What's happening to the bees?

[nosmokes]

no definitive answers here either, but it is about the best article on th subject i've read. dare i say - fairly balanced. i hafta addmit i'm a bit baffled by the house committee on agriculture holding a hearing on the matter. just WTH are they supposed to accomplish?
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original-CSMonitor

What's happening to the bees?

Suddenly, the bees farmers and growers rely on are vanishing. Researchers are scrambling to find out why.
By Moises Velasquez-Manoff | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

Page 1 of 3

Beekeeper James Doan first began finding empty hives last fall. Entire bee colonies seemed to have up and vanished, leaving their honey behind. Noting the unusually wet fall in Hamlin, N.Y., he blamed the weather. Unable to forage in the rain, the bees probably starved, he reasoned.

But when deserted hives began appearing daily, "we knew it was something different," he says. Now, at the beginning of the 2007 pollination season, more than half of his 4,300 hives are gone. "I'm just about ready to give up," says Mr. Doan from his honeybee wintering site in Ft. Meade, Fla. "I'm not sure I can survive."

The cause of the die-offs has yet to be determined. Its effect on the food supply may be significant. Longer-term, it may also force a rethinking of some agricultural practices including our heavy reliance on human-managed bees for pollination.

Scientists call it "colony collapse disorder" (CCD). First reported in Florida last fall, the problem has since spread to 24 states. Commercial beekeepers are reporting losses of between 50 and 90 percent, an unprecedented amount even for an industry accustomed to die-offs.

Many worry that what's shaping up to be a honeybee catastrophe will disrupt the food supply. While staple crops like wheat and corn are pollinated by wind, some 90 cultivated flowering crops – from almonds and apples to cranberries and watermelons – rely heavily on honeybees trucked in for pollinization. Honeybees pollinate every third bite of food ingested by Americans, says a Cornell study. Bees help generate some $14 billion in produce.

Research is only beginning and hard data is still lacking, but beekeepers suspect everything from a new virus or parasite to pesticides and genetically modified crops. Scientists have hastily established a CCD working group at Pennsylvania State University. Last week, the US House of Representatives' Committee on Agriculture held hearings on the missing bees.
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complete article here

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

1. Two words.

Big. Foot.

[AnneD]

3. Not so....

We have a few of these trees that bees love (the ones with the small white flowers and small red berries). Bees swarm to those flowers. I have at max counted 6 count em 6 bees on a tree that would have up wards of 20-30. I love bees and great grandpa kept his own hives and even I have noticed a drop over the last 2 years. This is serious stuff, this is the food on your table serious.

[Cetacea]

27. Genius.

nt

[ingac70]

2. I read somewhere it was a pesticide...

that caused the bees to get lost and not ever make it to their hive. A pesticide that was banned in France because of the danger posed to bees. And we still use it.

http://www.mailtribune.com/archive/2007/0320/local/stories/bees-jd.htm

<John Jacobs of Rogue River, director of the Southern Oregon Beekeepers Association, also has had heavy losses. He believes it may go back to the pesticide Gaucho, which was banned in France after a bee die-off they called "mad bee disease."

Said Jacobs, "CCD is absolutely a problem. In a nutshell, bees have struggled with mites for years, the hives are already stressed, they've had cold winters — and people suspect pesticide residues are not good for bees. It's been studied and they say it's non-lethal, but there are only so many environmental impacts you can pile on bees.">

[xultar]

4. That was my first thought. Pesticides...but watch the killer bees will survive

and the honey bees will die off.

[ingac70]

9. Killer bees are honey bees, actually...

Breed on purpose for greater honey production!

http://www.desertusa.com/mag98/sep/stories/kbees.html

[sarge43]

11. Yes, but much more aggressive than strains like the Italian. n/t

[nosmokes]

14. the irony is that the africanised honeybeees that were brought over are

extremely poor honey producers compared to the european variety. but that's what happens when some asshole gets a bright idea that he thinks is gonna make lots of money. ask the folks in lousiana and oregon how they feel about nutria, giant rats from south america that were originally brought to the bayous to bred for the fur. they escaped and bred like rodents and crowd out native species. then some idiot had the same idea and imported them from lousiana to oregon. gonna make million$ selling rat fur. uh huh. of course no one remembers his name now or his offspring would be tortured. prolly by being eaten alive by nutria.;)

[sarge43]

16. "....but there are only so many environmental impacts you can pile on bees"

So say we all. As noted in my post below, there's been warnings for years that there was a disaster waiting to happen and - surprise - it has.

[newscott]

5. I remember about 10 years ago....

I had a consversation with a cranberry grower who was a good friend of my landlord's. He told me that the bees he kept on his property were disappearing in rapid numbers one summer. Well, he went out and watched the hives for a little while and noticed that everytime a honeybee came out of the hive a larger bee would swoop in and fly away with it. Turns out he had wasps that preyed on honeybees. Wiped out his hives. Could this be part of the problem for the beekeepers?

