Posted on 05/19/2015 11:15:08 AM PDT by Olog-hai
The Obama administration hopes to save the bees by feeding them better.
A new federal plan aims to reverse America’s declining honeybee and monarch butterfly populations by making millions of acres of federal land more bee-friendly, spending millions of dollars more on research and considering the use of fewer pesticides.
While putting different type of landscapes along highways, federal housing projects and elsewhere may not sound like much in terms of action, several bee scientists told The Associated Press that this a huge move. They say it may help pollinators that are starving because so much of the American landscape has been converted to lawns and corn that don’t provide foraging areas for bees. […]
The plan calls for restoring 7 million acres of bee habitat in the next five years. Numerous federal agencies will have to find ways to grow plants on federal lands that are more varied and better for bees to eat because scientists have worried that large land tracts that grow only one crop have hurt bee nutrition. …
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
“Probably birds, bats and other species of insects. “
The other insects, particularly, could quite likely be undergoing similar declines, but aren’t noticed because they aren’t used for human uses like honey bees are.
From what I understand, it’s certain pesticides and insecticides that are thought to be responsible for a great deal of the decline, particularly neonicotinoids, which are similar to nicotine.
That’s a broad brush. Is there any specific evidence that there are bee pathogens in either the nectar or the pollen of genetically-modified crops? Besides, when bee colonies collapse, it’s mostly due to worker bees not returning. Colony collapse occurs in absence of GM crops too.
Seems to me that not enough people believe what God says on the subject any more.
I think this is just more land stolen from the people and the states to the feds. The only ones that will be happy with this are gaia worshippers!
FROM Wikipedia:
Many insects other than bees accomplish pollination by visiting flowers for nectar or pollen, or commonly both. Many do so adventitiously, but the most important pollinators are specialists for at least parts of their lifecycles for at least certain functions. For example, males of many species of Hymenoptera, including many hunting wasps, rely on freely flowering plants as sources of energy (in the form of nectar) and also as territories for meeting fertile females that visit the flowers. Prominent examples are predatory wasps (especially Sphecidae, Vespidae, and Pompilidae). The term “pollen wasps”, in particular, is widely applied to the Masarinae, a subfamily of the Vespidae; they are remarkable among solitary wasps in that they specialise in gathering pollen for feeding their larvae, carried internally and regurgitated into a mud chamber prior to oviposition.
Many bee flies, and some Tabanidae and Nemestrinidae are particularly adapted to pollinating fynbos and Karoo plants with narrow, deep corolla tubes, such as Lapeirousia species. Part of the adaptation takes the form of remarkably long probosces.
Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) also pollinate plants to various degrees.[5] They are not major pollinators of food crops, but various moths are important pollinators of other commercial crops such as tobacco. Pollination by certain moths may be important, however, or even crucial, for some wildflowers mutually adapted to specialist pollinators. Spectacular examples include orchids such as Angraecum sesquipedale, dependant on a particular hawk moth, Morgan’s sphinx. Yucca species provide other examples, being fertilised in elaborate ecological interactions with particular species of yucca moths.
Beetles of species that specialise in eating pollen, nectar, or flowers themselves, are important cross-pollinators of some plants such as members of the Araceae and Zamiaceae, that produce prodigious amounts of pollen. Others, for example the Hopliini, specialise in free-flowering species of the Asteraceae and Aizoaceae.
Various midges and thrips are comparatively minor opportunist pollinators. Ants also pollinate some kinds of flowers, but for the most part they are parasites, robbing nectar without conveying useful amounts of pollen to a stigma. Whole groups of plants, such as certain fynbos Moraea and Erica species produce flowers on sticky peduncles or with sticky corolla tubes that only permit access to flying pollinators, whether bird, bat, or insect.
Carrion flies and flesh flies in families such as Calliphoridae and Sarcophagidae are important for some species of plants whose flowers exude a fetid odor. The plants’ ecological strategy varies; several species of Stapelia, for example, attract carrion flies that futilely lay their eggs on the flower, where their larvae promptly starve for lack of carrion. Other species do decay rapidly after ripening, and offer the visiting insects large masses of food, as well as pollen and sometimes seed to carry off when they leave.
