Please Lord, not the bees

[Egalitarian]

By Peter Dearman

Everything you didn't want to know about Colony Collapse Disorder

It sounds like the start of a Kurt Vonnegut novel:

'Nobody worried all that much about the loss of a few animal species here and there until one day the bees came to their senses and decided to quit producing an unnaturally large surplus of honey for our benefit. One by one, they went on strike and flew off to parts unknown.'

Among the various mythologies of the apocalypse, fear of insect plagues has always loomed larger than fear of species loss. But this may change, as a strange new plague is wiping out our honey bees one hive at a time. It has been named Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD, by the apiculturalists and apiarists who are scrambling to understand and hopefully stop it. First reported last autumn in the U.S., the list of afflicted countries has now expanded to include several in Europe, as well as Brazil, Taiwan, and possibly Canada. (1)(24)(29)

Apparently unknown before this year, CCD is said to follow a unique pattern with several strange characteristics. Bees seem to desert their hive or forget to return home from their foraging runs. The hive population dwindles and then collapses once there are too few bees to maintain it. Typically, no dead bee carcasses lie in or around the afflicted hive, although the queen and a few attendants may remain.

The defect, whatever it is, afflicts the adult bee. Larvae continue to develop normally, even as a hive is in the midst of collapse. Stricken colonies may appear normal, as seen from the outside, but when beekeepers look inside the hive box, they find a small number of mature bees caring for a large number of younger and developing bees that remain. Normally, only the oldest bees go out foraging for nectar and pollen, while younger workers act as nurse bees caring for the larvae and cleaning the comb. A healthy hive in mid-summer has between 40,000 and 80,000 bees.

end of exerpt

complete article here: http://www.gnn.tv/articles/3063/Please_Lord_not_the_bees

This is a well researched, up to date article on the problems honeybees are experiencing.

[rosesaylavee]

1. This exerpt is key to figuring it out:

from the article posted in the OP...

"Perhaps the most ominous thing about CCD, and one of its most distinguishing characteristics, is that bees and other animals living nearby refrain from raiding the honey and pollen stored away in the dead hive. In previously observed cases of hive collapse (and it is certainly not a rare occurrence) these energy stores are quickly stolen. But with CCD the invasion of hive pests such as the wax moth and small hive beetle is noticeably delayed. (2) "

[Egalitarian]

2. Exactly. What do the predators know

that we don't know?

[GliderGuider]

3. Hmmm. WE are still eating the honey...

What do the predators know, indeed!

[rosesaylavee]

20. How to survive without eating poison?

:shrug:

Was that a trick question?

[Javaman]

26. And are the "experts" analyzing the honey?

and if they have are they going to release the results or take the route of saying, "the results are inconclusive"?

So far the only hives I have heard of collapsing are the commercial hives. The various owners of private hives I have spoken to here in texas haven't had a single problem.

but it seems no one is mentioning that.

[Egalitarian]

4. Thanks for the early rec's. I think

this article is worthy of the greatest page/wider distribution, but must go to work now, so K&R if you agree.

Cheers,
Egalitarian

[havocmom]

5. I do agree - Greatest page importance.

K & R

[InvisibleTouch]

6. K & R

Needs one more Rec.

[RestoreGore]

7. Sending this to the greatest page

This is something everyone needs to know. Perhaps the bees are acting as harbingers.

[ananda]

9. Used to be frogs were the harbingers.

Now it's bees.

It ain't over yet, but it's close.

[grasswire]

8. I saw here yesterday somewhere...

...a Jim Hightower article telling how most of the bees that pollinate commercial crops in America are commercial "herds" of billions of bees that are actually trucked from one crop to another, across the U.S. from Maine to California, and they have been bred to remove any other instinct aside from pollination. They don't feed the queen, they don't make honey.

So we are talking about two masses of bees. The commercial bee herds, and the other bees that aren't being hired for pollination of the big crops.

Are both suffering from colony collapse?

[rosesaylavee]

21. Yes. Saw the graphic from the Hightower

article... this is worldwide and effects all the bees - those being carted here and there commercially as well as bees kept by hobbyists.

Some theories as to what is happening are:

- GM crops are poisoning them
- New pesticides are poisoning them
- Cell towers/phones are disorienting them and they can't find their way back tothe hives
- Bees are overbred and have weakeneded immune systems making them more susceptible to dying from viruses
- New virus that kills them in the fields when they are out foraging.

