Posted on 02/06/2011 2:45:11 PM PST by DeaconBenjamin
Almost a third of global farm output depends on animal pollination, largely by honey bees.
These foods provide 35pc of our calories, most of our minerals, vitamins, and anti-oxidants, and the foundations of gastronomy. Yet the bees are dying – or being killed – at a disturbing pace.
The bee crisis has been treated as a niche concern until now, but as the UN's index of food prices hits an all time-high in real terms (not just nominal) and grain shortages trigger revolutions in the Middle East, it is becoming urgent to know whether the plight of the honey bee risks further exhausting our already thin margin of food global security.
The agri-business lender Rabobank said the numbers of US bee colonies failing to survive each winter has risen to 30pc to 35pc from an historical norm of 10pc. The rate is 20pc or higher in much of Europe, and the same pattern is emerging in Latin America and Asia.
Albert Einstein, who liked to make bold claims (often wrong), famously said that "if the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, man would have only four years to live".
Such "apocalyptic scenarios" are overblown, said Rabobank. The staples of corn, wheat, and rice are all pollinated by wind.
However, animal pollination is essential for nuts, melons and berries, and plays varying roles in citrus fruits, apples, onions, broccoli, cabbage, sprouts, courgettes, peppers, aubergines, avocados, cucumbers, coconuts, tomatoes and broad beans, as well as coffee and cocoa.
The reservoir of bees is dwindling to the point where ratios are dangerously out of kilter, with the US reaching the "most extreme" imbalance. Pollinated crop output has quadrupled since 1961, yet bee colonies have halved. The bee-per-hectare count has fallen nearly 90pc.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
That globull warming is fizzling so we are inundated with the extinction catastrophes again... The Libturds are simply shifting lies and moving to undermine freedom in any way they can.
For real ? Some kind of competition thing ?
Honey bees do not pollinate maize - good old Iowa corn, to those of you who are not botanists.
Yet the American corn crop, while much increased, is also not getting into the food chain. It is being diverted into the manufacture of ethanol, a rather finicky motor fuel, that is both less energy-dense than petroleum fractions commonly used for fuel, and causes its own set of problems in the fuel blends in which it is dispensed.
Now, there is a HUGE source of ethanol available, but unfortuantely, it comes from a foreign source, Brazil, and the tariffs raised against its import to the US largely prohibit its use for fuel blending here.
What America does best, and should be allowed to continue to do - our agricultural productivity has in years past, largely outstripped most of the rest of the world. But this productivity has NOT been harnessed in the most effective manner, which is to package and offer it for export to those regions in which the demand far outstrips the capability to produce foodstuffs locally.
First thing to do, is to divert all that corn now going into ethanol production back into the food chain, and rather than subsidize ethanol production in this country, import all our ethanol needs from Brazil or other regions where the cost of production is far less than the use of feedstocks in this country. Lift the tariff against that plentiful substance, and spread the proceeds from its commerce to the localities that can produce it economically.
The stark possibility of starvation that now faces much of the restless parts of the world, can still be averted, but it is an act of will that seems to be beyond the current regime that holds sway in this country. Much like FDR’s New Deal, they seem determined to lock up and make inaccessible in many ways, the productive potential of this nation. If anything, the New Deal probably deepened and extended the Great Depression far beyond its normal cycle, as there was NEVER a time throughout the Roosevelt years when the machinery of bureaucracy was ever dismantled. It was just shifted around because of political and popular pressure, but there was never a thought to returning the means of productivity to those who could best apply those assets.
Actually I believe the most common answer Albert Einstein was known to give was “I don’t know”. Apparently once he became famous, people asked him all kinds of questions about things he knew nothing about. I was pretty good at sticking to his field with a few departures.
He wrote a foreward for Robert Hapgood’s book on Hapgood’s theory of crustal displacement. The Theory was wrong but it was a step toward our current ideas on plate tectonics.
Yes. Last summer I moved the hummingbird feeder about 5 ft in front of the window for close-up, and hornets not only constantly attack hummers, but attack honeybees, wrapping around them and stinging them to death all the way to the ground.
Obviously I quit filling the feeder after this macabre scene.
Well, on my farm, some years there are more, some years there are not as many but I see no serious decline. Honey bees are not the only pollinators. For me, I would take a single bumblebee over a hundred honeybees for pollination purposes. Of course you don’t get honey but bumblebees are fabulous pollinators.
It’s a sting!
What a buzz kill!
Now yellowjackets I have enough of!
I thought I had done a pretty good job of discovering their nests around my house but they still kept coming around.........
Finally, when winter set in and all the leaves blew off my small magnolia tree at the back of my deck, sure enough, there was a big nest sitting up there that the wind had blown half away........Damn, you just can't rid of those damn things...........
They like to come up to you at eye level and "talk".
BS! The bees quietly repealed their DADT a few years ago, all the soldier bees got special training in homosexuality and bingo — the end of the honey bee and all mankind.
They sure do that when I’m gardening. I generally like bugs, but a bumble bee in the face creeps me out. Hard to shoo them away, too.
I had a carpenter bee that would come hang out with me when I sat on the front porch swing last summer. He would hover in front of me or to my right. I often felt he was just watching and studying me.
they haven’t died off, they’re all vacationing at my B.O.L. in Northern AZ. seriously you can not leave any source of moisture around without them swarming to it. last year we were pouring concrete for Mrs Reardon’s outdoor kitchen and they were even flying inside the mixer. lost count of the # of times we got stung. we went back there last weekend for a get away and they’re already active.
There was talk some radio waves -cell phone towers disrupted the bees GPS and hives failed. We need a 100 million $ study and bo is just the man to pay for it.
We’ll just have to hire Mexicans to pollinate all of the crops that the bees don’t get to.
When you leave a "quantum trace" it lasts forever.
Eventually we will figure this out and will be amazed, and will look at everything in a new light.
30 japanese hornets vs 30,000 bees....
all bees killed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fTrSOFyfxs&feature=fvst
Funny thing about the 70’s...thats when global cooling was the latest “sky is falling moment”.
You're right, while driving through a desert community the other day, the main street was suddenly filled with bees. Thousands of bees. My windsheild was covered with their flattened little bodies.
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