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 ...
They think it’s cell phones.
You Been Goofin’ With the Bees? (Get The Point?)
I think its the apocalypse. Bird flue being spread by world-wide bird migration, bees dying world-wide due to cell phones resulting in food shortages, and finally finding out, after a world-wide search, who the father is of Anna Nicole Smith’s child.
This ain’t one to dismiss lightly. Bees are a fundamental part of modern agriculture.
Canaries dying in coal mine
I doubt that wireless transmissions are causing the problem. Wireless tends to run in GHz ranges, and animal tissues don’t do anything in those frequency ranges. Microwaves won’t hurt living things on this planet, except for living things that are very close to and in front of transmitters of such frequencies.
My best guess is that something is eating the bees.
but if your soul is saved, who cares?...ha ha...just kidding, sort of.
but how do they home in on flowers, and then go back to the hive and share with others? that little dance/jig they do? Puhleez, and its not even in time. (jk) Maybe there is some variations of the frequencies around towers that effect the frequencies, or lack there of, that might be used? Like a little EMP sub-frequency disaster. Ergo, my “Global Swarming” tag.
What if it turns out that cell phones are killing bees?
I mean what will they do? What can they do?
Sure. As the article says, "The phenomenon was first noticed late last year in the United States..."
That would be right after the introduction of cell phones in the USA last fall. Or maybe it took this long for the bees to get listed.
A more reasonable suggestion faults the sunspot cycle.
Probably the bees have been called home by all the cell phones.
Going to a new part of the universe, just like the dolphins in “Hitch hiker’s guide to the galaxy”
The illegal aliens Jorge Bush invites in will do the work the bees don't want to do.
So I'm guessing the free market can't solve this problem, right. Grow the food in a controlled environment and use a machine to cross pollinate or do some gene splicing or something. Sheesh.
They joined the Teamsters and will be demanding MO MONEY
yeh okay
out
Hey, 13 posts in and no illegal alien posts, it’s my duty to provide one.
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