FYI...
lets hope this is the real cause and this sticks.
Obama ain’t smart enough to realize how many jobs disappear if we don’t have bees. But I’d bet money that if the bees come back he will claim credit for every job having been ‘saved’.
I didn’t get worried about Bird Flu. I didn’t bother with Conflicker. But the thought of massive bee colony collapse could make me lose sleep the same way $150bbl oil did.
Doesn't that really bite you?????? I hope you pigs itch where you can't scratch.
I wish them good luck with this.
Honey bees are an incredibly important part of the ecology.
Here in south Texas, we have Africanized bees that crossed the Mexican border. Maybe they’ll do the work that domestic honey bees won’t?
That’s very good news! Florida (where I live) is, of course, heavily dependent on its honeybees for pollination and growers have been concerned. I don’t believe the problem is that far advanced in all parts of Florida yet...maybe this will halt it. That would certainly be nice, a tiny bit of good news!
I am sure the parasite Nosema ceranae only rose up, because of Global Warming.
Some times I think we become so busy looking for zebras that we tend to ignore the herd of horses thundering past.
It is good to know that some researchers are still doing their job.
But how exactly do you give a bee an antibiotic treatment??
Very good news if true. That makes two good things for the day. This and that diseased rat Rall being fired.
I speculated the other day the much of the problem lies with the dual use of the honey bee, both for their honey, and beekeepers moving them around by truck to pollinate farmer’s fields.
If they were just used for honey, honey bees would be much less likely to share mite infestations with other hives.
My speculation was that there are about 20,000 different species of bee in nine families, and many of them would be just as suitable for pollination, alone, than would honey bees, even if they produced no honey at all. So beekeepers could keep both kinds of bees, travel around with the other kind of bee for pollination services, and keep the honey bees at home to make honey.
And because premium honey is based on just one kind of flower, like clover, mesquite, sunflower, etc., keeping the honey bees at home, near that particular crop, would likely reduce blending of flavors from other flowers.
Good news - thanks!
First good news since November.
GASP! You mean man-made global warming isn’t to blame?
I am a hobbyest beekeeper and we closely follow the reports from UGA about the CCD problems. The University of GA has been assigned a major grant to head up a study in which the other major universities are all participating.
The truth is that it was just this one research group that says they found Nosema ceranae as the only disease present in CCD. But there are plenty of other studies where evidence of other problems were present.
That's the mystery of this thing...... the evidence is different in different cases. Which is one of the reasons they tend to believe that something weakens the bees and then they succumb to either one of the presently known diseases or in some cases to no disease they can spot, just disappearance.
Treating your colonies regularly for Nosema ceranae is NOT the answer! We all wish it was that easy! Big commercial bee keepers are regularly treating their hives for all the diseases and they still are having the Colony Collapse happen.
The bad part of that is many of us KNOW that it is dangerous to be treating the bees so much with antibiotics. The stuff gets into the comb and builds up and stays. No matter how careful we are, it gets into the honey and is ingested by humans. That leads to our human diseases becoming immune to these antibiotics.
In our apiary we avoid the use of antibiotics completely. This past winter we lost several colonies to Nosema ceranae (at least we think that's what they had.... we didn't send any off to get the expensive test done since the evidence was so similar to our commercial beekeeper friend in the area who was diagnosed by the university). We decided not to treat our remaining hives with antibiotics but to let them either die or survive on their strength.... thus hoping to breed this spring from the strongest survivors.
We raise new queens from these strong survivors, did colony splits just these past few weeks while they are all building their numbers.... and we now have a bunch of new hives... all the stronger to survive in the coming years and free from the buildup of antibiotics.
Now to address the comments about it not being pesticides that are killing the bees. Don't be deceived, pesticide IS still a major problem and proven to be! Don't be so quick to pin the label of environmental quacks on us because we call it like it is. It's the ole scream "wolf" problem. The enviro wackos have screamed wolf so many times that now some of you refuse to see the wolf when he really does show up.
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