[Egalitarian]

29. Here's the quote from the Hightower article

"the bees themselves have been bred into single-purpose super-pollinators, rather than bees with multiple functions (make honey, feed the queen, maintain the hives, and extend the species). The industrial bees have lost the diversity and natural traits of wild bees."

link: http://www.jimhightower.com/node/6106

My understanding is that the bees still perform all normal functions, but that have been bred to excel as pollinators. Pretty sure they still make honey, feed the queen etc. The running hypothesis is that in breeding and beekeeping with pollination in mind we may have created a situation in which these commercial bees are more susceptible to ccd. Also of potential significance and related especially to commercial operations is the foundation cell size issue as mentioned in the original article. Larger foundation size is linked to more mites, which is linked to susceptibility to many ailments.

[fasttense]

10. Just another wonderful outcome of free trade.

"It is worth noting that, while CCD has been presented to the media as a sudden new problem, these same theories about causative infections have already been presented to explain previous bee die-offs, especially those in the spring of 2005, which were attributed to the now infamous varroa mite, a.k.a. “vampire mite,” which began infecting American honey bees in 1987. (31)

About the size of a pinhead, and with eight legs, it feeds on the blood of adult bees like a tick, and even worse, it also eats the bee larvae. Varroa is the bane of beekeepers everywhere except China, where it originated, and the honey bees have local resistance. In a case of sadly ironic timing, Hawaii just reported its first case of varroa a few weeks ago. (26)"

A huge natural hive at the outskirts of our woods died off in 2005. Our fruit trees had no fruit that following summer.

Our lovable forgetful president Raygun was well into his Alzheimers in 1987. The bushes and neocons were pushing their deregulation and anti-union goals. We are still suffering from his horrible legacy.

You got to love unregulated trade. It comes with unregulated diseases and parasites. A parasite that may not be a problem on one continent, is a problem on another because the animals, insects and vegetation have no adaptations to fight off the disease or parasite. So whole continents of creatures become safety tests for new and foreign products.

[Morgana LaFey]

14. That's a jump --

I don't see any support for that conclusion. At all. And I'm about as anti Free Trade as you can get.

[Exultant Democracy]

17. Well with proper regulation we can be sure that the hemlocks would

be in better shape, so it isn't that much of a push. Although as of yet it seems as if the bee die off is still a bit of a mystery so attributing it to an alien bug may be premature.

[Rydz777]

16. "Our fruit trees had no fruit the following summer."

Sadly those words apply in so many ways.

[rosesaylavee]

22. This is a world-wide problem effecting

commercial as well as hobbyist hives. And the die off is much larger than the mite problem a few years back.

A friend who has kept hives for 30 years (hobbyist with 125 hives) related the other day that we have had a die off similar to this in the late 1800s, the 20s and the 30s. We didn't have the equipment or the communication at those times to figure out how bad it was - but the bees did come back.

Some areas are reporting very robust hives this spring. U of Montana is studying the problem and will hopefully have some answers in June.

[The2ndWheel]

11. "The hive population dwindles...

and then collapses once there are too few bees to maintain it."

Which is why we have no choice but to continue to increase our own population, no matter the cost.

[crikkett]

24. Say what?

I don't get your line of reasoning. Are you being sarcastic?

C

[The2ndWheel]

32. I wish

If we don't keep increasing our population, whatever it is that we're building isn't going to continue to be built. If we have negative population growth, at some point, we won't have enough tax money to pay for everything that taxes pay for, especially if we continue to increase our demands. If we don't have more people consuming more, the economy will slow, jobs won't be created, and there won't be much of a tax base. The global population cannot stop increasing, nothing can. We have to produce more of everything so that it's cheap enough for everyone. It needs to be cheap enough for everyone to increase demand so that there are enough jobs for everyone. We need those jobs so that everyone can support the system. We need more people to consume more, and produce more, for as long as they can.

It depends on what type of world you want. If it's centered around production and consumption, we have no choice but to never stop population growth, production growth, consumption growth, infrastructure, education, energy consumption, healthcare, life span, corporate consolidation, centralization of government, ownership of every aspect of planet.

If anything doesn't increase(especially population), our story might sound much like the bee story.

