It's affecting people, too...
Posted on 07/26/2016 10:02:09 PM PDT by Olog-hai
A new study finds that a commonly used insecticide kills much of the sperm created by male drone honey bees, one reason why the bees are dwindling.
The class of insecticide called neonicotinoids didn’t kill the drones. But bees that ate treated pollen produced 39 percent less live sperm than those that didn’t, according to a controlled experiment by Swiss researchers published Wednesday in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
It essentially acted as an accidental contraceptive on the drones, whose main job is to mate with the queen — but not one that prevented complete reproduction, just making it tougher, said Lars Straub, lead author of the study and a doctoral student and researcher at the University of Bern. …
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
And why are bees dying?
Insecticide?
Bees die all the time. Average lifespan of workers during the summer is one month to six weeks. It is incumbent upon the queen (who lives as long as four years) to keep producing new workers.
Considering that the end of the line for this sprayed food is people, is anybody shocked that one of the side effects is to kill sperm? Destroying people is big business and well-paying in our culture of death, and the birds and the bees will just have to go f themselves, and a lot more frequently now that it is made less efficient.
Too many lawn chemicals. Very few butterflies. Nothing like when I was a kid!
Quick, feed that stuff to all the drones on welfare!
Thanks for posting. Our beekeeping group, and I’m sure most groups around the country, have been trying to educate ourselves on all of the problems our hives can encounter. It’s not just pesticides - GMO products, pests, viruses caused by the pests.. and so on.
My problem this spring has been hive beetles. I did have a hive with some wax moths - not overrun with them - but I sure hate those things.
Okay, enough shop talk. :-)
That said, honey bees are not native to America, yeah maybe we should wipe them out! < / sarc >
You bee keepers are doing good work but your PR stinks. Films in which bees are prominently featured include My Girl ... and Ulee’s Gold, a boring film with an aged Peter Fonda practicing beekeeping in slow motion.
It's affecting people, too...
You are correct.
https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2015/07/30/beepocalypse-myth-handbook-dissecting-claims-of-pollinator-collapse/
Probably wasted billions of tax dollars teaching bees to jerk off into a cup.
LOL - I know. You left out “The Secret Life of Bees”. I don’t think I ever saw “My Girl”. I have seen “Ulee’s Gold” which I like somewhat because it’s set in Apalachicola and is about beekeeping.
Could be their pants are too tight.
But previous studies have shown that in two hives with neonicotinoids present, one with be thriving and one will be struggling.
It's also true that drones are under stress because they have the longest gestation period among the three types of honeybees in a hive; that timeframe is ideal for Varroa Mite gestation. The mites feed on drone larva, and count on adult drones to carry them hive-to-hive. Mites bite drones to suck the blood; the bites allow disease to take hold.
Back to Neonics for a moment... Neonicotinoids are essential to agriculture on the continent of Africa. They are amazing compounds, derived from the nicotine plant, which can be inserted into the DNA of a host plant. The neonicotinoids are only present in the plant– they don't linger in the soil– and can be fine-tuned to affect only certain pests.
These do-good hand wringers ignore anything that contradicts their desire to live in a world controlled by bureaucrats.
The neonicotinoids are extremely dangerous.
I have a few of the ant bait traps I bought back in the late 80’s or early 90’s. They have something in them called fipronil.
The cover is slathered with warnings from the EPA and the federal government saying basically “you cannot use this product anywhere near bees”...
A single bee can carry back to the hive enough poison to kill hundreds of other bees.
“And why are bees dying?”
Mites.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.