Hoverflies are important pollinators of flowering plants worldwide.[6] Often hoverflies are considered to be the second most important pollinators after wild bees.[6] Although hoverflies as a whole are generally considered to be nonselective pollinators, some species have more specialized relationships. The orchid species Epipactis veratrifolia mimics alarm pheromones of aphids to attract hover flies for pollination.[7] Another plant, the slipper orchid in southwest China, also achieves pollination by deceit by exploiting the innate yellow colour preference of syrphide.[8]
Some male Bactrocera fruit flies are exclusive pollinators of some wild Bulbophyllum orchids that lack nectar and have a specific chemical attractant and reward (methyl eugenol, raspberry ketone or zingerone) present in their floral fragrances.[9][10][11]
A class of strategy of great biological interest is that of sexual deception, where plants, generally orchids, produce remarkably complex combinations of pheromonal attractants and physical mimicry that induce male bees or wasps to attempt to mate with them, conveying pollinia in the process. Examples are known from all continents apart from Antarctica, though Australia appears to be exceptionally rich in examples.[12]
Some Diptera (flies) may be the main pollinators at higher elevations of mountains, whereas Bombus species are the only pollinators among Apoidea in alpine regions at timberline and beyond.
Other insect orders are rarely pollinators, and then typically only incidentally (e.g., Hemiptera such as Anthocoridae and Miridae).
Bats are important pollinators of some tropical flowers. Birds, particularly hummingbirds, honeyeaters and sunbirds also accomplish much pollination, especially of deep-throated flowers. Other vertebrates, such as monkeys, lemurs, possums, rodents and lizards[13] have been recorded pollinating some plants.
Humans can be pollinators, as many gardeners have discovered . . .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollinator
Essentially, their solution is always the same as for every other problem: a) more government, b) lock up more land from private sale, and c) more government spending, requiring more taxes taken by force from productive citizens, thus requiring d) more government.
Yes
BTTT
Other insects such as bumblebees did the pollination. Also a lot of the native plants were wind pollinated.
Vanilla is pollinated by the Mayan bee, a very small sting less bee that does produce honey but in such small amounts that it is not really worthwhile to keep it. Vanilla grown anywhere but in this bee's habitat has to be hand pollinated. Usually by some poor guy with a ladder and small brush.
BTW the bees talked about by O-Bummer are wild bees. There are fewer records on wild bees so he can claim their populations are declining more easily without some smart alek being able to prove him wrong.
Cultivated bees were having a rough go of it a few years back but the populations have recovered as more beekeepers dusted for mites.
Thank you; that was quite informative!
hand slapping forehead sound
I am planning to have a few hives in our new place so I am reading up on bees.
The government trying to “help bees”? Say goodbye to all bees on the earth and all the products they produce with honey.
Like the school lunch program (and everything else 0bama touches) this attempt will turn to s#it.
5.56mm
That was my thought when I first read that headline.
Once again....the bees know.
What do they know? We don’t know, because we aren’t bees. All we do know....is that the bees know.....
Obama is their master & can summon them at will while telling the children not to fear. In the Rose Garden.
Obama can do better than Mother Nature?
This is the one I’m talking about.
http://bugguide.net/node/view/475348
Native Bees of North America
Native bees are an unappreciated treasure, with 4,000 species from tiny Perdita to large carpenter bees, they can be found anywhere in North America where flowers bloom.
Most people don’t realize that there were no HONEY BEES in America until the white settlers brought hives from Europe. These resourceful insects promptly managed to escape domestication, forming swarms and setting up housekeeping in hollow trees, other cavities or even exposed to the elements just as they had been doing in their native lands.
Native pollinators, in particular bees, had been doing all the pollination in this continent before the arrival of that import from the Old World. They continue to do a great deal of it, especially when it comes to native plants.
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