Posted on 06/29/2008 5:43:52 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
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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