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Bit scary this

7K views 77 replies 23 participants last post by  CubaMark 
#1 ·
"This is certainly the worst die-off that I’ve seen in my experience working with honey bees. It may be the worst die-off that has ever occurred with honey bees since they’ve been introduced into the United States since the 1620s."
- Maryann Frazier, Honey Bee Specialist, Penn State


February 23, 2007 Pennsylvania - Most people don’t realize that honey bees pollinate about one-third of our food supply around the world]/b]


The past year in America, at least 22 states have reported honey bee disappearances. Government and science authorities are calling it "Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD)." Beekeepers have reported losses ranging from 60% to 100% of their bee colonies. As winter changes to spring and beekeepers in the colder Northeast can open their hives again, it's expected there will be many more empty hives.

Strangely, honey bees have also been disappearing in huge numbers in Spain and Poland. Adding to the European mystery is that Spain has very large commercial beekeeper operations with at least 3 million colonies of honey bees, similar to the United States. But Poland’s 400,000 hives are largely raised on individual farms where smaller bee colonies are separated from each other. If the answer were disease, you would not expect Poland’s separated hives to be plagued by large numbers of honey bee disappearances as in Spain and the United States.
Complete article

http://www.earthfiles.com/news/news.cfm?ID=1214&category=Environment
 
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#6 ·
What classic ignorance. :rolleyes:

Component III: Bees and Pollination

PART I: INTRODUCTION

Managed bees are vital to the production of more than 90 crops, including almond, alfalfa and sunflower seed, apple, cherry, melon, and berries. Honey bees (Apis) alone pollinate crops that have an added value of over $14 billion. Only a few species of bees can be used for commercial pollination, and their health and improved management are critical to agricultural production
You remind me of the clowns that didn't think there was any risk to vineyards.

Remember what happened to Madeira during the powdery mildew disease? After phylloxera, Madeira was down to about 10% of its vineyards and its wine industry remains smaller than it once was.
http://vinofictions.com/category/californiaeurope/
It took a massive worldwide effort to reconstruct European vineyards. It's a fascinating and cautionary tale.

Now apply that to 90 food crops instead of one luxury crop and tell me again not to worry.
Bees ARE the canary in the food chain coal mine...and they ARE dying off in quantities that WILL impact food prices now.

Oh sure, bees have been around for millions of years and will be.......useful, handleable species - that's another story entirely.

Agriculture is highly dependent on bees that can be trucked around like this and handled with little danger.


Already the Africanizatio of NA honey bees has caused issues. Massive loss of key pollinators would have a very large impact on food crops.

It is generally known that bees are needed to pollinate our crops but it is not well known that the economic value of bee pollination is several times more the value of the world-wide production of honey. About 80 % of our food crops are pollinated by animal pollinators. These are mainly bees. It is estimated that one third of what we eat and drink is produced through service supplied by pollinators
Dr. Marinus J. Sommeijer, President (Curriculum vitae)
APIMONDIA Standing Commission for Pollination and Bee Flora
Bee Research Department, Utrecht University
http://www.bio.uu.nl/sommeijer/apimondia/index.html

Qtips anyone???.......... :(


Sure there ARE other pollinator species but we've built the agro-industry on transportable bees that can be handled.
....and there's 50% more humans on the way to feed.
The threat to a keystone species in agricultural is no light topic.

This is not limited to North America but also in Europe.
 
#9 ·
The major problem is that no one knows for sure and with no bees to examine it's very strange.

The puzzling part is the section about the complete disappearance of the swarm.
Also that abandoned hives were not being invaded normally by post occupancy organisms. Clearly there is something inside the hive environment that is keeping both bees and the associated organisms away.

Then when the hives are opened to the air the organisms that consume honey and wax etc come back into play.
Quite an odd phenomena and of course the northern states are not yet reporting in.

There are and have been identified issues with mites and other destructive agents and beekeepers have been in a long term battle ( which they appear to be losing ) against them. Always the issue with near mono culture species ( think bananas a 100 years ago ).

I'm quite sure alternative pollinators are being bred and identified and this might just be a wake up call rather than a full blown crisis.

Frogs have and are dying very quickly and that's a shame to lose some of the gorgeous specimens but commercial bees are a different issue for humans.

There would be likely less impact on human food production if all the cows died off than if the bees did :(

No robot in the near term can ever do what a honeybee does in pollinating crops.

Get out the QTips.
 
#10 ·
I find the notion that we are fundamentally weakening much of our biological inputs through protective behaviour (like raising a kid in your safe basement and releasing them into the world at 18) fascinating. Does anyone have research on this written for someone who isn't an expert in biology?
 
