initiative School Mission Video" under Devon Noll on YouTube.
I may not be able to save the bees, but I think if we try, we can make a start at saving enough that we can re-create the species through a return to better farming practices. We can only do this if people come together to do so, and we must start to educate the next leaders of our society to understand that companies like ADM, Monsanto, Cargill, and Conagra create more in human and natural misery than they produce in food. We MUST move towards a better future, we no longer have the luxury of time. We MUST watch the bees because they are showing us our future, and we MUST work to save them if we are to save ourselves. Please join with me to build the first of the schools I propose. I truly believe that educating our young people differently is now our only hope.
Note: I will bet that the bee farms are all near commercial/industrial farm operations, and the ones in Britain that did not show any losses were near organic or permaculture operations. Wanna Bet?
Website URL: http://www.letfreedomring.community.officelive.com
I wonder why not a single mention of GM type crops was made in this article about one of the reasons these collapses might be happening.
It is a VERY common opeinion held by researchers who claim that the pollen from the flowers undigestible by the bee.
It hardly conclusive but it should have been listed as one of the suspects. We already know such crops kill butterflies.
I really don't like turning something like this around on everyone outside the corporate/political sphere, meaning us the people, but by allowing a fraternity club like corporations to infest itself into the whole world in such a manner as to be able to dump toxic materials into the air, land and water unfettered, on the pretense of an unbearable cost of doing business, then everyone is partly responsible for everything like frogs, honeybees or just much of the smaller parts of this organism called Gaia to disappear.
Then it should presuppose also that it will be us, the people, who are outside the sphere of corporate/political machinations to do what can be done to tear this fraternity club apart. It would be an immensely difficult task as all the systems and technology have been subverted to their cause, MSM comes to mind and congress, will fight tooth and nail to preserve their 'lofty' status. But it is the problem and people will only overcome that problem when they can group together in some concerted effort to do so. Or we can all sit back and laugh and wait for NEMESIS to 'fix things'. While that would be a cost of getting her done, she will not show much in the way of favoritism.
I was once told by someone who claimed to be an expert on bees that many commercial beekeepers use hybrid bees (female Africanized bees as I recall) because they're more productive. He claimed that these bees will abandon a hive more readily than the "standard" honeybees, but the beekeepers don't admit to using hybrids bees because it violates regulations. I've never seen this possible explanation for colony collapse disorder discussed in news articles on the topic. I find it especially interesting in light of the article's statement that "the disappearance of so many colonies has also been dubbed 'Mary Celeste syndrome' due to the absence of dead bees in many of the empty hives."
Are there any commercial beekeepers out there who can comment on this suggestion one way or the other?
We KNOW the varroa mite is killing bees. It seems logical that the factory-farmed bees would be more susceptible to problems from this type of crowding and moving. While bees have a hundred or more pesticides in their bodies, so do we and most creatures. I spray insecticide on my 4 apple trees, but NEVER when they're blooming. I sometimes spray insecticide on my soybeans in August for aphids. I believe there is less danger in killing bees at that time, but I, and I hope others, need to do more research.
MONSANTO. You could read about them all day long and still not learn all of the horrors.
I keep reading dying, then I read disappearing. We know the colonies just disappear but do we know the bees are dying? Maybe I missed it but I've read a bit on this and always see similar descriptions.
As someone else suggested, the way we've come to use honey bees is not unlike introducing non-native species to some areas - growing colonies and using the same species everywhere. Bees that are native to their own habitats can also do this job.
Don't forget. MONSANTO. Spelled backwards it's "scumsuckingpig", and I know that's not fair to the actual swine.
Check out the great book "Fruitless Fall." It's highly educational and damning of the use of bees and the environment. It ends on a genuinely bright note: the bees do fine when not wedded to commerce, industry, or their offshoots. (Note to h. sapiens!)
Kleptoprica the Beautiful empirePie May 2, 2010
O bountiful for dusted skies
For orange agent sprays on grain
For blown mountain travesties
Above the arid plain!
Kleptoprica! Kleptoprica!
God cries in vain for thee
While goods crown brotherhood with thorns
From sea to oily sea!
O bountiful for a world policeman’s beat
Whose waring chickens breethe duress
To target Tomahawk freedom from the flesh
Across our new world wilderness!
Kleptoprica! Kleptoprica!
The dogs of war won’t mend your flaws
You’ve lost all self - control,
Greed defines your mold
And fungus is not divine.
Kleptoprica! Kleptoprica!
