Disappearing bees exposes our ignorance

This sudden, mysterious disappearance of honeybees is an unnerving reminder that, despite all our scientific and technological know-how, we can still be vastly ignorant of how the world around us works.

From the Express-News today:

Beekeepers in 24 states have reported similar mysterious losses in a national affliction that could dramatically reduce fruit and vegetable crops and decimate honey production across the nation.

"This is what we lost last winter," Park said as he drove past stacks of empty brown pallets on his 25-acre ranch in Moore. "Each of these once held a hive. These should be 1,200 hives."

"The bees are not coming back to the hives," said Randy Johnson, a Paris-area beekeeper who also has lost half his hives. "They are just dwindling away to nothing. We don't know where they are at or what is happening to them."

Beekeepers don't even know how widespread the problem is. A hastily assembled coalition of scientists and industry representatives is scrambling now to gather basic information from a small industry of about 2,000 beekeepers around the U.S.

The coalition has given the syndrome a label — colony collapse disorder — but barely has begun to study what's wrong.

That we not only could not anticipate this, but have no idea why it is happening well into the phenomenon exposes our ignorance of so much of the vast complications of natural systems.  It is this ignorance that troubles me most about our species' impact on this planet. 

For instance, our knowledge is good enough to tell that we are messing with Earth's climate system in a way that will inevitably lead to significantly more heat being retained.  And we have good ideas of some general impacts, such as rising sea level, disrupted weather patterns, and more.  But we have little clue what the detailed impacts will be, and thus little ability to head off the worst effects by planning for them.

Apparently we humans have trouble even anticipating relatively simple, small-scale effects of our impact on the land.  Blasting and bulldozing vast amounts of land, piling the rotting remnants of the trees into huge piles on top of land that feeds a critical aquifer -- the Helotes mulch fire was an accident waiting to happen.  Yet we couldn't even prevent that.

We need to get smarter in a hurry.

Comments

[BCDean]

Could this be an attack on the food supply?
I remember hearing years ago that one legit bizz the
Al Qaedas had was honey sales.

[MIke]

Remember, "Global Warming" is only a theory promoted by scientists seeking more government funding and former politicians who have a stake in carbon offset companies (Gore). Heard of the saying "follow the money"? Mars is also experiencing warming. Hmm, sounds like the sun may be the culprit. So, "Global Warming" isn't causing the bees to fly away in some massive collective suicide to protest the Bush administration.

Probably not al-qaeda, those guys are a bunch of boobs. Everybody knows TWO planes didn't bring down THREE skyscrapers. Whatever did it wasn't jet fuel and it wasn't plotted by cave-dwelling muslim thugs.

The theory about cell phone radiation affecting the bees' navigation seems like a much more plausible explanation.

[TH]

Ha, i like the idea of a terrorist attack on our food supply. That also explains tainted spinache...
It might even be the Chem-trails, and weather manipulating machines owned by the yakuza.

BUT if you act now, i'll send you an ORGONE chem-trail cloud buster, plus a free magnetic bracelet.

i would agree with mike that the cellphone theory sound most plausible. Or, the fact that the suns EM radiation has changed in recent years.

But seriously, this "sudden disappearance of bees" it was not at all sudden, it has been happening for a few years now, only that it doesn't seem to be stopping. But once again the media needs to pounce on something that has been happening and make it news.

[Urkle]

Scientists need to eliminate whether or not the hive itself has been contaminated with some toxin that is killing or driving away the bees.
One newspaper article says that once the hives are abandoned, other invading
and normally maurading bees do not take over these abandoned hives. Why not?
Could it be that something in these abandoned hives is repelling them?
As a test, what happens if a new colony is introducted to an abandoned box/hive?
If a brand new cleaned out box/hive is used, how often are these new boxes
also abandoned - as compared to old re-used ones? Are they using new materials,
paints on the hives? If so, try using all natural materials...

[Dan Fowlks]

Lifespan of a bee -
The queen can live from 2-5 years. The drone lives 40-50 days. Drones are male bees. Most of the bees are workers.They are females. They work hard making honey and stinging for defense! They live from 1-4 months. The life cycle of the worker bee: Egg (3 days), Larva (6 days), Pupa (12 days). This is a total of 21 days from egg (baby) to adult worker.