#11 ·
I think all you have to do is search on bio-diversity to get a lifetime of info on it.
Even take the area of maize and have a look.
There are many wonderful projects afoot to maintain diversity in food crops.
I purposefully buy Ancient Grain cereals to aid in that.
Pandas, tigers, whooping cranes - any threatened species also represents a challenge to biologists to keep a varied enough gene pool intact to regenerate numbers without risking a "single threat" collapse.

Monoculture is a huge risk tho it has enormous short term rewards.

The banana story is fascinating and is the vineyard story.

If you want a wonderful read about the vagaries of genes try The Ancestor's Tale by Dawkins.

A superb overview - wonderful writer, very funny in places and I learn on every page despite a lifetime of science reading.
Most important he's readable.
•••

This is just in today

Mysterious bee disappearances endanger crops

By Alexei Barrionuevo
Published: February 26, 2007


VISALIA, California: David Bradshaw has endured countless stings during his life as a beekeeper, but he got the shock of his career when he opened his boxes last month and found half of his 120 million bees missing.

In 24 U.S. states, beekeepers have gone through similar shocks: their bees have been disappearing inexplicably at an alarming rate, threatening the production of numerous crops, including California almonds, one of the most profitable crops.

"I have never seen anything like it," Bradshaw, 50, said last week from an almond orchard that was beginning to bloom. "Box after box after box are just empty. There's nobody home."

The sudden, mysterious losses are highlighting the critical link that honeybees play in the long chain that gets fruit and vegetables to supermarkets and dinner tables. As researchers scramble to find answers, growers are becoming openly nervous about the capability of the commercial bee industry to meet the growing demand for insects to pollinate dozens of crops, from almonds to avocados to kiwis.

A study by Cornell University has estimated that honeybees pollinate $14 billion worth of seeds and crops annually, mostly fruits, vegetables and nuts.

"Every third bite we consume in our diet is dependent on a honey bee to pollinate that food," said Zac Browning, vice president of the American Beekeeping Federation.

Now, in a mystery worthy of Agatha Christie, bees are flying off in search of pollen and nectar but never returning to their colonies. And nobody knows why.

Researchers have dubbed the syndrome the "colony collapse disorder." They say the bees presumably are dying in the fields, perhaps becoming exhausted or disoriented and eventually dying from exposure to the cold.

Or, it could just be that the bees are stressed out.

Last week about 20 worried beekeepers convened in Florida to brainstorm with researchers about how to cope with the loss of bees. Investigators are collecting samples and exploring a range of theories for the colony collapses, including viruses, a fungus and poor bee nutrition.

They are also studying a group of pesticides that were banned in some European countries to see if they are somehow affecting the innate ability of bees to find their way back home.

The bee losses are ranging from 30 percent to 60 percent on the U.S. West Coast, with some beekeepers on the East Coast and in Texas reporting losses of more than 70 percent; beekeepers normally consider a loss of up to 20 percent to be normal.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/26/business/bees.php

Now 24 states. No bodies..... no post mortem.....just gone.... spooky.
 
#13 ·
This is likely as good an overview as I've seen - nicely laid out.
It goes from the general overview with tabs to go into more detail.

http://www.greenfacts.org/biodiversity/index.htm

Ancestor's Tale is more wide ranging.

THIS is the problem



and 50% more people to come :(
 
#16 ·
The hives are 100% empty - no dead bees and no post desertion critters that would normally feed on hives with no bees but with honey in them.

It's the totally empty aspect that is so spooky.
When they say losses are such and such a percentage what they mean is not bees per hive but hives that survive.

The reactions of the long time beekeepers to this says much.
 
#19 ·
Ass. :rolleyes: Getting foolish and bitter in your dotage??
You can't defend your nonsense and just leave a trail of fecal garbage behind you.

Your canola growing neighbours would look askance at your attitude as well.

Will Alberta's bees be next to vanish mysteriously?
U.S. beekeepers puzzled by empty hives; Alberta industry alarmed that plea for extra provincial funding rejected
David Finlayson, The Edmonton Journal; with files from the New York Times
Published: Wednesday, March 07, 2007
EDMONTON - Alberta's beekeepers are keeping a worried eye on The Mystery of the Disappearing Bees.
Across 24 U.S. states, hundreds of millions of honeybees have inexplicably gone missing from their hives, threatening their owners' livelihoods and the production of numerous crops.
And in Alberta, Canada's largest bee colony, producers know that any disaster south of the border eventually hits here, Alberta Beekeepers' Association central director Kevin Nixon says.

