Posted on 04/23/2007 1:11:12 AM PDT by Tulsa Ramjet
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Go to work, come home.
Go to work, come home.
Go to work -- and vanish without a trace.
Billions of bees have done just that, leaving the crop fields they are supposed to pollinate, and scientists are mystified about why.
The phenomenon was first noticed late last year in the United States, where honeybees are used to pollinate $15 billion worth of fruits, nuts and other crops annually. Disappearing bees have also been reported in Europe and Brazil.
Commercial beekeepers would set their bees near a crop field as usual and come back in two or three weeks to find the hives bereft of foraging worker bees, with only the queen and the immature insects remaining. Whatever worker bees survived were often too weak to perform their tasks.
If the bees were dying of pesticide poisoning or freezing, their bodies would be expected to lie around the hive. And if they were absconding because of some threat -- which they have been known to do -- they wouldn't leave without the queen.
Since about one-third of the U.S. diet depends on pollination and most of that is performed by honeybees, this constitutes a serious problem, according to Jeff Pettis of the U.S. Agricultural Research Service.
"They're the heavy lifters of agriculture," Pettis said of honeybees. "And the reason they are is they're so mobile and we can rear them in large numbers and move them to a crop when it's blooming."
Honeybees are used to pollinate some of the tastiest parts of the American diet, Pettis said, including cherries, blueberries, apples, almonds, asparagus and macadamia nuts.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
>Every year, one or two swarms move into the walls of our 200 year old farmhouse.<
Those must have been wasps or hornets. I don’t think honey bees are interested in farmhouse walls. Maybe the vines that grow on them, though. Lucky you to have a 200 year old farmhouse. :o)
The famous scientist who said: “If bees disappeared, man would have only four years of life left”.
Been posted before: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1819697/posts
There are not enough “other” critters/insects who can do the amount of work that bees do.
Opps - forgot to add - The famous scientist is Albert Einstein.
I hope you are correct.
But how about this scenario: Who would benefit from the bees dying ?
How about the makers of Hybrid seeds ??
Something to think about ?
regards
No no no! You don't understand! Journalists know better than you!
The only wzy to solve the BEE CRISIS is to BAN GUNS!
That was somebody elses reply to me. My house is only 46 years old...........But, where my in-laws live north of Jacksonville, FL, there was an old Egg Packing plant that was abandoned next door to them. A swarm of honeybees moved into the walls of the old office building. It was literaly solid packed with honey and honecomb inside one wall. It was oozing out of the wall and running down the floor. Thay had a bee keeper come and remove the queen and the hive into a commercial colony. I forget what the numbers were but they got gallons of honey out of that wall. He had never seen such a large wild hive. It must have been there for years and years..........
“There is a problem but it is with the Varroa and Tracheal mites.”
-Knowing nothing about bee keeping. How is this treated?-
Tracheal is easy, Crisco patties which are a mix of sugar and Crisco. Confuses the mite and it dies with the bee instead of moving to another one. Tracheal mites get into the bees breathing tubes.
Varroa is like a basketball sized tick on your back s far as a size comparison. Varroa is more complex since the mites have developed resistance to the pesticides used to kill it. So new pesticides are being used but the real solution is mite resistant bees. There are some but there is still a long way to go.
How dare you deny people their latest batch of apocalypse porn?
#1 How do bees communicate? I’ve heard they leave chem-trails.
Through smell and dance.
#2 Do the Africanized bees, who do not focus on large amounts of honey production, have an effect on native colonies?
They will take over in an area because they develop faster and cast off many more swarms than European honey bees. Plus, when they mate, the AHB genetics will predominate because of the shorter time from egg to adult. The first queen to emerge will kill off the others still in their cells.
Actually, AHB does produce a good honey crop. They are being managed throughout the Americas, including the SW US and Florida. AHB are not all mean and those that are are killed off. Truth is, many EHB can be pretty bad. In all cases, they are re-queened with gentler bees.
#3 There are many more transmission towers, not just cell towers, being erected in our area. Is it possible the bees could be effected?
There was some concern about this but bees thrive right in the shadow of major power lines.
#4 What other ways can individual gardeners pollinate their crops?
If you look at your garden, you will see lots of insects at work including ones that look like flies. Most are solitary bees, the bees that were in the Americas before the honey bee came over with the Europeans. Several commercial crops are pollinated with solitary bees, including cherries in Washington. Bumblebees are better pollinators than honey bees, but you can have 60,000 honey bees in one colony compared to 20 or 30 bumble bees. They do not have to be better since there are so many of them.
“But how about this scenario: Who would benefit from the bees dying ?
How about the makers of Hybrid seeds ??”
Actually, one of the largest of the hybrid seed producers uses honey bees for pollination. Those seeds have to come from somewhere.
Even GMO crops benefit from honeybees, like GM soybeans as bees will increase yields of self pollinating soy by 30%. Bees are not affected by GM crops as shown by good scientific studies and the fact that they are doing it yearly with no problems.
Just dandy.
To bee, or not to bee. THAT, is the question!
Thanks for the info!
We’ve been in an off and on drought here for about 10 yrs. This year has been wet and everything , including the bees,
are looking rosey. If We can avoid the devestating hail storms of last year, We should have a good crop of most everything. Fingers Crossed!
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