[Stanchetalarooni]

12. Neonicotinoid insecticides may be responsible for the collapse of honeybee colonies.

Certainly, honeybees are declining both in areas where GM crops are widely grown, and in other areas where GM crops are released in small test plots. Is there a common thread that links both areas? Yes there is, the universal use of systemic pesticide seed dressing in GM crops and conventional crops; in particular, the widespread application of a relatively new class of systemic insecticides - the neonicotinoids - that are highly toxic to insects including bees at very low concentrations. Systemic pesticide seed dressings protect the newly sprouted seed at a vulnerable time in the plant’s development. Seed dressings include systemic insecticides and fungicides, which often act synergistically in controlling early seedling pests.

The neonicotinoid insecticides include imidacloprid, thiamethoxam, clothianidin, and several others. Imidacloprid is used extensively in seed dressing for field and horticultural crops, and particularly for maize, sunflower and rapeseed (canola). Imidacloprid was detected in soils, plant tissues and pollen using HPLC coupled to a mass spectrometer. The levels of the insecticide found in pollen suggested probable delirious effects on honeybees <3>. For several years since 2000, French and Italian beekeepers have been noticing that imidacloprid is lethal to bees, and the insecticide is suspected to be causing the decline of hive populations by affecting the bee’s orientation and ability to return to the hive.

Turning to GM crops such as maize, canola, cotton and soybean it is clear that all of these GM crops, with or without Bt genes, use seeds most of which are coated with neonicotinoid pesticides highly toxic to honey bees. For example, Herculex maize with Bt genes to control rootworm, like Yieldgard corn borer resistant maize, is planted with seeds dressed with a neonicotinoid insecticide and a fungicide. Furthermore, the GM planting requires setting aside plots of non-GM maize making up 20 percent of the planted area as a “refuge” to discourage the evolution of resistant insects. But the “refuge” is sprayed with neonicotinoid pesticide to protect its yield <14>, and is more like a death camp for insects. Monsanto’s US Patent 6,660,690 provides for coating GM seeds with chemical pesticides <15>.

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/requiemForTheHoneybee.php

[rosesaylavee]

23. THAT is the answer to the bee die-off

I would bet. This answers why the bees can't find their ways home. This pesticide is used worldwide - and unfortunately does not break down in the field as readily as earlier pesticides.

Hopefully it gets banned after this year and worldwide testing is implemented.

[thereismore]

13. Didn't I read someplace that it's a fungus? nt

[Morgana LaFey]

15. THE most important paragraph, by far --

IMO:

I’m on an organic beekeeping list of about 1,000 people, mostly Americans, and no one in the organic beekeeping world, including commercial beekeepers, is reporting colony collapse on this list. The problem with the big commercial guys is that they put pesticides in their hives to fumigate for varroa mites, and they feed antibiotics to the bees. They also haul the hives by truck all over the place to make more money with pollination services, which stresses the colonies. (13)

Of course, there's no assurance at this point that the organic bees will remain untouched -- still, this seems to point to the fact that organic bees are at least stronger and more resilient. And it may very well be that they remain more resistant or even unscathed.

One can hope.

[AnneD]

18. My Grandfather was a farmer....

He kept his own hive. It was great. When sugar was rationed in WWII-no problem-everyone ate and baked with honey. He never had hive problems, and the bees were not a bother. I think large scale farming will be collapsing-it is unsustainable.

[Morgana LaFey]

28. Absolutely unsustainable

The first time I ever tried to grow food (not all that long ago) I was struck by two things: (1) We don't pay enough for our food (it's hard work!!) and (2) organic gardening and farming is THE only way that makes sense. Period. Nothing else makes any sense at all.

[AnneD]

31. Preach it sister...

preach it. Small farms are the only safe sustainable way to go. Call me paranoid, but I don't like all our eggs in one basket (food coming from mega farms).

[Shoelace]

25. that's it - Organic bee keepers not affected, not hybrid bees

so far as I've read anyway and I've been following this closely since I've been into gardening all my life. No bees now to pollinate our vegie garden - have to do it by hand!

The commercial breeders used hybrid bees that might just be too big for the job, not able to survive as would native bee colonies.
So bloody sad! I miss their sweet little hummm. Now the Bumblebees are disappearing as well. Silent Spring is here.

[GliderGuider]

19. I can't get any coal dug because of all the damn canaries singing down here

Bees
Golden tree frogs
Northern cod
Polar bears
Amur leopards
Basking sharks
Pine beetles (OK, the problem is that there are too many of them)

All singing their little hearts out trying to wake up the firefighters. There's something very bad happening in this here coal mine.

[earth mom]

27. K & R!

:kick:

[texpatriot2004]

30. kick it for the bees nm