"We're very concerned about it. History shows that any pest or disease that affects bees in the U.S. is usually seen her four or five years later. It could be absolutely devastating for us."
http://www.canada.com/edmontonjourn....html?id=3a987c0c-09f3-42f9-8c22-e4d34fccbd70
 
#23 ·
Why are Niagara's bees dying?

HAMILTON SPECTATOR FILE

It takes one colony of honey bees (around 30,000 bees) to pollinate an acre of fruit trees. Pollination success increases if there are more honey bees present at the time of peak flowering.

The value of bees pollinating fruit, vegetables and legumes is 10 times the value of honey produced (more than $1 billion in Canada).

A colony of honey bees in early spring has 10,000 to 15,000 bees.

A colony of honey bees in summer may have 60,000 or more worker bees (undeveloped females) who do all the work. There will also be several hundred drones (male bees) and just one queen, who may lay 2,000 eggs per day during her busy season.

The average life of a honey bee during the working season is about six weeks. A worker bee gathers in her entire life less than one gram of honey.

A single colony can produce 45 kg of extra honey and this is what is harvested by the beekeeper. Some beekeepers in Alberta and Saskatchewan regularly harvest more than 136 kilos of honey per colony.

Bees fly the equivalent of more than twice around the world to gather a kilo of honey.

A honey bee flies up to 24 km/h and its wings beat 200 times per second.

Source: Canadian Honey Council

Experts called in to probe mysterious, costly threat to region's fruit industry

Apr 17, 2007 04:30 AM

The sudden unexplained loss of millions of bees in the Niagara region – up to 90 per cent in some commercial colonies – has prompted Ontario beekeepers to ask experts at the University of Guelph to investigate.

The move comes amid the mysterious disappearance of millions of bees in the U.S., in a phenomenon so unusual that it has spawned a new phrase – "Colony Collapse Disorder."

In Canada, the problem seems to be confined so far to the Niagara region but is still early days for beekeepers in the West, who won't know the extent of the damage until they unwrap their hives later this month.

"About 80 or 90 per cent of the beekeepers in the Niagara region have had substantial losses," George Dubanow, president of the Niagara Beekeepers Association, said in an interview yesterday.

"This number is unparalleled. A typical winter loss is between 10 and 20 per cent."

That has some Niagara region fruit growers worried in the weeks leading up to the May pollination period because bees don't just make honey. They also play a vital role in pollinating everything from cherries to pear trees in Ontario, hybrid canola in Western Canada and blueberries in New Brunswick.

As much as a third of the food we eat requires bee pollination, according to experts. Bee pollination is valued at $1 billion in Canada.
TheStar.com - Business - Why are Niagara's bees dying?
 
#24 ·
This posted on Magic:

"A German study conducted by Professor Jochen Kuhn of Landau University and reported in Britain's Telegraph newspaper this week offered another, less conventional, culprit: radiation from cellphones and cellphone towers.
To conduct the study, Kuhn placed cellphone handsets near hives and found the bees avoided their homes when the phones were radiating frequencies in a range from 900 to 1800 megahertz, the standard range for most cell phones."
 
#25 ·
Bees Vanish, and Scientists Race for Reasons

BELTSVILLE, Md., April 23 — What is happening to the bees?

Kalim A. Bhatti for The New York Times
SUSPECTS The volume of theories to explain the collapse of honeybee populations “is totally mind-boggling,” said Diana Cox-Foster, an entomologist at Penn State.
More than a quarter of the country’s 2.4 million bee colonies have been lost — tens of billions of bees, according to an estimate from the Apiary Inspectors of America, a national group that tracks beekeeping. So far, no one can say what is causing the bees to become disoriented and fail to return to their hives
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/24/science/24bees.html?em&ex=1177560000&en=f5ba22e773db984a&ei=5087

Good read.....given that 30% of food crops are bee dependent.....losing a 1/4 of the pollinators already is just mind bending
 
#26 ·
It's the cell phones, stupid:

"A German study conducted by Professor Jochen Kuhn of Landau University and reported in Britain's Telegraph newspaper this week offered another, less conventional, culprit: radiation from cellphones and cellphone towers.
To conduct the study, Kuhn placed cellphone handsets near hives and found the bees avoided their homes when the phones were radiating frequencies in a range from 900 to 1800 megahertz, the standard range for most cell phones.
Whatever the cause, the disappearing honeybee populations pose a threat beyond honey production."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070417.CELLPHONE17/TPStory/National
 
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