The Collapse of the Bees... And How To Save Them

[ashling]

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/05/10-1

“The only solution for the global bees decline and the current agriculture crisis is a change towards ecological farming." —Matthias Wüthrich, Greenpeace

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Don't Worry - Monsanto's got a fix for that ...

[mike_c]

1. the irony is that a "change towards ecological farming..."

...would be of greatest benefit to native pollinators rather than honeybees. Honeybees enable modern big ag practices like removal of alternate foraging habitat, huge scale monodominant cropping (California almonds, anyone?), and liberal pesticide use during much of the crop life cycle. These practices create "pollination deserts" that can only be alleviated by trucking honeybee hives around the country. Eliminating these sorts of farming practices makes pollinator habitat much friendlier and more varied, and supports a larger pollinator assemblage that includes native bees rather than depending upon the introduced honeybee. The rise of honeybees' importance in agriculture pretty directly parallels the development of industrial scale farming and the widespread use of chemical pesticides for crop management, because those diminish the capacity of native bees to provide pollination services.