Posted on 06/29/2008 5:43:52 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
WASHINGTON -- Food prices could rise even more unless the mysterious decline in honey bees is solved, farmers and businessmen told lawmakers Thursday.
"No bees, no crops," North Carolina grower Robert D. Edwards told a House Agriculture subcommittee. Edwards said he had to cut his cucumber acreage in half because of the lack of bees available to rent.
About three-quarters of flowering plants rely on birds, bees and other pollinators to help them reproduce. Bee pollination is responsible for $15 billion annually in crop value.
In 2006, beekeepers began reporting losing 30 percent to 90 percent of their hives. This phenomenon has become known as Colony Collapse Disorder. Scientists do not know how many bees have died; beekeepers have lost 36 percent of their managed colonies this year. It was 31 percent for 2007, said Edward B. Knipling, administrator of the Agriculture Department's Agricultural Research Service.
"If there are no bees, there is no way for our nation's farmers to continue to grow the high quality, nutritious foods our country relies on," said Democratic Rep. Dennis Cardoza of California, chairman of the horticulture and organic agriculture panel. "This is a crisis we cannot afford to ignore."
Food prices have gone up 83 percent in three years, according to the World Bank.
Edward R. Flanagan, who raises blueberries in Milbridge, Maine, said he could be forced to increase prices tenfold or go out of business without the beekeeping industry. "Every one of those berries owes its existence to the crazy, neurotic dancing of a honey bee from flower to flower," he said.
The cause behind the disorder remains unknown. Possible explanations include pesticides; a new parasite or pathogen; and the combination of immune-suppressing stresses such as poor nutrition, limited or contaminated water supplies and the need to move bees long distances for pollination.
Ice cream maker Haagen-Dazs and natural personal care products company Burt's Bees have pledged money for research and begun efforts to help save the bees.
The problem affects about 40 percent of Haagen-Dazs' 73 flavors, including banana split and chocolate peanut butter, because ingredients such as almonds, cherries and strawberries rely on honey bees for pollination.
Katty Pien, brand director for Haagen-Dazs, said those ingredients could become too scarce or expensive if bees keep dying. It could force the company to discontinue some of its most popular flavors, Pien said.
Haagen-Dazs has developed a new limited-time flavor, vanilla honey bee, and will use some of the proceeds for research on the disorder. Burt's Bees has introduced Colony Collapse Disorder Lip Balm to "soften your lips while saving honeybees."
The House Appropriations Committee approved $780,000 on Thursday for research on the disorder and $10 million for bee research. The money awaits approval by the full House and Senate.
That is not going to take the sting out of this problem...
The bees seem to be leaving the beekeepers,....
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Perhaps they are leaving for better benefits and wages elsewhere.
Hive got to agree with you.
you dont think the trees and grass are going to turn against us and make us kill ourselves do you?
Bees were not meant to be trucked hundreds of miles every few days....
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Excellent point. Since all reports say that the keepers have not been finding the bees dead somewhere, you just may be on to something.
This is in Chat!
This is in Chat!
How did American plants get pollinated before 1492?
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I suppose that in those days there were plenty of bumblebees, flies, hummingbirds, mosquitoes, moths, etc. to do the job for the many naturally occurring plants and the few crops planted by the Indians.
LOL! I love puns.
This is in Chat!
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Okay, does that mean I did something wrong?
Don’t get fresh with me! and don’t call me your Honey...
Honeypuns?
However, I would have posted it into news, as it is a serious matter.
Also, sorry for the double post
Hymenoptera doing that today.
However, I would have posted it into news, as it is a serious matter.
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But I’m not the poster....
my personal favorite:
Are Mobile Phones Wiping Out Critical Bee Industry?
none | wild bill
Posted on 04/15/2007 6:31:50 AM PDT by wildbill
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1817681/posts
I am showing how much I don't know about bees but when we lived in the country I noticed bees in my yard but not that many. Then a huge pecan tree in our yard fell down in a storm and I discovered a GIANT hive of bees had been there for years, honey comb was everywhere. They moved someplace close I imagine, maybe the lost bees are doing that too.
Maybe it's a “Take This Job and Shove It” kinda thing. LOL!
It’s not an original thought. It’s one of the explanations that’s been proposed by researchers. It makes some sense because it would explain why the “disorder” didn’t first hit regionally and then spread from an identifiable point of origin. On the other hand, I’ve read that 2/3rds of the commercial pollinating bees in the continental US spend time in California each year, so an infectious agent that originated there could pretty well have started taking hold nationwide all at once.
My guess is that the full answer is going to be pretty complex. Something along the lines of an infectious agent to which many bees had genetic resistance, but that stress resistance was dependent on genes that were predominantly found in individual bees which were NOT resistant to the infectious agent. Bees are such utterly communal creatures that it’s entirely possible that as long as a good portion of bees in any given hive are genetically stress resistant, the rest of the bees will do fine just be taking cues from the stress resistant ones. Then a disease comes along and knocks out the stress resistant ones, and the remaining ones, though disease free, suddenly decide “Oh crap! I just can’t take all this travelling stress anymore. I’ll just settle down in this field and hope I hook up with a new hive somewhere, ‘cause I can’t face going home to that perpetually moving hive anymore!”
This is, after all, a species in which the presence of one female with functioning ovaries will prevent any other female in the hive from developing functioning ovaries. And the death of the egg-laying queen will cause all the young sterile female bees to suddenly think “Oh crap, we gotta hurry up and pick out one female larva less than 3 days old and feed it nothing but royal jelly so it will turn into a queen!” And somehow they agree on which one of the many female larvae in the hive will get this honor, and proceed to feed it differently from how they feed all the other male and female larvae. The mind of a bee is hard to fathom . . .
“...they’d do better to spend their taxpayer money on researching colony collapse disorder, than on the touchy-feely politically correct garbage that they currently pour so much money into.”
Well, I can’t disagree with that, LOL!
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