Lifespan of a trout -
Brown trout spawn in the fall, a little later than brook trout, when water temperatures are in the mid-40s to high 40s. Eggs are deposited in a stream gravel depression that the female prepares with swimming actions of her fins and body. Large females produce 4,000 to 12,000 eggs. Several males may accompany the female during spawning. The eggs hatch the following spring, with no parental attention. Brown trout eat aquatic and terrestrial insects, crayfish and other crustaceans, and especially fish. The big ones may also eat small mammals (like mice), salamanders, frogs and turtles. Large browns feed mainly at night, especially during the summer. Their life span in the wild can be 10 to 12 years.

Bees pollinate everything that flowers - not just the pretty flowers we see going in the fields but the flowers on food crops like strawberries, lettuce, almonds, oranges, lemons and on and on - in other words, everything we spread sludge and/or treated wastewater on.

Is it possible that the mutations we've seen documented in fish (with a lifespan of 10 to 12 years) are happening at a relatively faster rate to bees? A report I read recently suggested that scientists are looking at a virus or plague of sorts that might be killing off the bees. I might suggest that they start looking at possible mutations caused by the endocrine disruptors commonly found in sludge and treated waste water. Maybe the bees just can't reproduce anymore.

[Tom Booth]

Pesticides containing Imidacloprid have been implicated and after this insecticide was banned in France, Beekeepers there reported improvements in the health of their hives, though this took several years as the substance remains in the soil and is taken up by plant roots.

The substance is still widely used in the US for everything from lawn care products to flea powder, termite eradication seed coatings and insect and animal repellents.

It is commonly used in orchards and farms to control or kill aphids and other sap sucking bugs, even added directly to irrigation water.

Bees drink lots of water and I believe also use it to cool the hive in hot weather.

What if it is a hot day and the bees use Imidacloprid laden water from an irrigation ditch?

The effect of this nerve toxin on termites includes disorientation. The termites wander about unable to find their way back to the nest.

I wonder if anyone has considered the possibility of aphids transmitting Imidacloprid to honeybees and other insects as well as the birds, bats, fish etc. that may eat these honeydew consuming bugs?

Imidacloprid is used in orchards and on crops to control aphids but I have seen reports that the aphids build up a resistance to the toxin. It reduces their number but does not eliminate them. How much Imidacloprid might be present in the honeydew honeybees collect from Imidacloprid resistant aphids?

I think this might explain much of the so-called "mysteries" such as;

Some hives are effected while others are not, even though side by side in the same location.

As a former beekeeper, I know that Bees have preferences and do their work as a group. When one bee finds a source of food, or water, thousands more bees from the same hive will follow.

Some hives will find honeydew or one source of water, while other adjacent hives will collectively gather nectar from some specific type of flower or utilize some other source of water. Bees are territorial and a whole hive acts in common.

Some colonies of bees seem to have a preference for honeydew.

according to some reports I've read, the largest disappearances of bees often occur in the off season when few if any flowers are in bloom. At such times bees will often turn to honeydew from aphids as an alternative source of nourishment.

Imidacloprid levels are higher in the sap of plants and trees which the aphids feed on directly but relatively low in the nectar.

Bees will collect honeydew from aphids on virtually any kind of plant, including non-flowering plants and trees that are not normally a source of nectar or pollen.

Desperate hungry bees will often only consume honeydew as a last resort, thus they would tend to consume it right away rather than storing it in the hive therefore leaving little evidence in the hive or in any honey left in the hive.

Other theories, such as the weakening of the Earth's magnetic field, cell phone towers and so forth would probably have an equal effect on ALL the hives in or brought to a certain location not just some of them.

Another clue is that Imidacloprid is used as an animal and insect repellent. If a hive became contaminated with high enough levels of this substance, from continuous evaporation of contaminated irrigation water perhaps... Not only bees and other insects but also animals would stay away after the bees themselves leave or get lost due to the disorienting effects of this substance.

Although the substance may remain in the ground for several years, it breaks down rapidly in just a few hours or days when exposed to the air.

Therefore by the time investigators go looking for a cause of this "disappearing bee" mystery, traces of the substance in the hive may have already dissipated.

All this seems rather conclusive to me, since the ban in France appears to be resulting in a reduction of the incidence of "Colony Collapse Disorder" there.

[K. Floyd]

How about researching the global CHEM TRAIL spraying & HAARP transmissions? Bees would be the FIRST to be impacted by the Barium & Aluminum Oxides, and the HAARP transmissions that these chemicals are being sprayed to facilitate. Google Chem Trails or HAARP and see that it’s GLOBAL spraying going on.

[Alex]

They killing all bees by spraing chemtrails in US and Europe to wipe out 4 billion people in near future.