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 ...
Just sniping here so bear with me. How many thousands of acres of food product would you think we could grow in greenhouses? That's the only "controlled" environment that comes to mind. In the end we'll probably find that the current gene splicing IS the culprit. Perhaps it's altering the smell/taste of the plants, or some such, to the point that it's driving the bees away. Just because we can gene splice or otherwise alter the natural state of things, doesn't mean we should. The law of unintended consequences. Blackbird.
Another Missing Bee Ping :)
Your kidding! I saw a picture of a mantis eating a lizard but I'd think it'd would be almost impossible for a mantis to catch a humming bird. Wouldn't you hate being slowly eaten starting with your foot or knee?
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.
The problem with both of these ideas is that other bees seem to avoid the empty hives. In my hives where the bees disappeared there is lots of honey but other bees aren’t robbing them out as you would expect. The answer doesn’t seem to be pesticides either as non of the farms around me are using any new pesticides and the closest neighbor is all organic and uses no pesticides.
Nope. This thing snagged the bird, held it down and started muching on it's throat, ripping out feathers as it tore away at the little bird's neck. Nothing short of amazing!
My neighbor has about a dozen hives. I mentioned this to him over the weekend and he's not noticed any problems with any of his hives. This is in SE Tennessee.
I blame the iPods.
My neighbor has about a dozen hives. I mentioned this to him over the weekend and he’s not noticed any problems with any of his hives. This is in SE Tennessee.
From what I’ve heard, it has been only affecting some areas.
Panic-party pooper!
“There is a problem but it is with the Varroa and Tracheal mites.”
Knowing nothing about bee keeping. How is this treated?
Thanks.
Too late, though. I just burned all my cell phones (and doggone it if the toxic smoke didn’t kill all the local bees).
As a gardener, the lack of bees has been a killer here in central Texas the last several years. We just haven’t seen that many bees.
Questions:
#1 How do bees communicate? I’ve heard they leave chem-trails.
#2 Do the Africanized bees, who do not focus on large amounts of honey production, have an effect on native colonies?
#3 There are many more transmission towers, not just cell towers, being erected in our area. Is it possible the bees could be effected?
#4 What other ways can individual gardeners pollinate their crops?
‘”praying mantises”
praying baptists, more like it, hastening in armegeddon.
Perhaps a Vogon destructor fleet is on the way...
“So long, and thanks for all the honey”
Can we get honeybees from Mexico to do the work that *Oh, forget it*
I once saw a praying mantis take down a gazelle. but only because his brother took down an impala. Those animals may be fast but the mantis looks like a friggin stick when it sits still. and those googly eyes that look like a raleigh bicycle seat. ooooooo! just gives me chills thinkin’ about it.
“They can;t navigate”
neither can Ted Kennedy but he was able to swim home.
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.