[CabalPowered]

6. I spoke with my friend who's a professional bee-keeper

He winters his hives in California and then trucks to Idaho for the summer. He says his hives are doing well. :shrug:

[sarge43]

13. He's very fortunate.

One commercial beekeeper in Michigan lost 12,000 colonies out of 13,000. The business my husband used to buy his bees from lost all but 1% of its colonies.

[TheWraith]

7. I read some scientists saying that it's a parasitic mite they've found.

The mite gets into the bees' digestive system, undermining their health and immune response, and eventually the bees can no longer make it back to the hives.

[sarge43]

22. Tracheal mites will cause damage to the flight muscles. However,

their infestation is fairly easy to id. The current problem is bees are just disappearing; they aren't dead at the bottom of hive. They're gone and bees just don't up and leave, especially in winter and early spring. (Swarming is entirely different and gives lots of advanced notice.) This is making it doubly difficult to id the cause(s). No bees to biop.

[sarge43]

8. "just WTH are they suppose to accomplish?"

Well, for starters, recommend adequate funding for research. Labs like the one at Cornell have been short changed since Day One. This isn't a problem that has gone unnoticed; the warnings have been out there for years. But you know - bees, bugs that sting - who needs 'em.

[ronnykmarshall]

10. Sounds to me

like it's Hillary's fault.

She probably has something to do with it. The wasp lobby probably got to her. Wasps hate bees ya know.

Oh that Hillary! Is there no END to her evil!

:sarcasm:

[NormanYorkstein]

12. scary stuff! Plus the frog are disappearing

amphibians have be dieing off and some kind of pollution is interfering with their development, turning amphibians into hermaphrodites unable to reproduce. Frogs are like the canary in the coal mine since they can absorb chemicals through their skin so easily.

And now bees! At some point we won't be able to "fix" the problem no matter what we do.

[OrangeCountyDemocrat]

15. Colbert Had A Segment On This A Few Weeks Back nt

[dysfunctional press]

17. i dunno...why don't you ask monsanto...?

i'm guessing that someone over there might know or at least suspect something about the answer to your question.

[nosmokes]

18. yeah, i'd be willing to bet that when the dust settles their

hand will be somewhere in the middle of all this. either in one or more of their pesticdes or in their GMOs or a confluence of the two. problem is i doubt if i'd be able to find anyone to take the wager...

[fed-up]

20. here is a possible tie to Monsanto from the article

"Others point to genetically modified crops – specifically, those with a gene for a bacterial toxin called Bt. Initial studies indicated that it didn't affect bees. But some beekeepers argue the trials didn't last long enough to determine the long-term effects. (Doan says the same about the nicotinelike pesticides.) A German study supports this. Scientists at the University of Jena found that while Bt food had no direct effect on bees, when fed to bee populations infected with parasites, they quickly became diseased. Alone, Bt may do nothing. But in the presence of a parasite, it may facilitate infection.

"Maybe these toxins weaken the immune system," says John McDonald, a retired biologist and hobby apiculturalist in Spring Mills, Pa., who wrote an editorial on the topic for the San Francisco Chronicle

But the shrinking of our so-called "pollination portfolio" is of more concern to many entomologists than a die-off in commercial beehives. A 2006 National Academy of Sciences report declared that there was "direct evidence for decline of some pollinator species in North America" – species responsible for pollinating three-quarters of flowering plants. Europeans have documented a parallel decline in their natural pollinators for years."





My boyfriend is an organic farmer of fresh greens and other veggies (total of 32 different crops-no monoculture here) and a local bee farmer has placed some hives at the edge of his farm. So far they are doing fine.

[Skidmore]

19. A couple of local beekeepers have lost their hives here, and

I know another one that moved his bees into his basement this winter. His wife is not a happy camper right now.

[fed-up]

21. I spoke to a bee farmer from Wash state last week-he overwinters in the desert

and when bees aren't busy pollinating he keeps them in a valley full of organic farmers. So far his bees are okay...

[Canuckistanian]

23. DUer hatrack keeps bees

He said he's going to try keeping a few hives this year.

We should ask him occasionally how they're doing.

[sarge43]

24. My husband keeps bees

We lost all four of our hives this winter. Rotten weather, not CCD (thank goodness). He has three replacement packages on the way and if all goes well, we'll be back in business. Would be happy to you posted on the situation.

[Canuckistanian]

25. Sure, I'd be interested to know

Also, I live in the country and a few of my neighbors keep bees as well.

The only reason why I wouldn't try it myself is that I'm terrified of bees and wasps (major phobia).

[sarge43]

26. Well, just send me an email whenever you want an update.

That's a shame about the phobia because it is a fascinating hobby.

I'm not phobic about them, but I keep out their way - nasty reaction when I'm stung. However, the little ladies do wonders for my gardens and there's nothing like the hum of contented bees on a lazy summer afternoon.