Lawless you have no soul
Your gain is wanton plunder
God cries in vain for thee
If you don`t like pesticides, then use GMO crops and there is no need for pesticides. Chances are, one or the other will be used out of necessity. Maybe the problem is all of the vehicles running around with one person in them polluting the atmosphere. Back in the horse and buggy days, we had plenty of bees. Also, plenty of weeds and bugs that raised havoc with the crops. The problems are perhaps a little more complicated than just screaming at Monsanto, and they are only one of many companies that may be responsible for some of our ecological changes.
Strange. My place in the Willamette Valley (Oregon) is thick with bees. My neighbor keeps several hives, there's a wild hive in a hollow tree down by the river, we see swarms every year, and a friend is a commercial beekeeper who has had no trouble.
There's a trick, of course: I and my neighbor are organic gardeners, there is no commercial farming in the immediate area, hence minimal spraying, the area along the river is left very wild, and my friend is a very conservative apiarist - sometimes "conservative" is a good thing.
The reports keep saying that the disappearances are wildly variable, from place to place and beekeeper to beekeeper. That means there is little danger of "extinction;" it also means that cultural practices are crucial.
The wild hive thriving on my land is a tipoff: no one is treating it for mites or "inspecting" it - I, for one, don't dare get close enough. So it's the conditions, and probably good genetics. Apparently bees do a lot better when left alone, or properly cared for rather than worked to death, and given some distance from the pesticides.
Sort of like people.
Sioux Rose
CHARLES: Thanks for the optimistic post!
Two anecdotes to share, both true.
1. I was sitting with a "green" friend and he was rolling a joint from a little box. He took pains to separate the seeds before doing the art of the roll. Anyway, just then who should happen by but a honeybee who dove down, grabbed a seed and was off on his now merrier way. We both cracked up as we were reading about the missing bees and wondered if giving them access to a higher buzz might not help matters of the agricultural sort? After all, a happy laborer is a more productive laborer.
2. Same gentleman took me offshore. Just outside Cedar Key is an island chain some of which is designated as a wild bird sanctuary. We took a boat into a very narrow passage that's only operational during really high tides and there among some sort of mangrove trees was an enormous colony of bees. At the time Bush was still Prez and it made me think the bees, like so many conscious human citizens, were figuring out ways to live outside of the Homeland lock-down security state...
Corporations now enslave the forces of nature. They take diverse green communities and convert them to equivalent rows of marching trees. They do the same on a microscopic level in efforts to bind genes together that the Great Mother never intended to place together. The bees are probably fed up with being overworked and turned into slaves and those that will survive are opting for organic gardens, offshore mangroves, and who knows, hemp plantations here and afar?
Thank you charlesthegreen and other organic gardeners for keeping a sanctuary for the bees. Thank you for keeping a bower full of health and a place in which nature can develop as the quiet miracle it is. Your refuge can be a source for re-populating the country with bees until such time as we get over our obsession to drug and whip nature into producing more and more until it topples over, unbalanced, depleted and polluted.
Your description of your garden reminds me of this poem:
"A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing."
If only there were ways to do the same with the ocean.
Joe
let's see if we can get a moratorium on all pesticides for a couple years, see what happens. thing is, we already know about lots of damage pesticides do, so it's a plausible idea.
yours is just one story, charles, but hey- it's enough for me.
organic farms- lotsa bees. pesticide farms- disaster.
i'd like to see this done right now, caue monsnto is already flying millions of gallons of roundup around the world, ready for the upcoming growing season.
I heard two years ago that of 1000 organic beekeepers on one website, none were reporting colony collapse disorder.
I heard a recommendation for smaller honeycomb cells. Bigger cell diameters mean bigger bees and more profitable honey from the hive, but if the bees all die then the profit is fictional. Bigger cell diameters promote Verroa Mites. One natural remedy for Verroa Mites is smaller cells. That's one reason why a natural beehive in a hollow tree has fewer problems.
An update: just after I wrote the above, my neighbor came by to tell us he was trying to collect a swarm on our property. There were two, today, within a 100 yards of each other.
I'm finding it hard to imagine bees being in all that much trouble - although I remember they were scarce for a while when the Varroa Mites came in.
I recently had my bees completely disappear......right after I fed them for the 2nd time. Is it possible sugar beets that are GMO could be at fault?
I think so, but can't be 100% sure. Let me just state this: GMO anything from Monsanto is simply a master key that gives Monsanto entry into EVERY cell in the entire kingdom. If you eat GMO foods then you have GMO in your body's cells. No one knows what it does yet, but it can't be good.