Worldwide Honeybee Deaths

[Ripley]

Bee Keepers have been talking about declines for years. I watched an informative PBS show the other night and thought I would share:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/bees/impact.html

Sorry, I don't have a direct link to the show's vid. Maybe someone else can do that?

It is most interesting to see (in the documentary) that Chinese Pear farmers became "honey bees" and pollinated their crops by hand. Yes, by hand. Attempting to be bees by using chicken feathers to dust plants.

Humans are fucking doomed.

[CatWoman]

1. 60 Minutes did a great segment on this last night, too

[Subdivisions]

3. It was a very good segment and featured the guy who first

discovered the problem. Alot of his bees didn't come home last year and it hit his business. So, he replaced the bees and this year he lost a bunch more and he's having a hard time with his business. A good look at the depth and emotion of this story from those closest to the consequences.

[CatWoman]

4. what freaked me out was the fact that he couldn't find any bodies

:scared:

they just disappeared

:scared:

[Subdivisions]

10. I think the new pesticide mentioned by the beekeeper on 60 Minutes

called http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neonicotinoids">neonicotinoids are causing problems with the bees' ability to navigate and/or their ability to detect the unique scent that leads them back to their hive.

If they don't figure this out and we lose more and more bees, we're going to have SERIOUS problems.

[TheWraith]

17. That's one of several major theories.

The others are a parasitic mite, or a new strain of disease. The few dead bees recovered from these sorts of colonies tend to be overloaded with pathogens, like they were suffering from something that harmed their immune systems.

Some people suspect that it's a combination of factors causing the bees to become stressed, which results in immune supression and eventually colony death.

[dysfunctional press]

12. aliens have been stealing our bees.

that's my story, and i'm sticking to it.

[Richard D]

13. Nope . . .

. . . the bees have been boarding alien ships voluntarily. They can't stand it here either.

[still_one]

2. The implications are extremely serious. This is our food supply we are talking about /nt

[kestrel91316]

5. When I was in the house with the garden, my squash wasn't

producing much, so I hand-pollinated it and had much better luck. The honeybees don't pollinate squash much, and we have done a pretty good job of wiping out all the other insects that do. So I got out my q-tip and got busy.

Pollinators are our friends (them, and bacteria):
http://www.nappc.org/

[Ripley]

9. Hand pollinating

That's great you did it and it worked. The point I am trying to make with the Chinese Pears is that an entire crop (pears) was dependent upon those people pollinating them. The family doing it for profit will eventually be pushed out.

[kestrel91316]

20. That's why I am a BIG advocate for every house on the planet having a

fruit tree, of some sort suitable to local conditions, in the back yard for personal consumption and bartering with the neighbors.

[Mugu]

16. One winter I grew tomatoes on the back porch.

I used an electric tooth brush to pollinate with.

Regards, Mugu

[kestrel91316]

21. Tomatoes are self-fertile and don't actually require a pollinator, IIRC.

[rucky]

6. It's all Ray Liotta's fault.

I saw that in a documentary somewhere.

[End Of The Road]

7. I think there's hope

I've run across several articles lately that seem to indicate that colony collapse happens much more frequently among industrial bees, much less frequently among "organic" bees.

I don't keep bees, so I can't vouch for nuthin' about the articles.

But here's one for you if you want to check it out:

http://www.celsias.com/2007/05/15/organic-bees-surviving-colony-collapse-disorder-ccd/

[Ripley]

11. Organic bees have also declined

Pesticides are not the sole cause. Organic beekeepers have lost colonies. The source is many.

[stanwyck]

8. Albert Einstein warned that if we

lose the bees, we only have 7 years left. But, then, what did he know? No doubt the neocons said his theory of relativity was a bunch of leftwing nonsense...based on "science".

[dysfunctional press]

14. actually it was four years, but he never said it, anyway.

http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/2782

and it's been debunked- it would drastically affect big parts of the food chain, but ultimately humans can survive without bees.

[stanwyck]

18. Thanks for setting the record

straight.

[Disturbed]

15. The problem seems to be greed, as usual.

Capitalists trying to maximize their profits by using chemicals that harm
the bees; destroying the source of the end product.

[Ripley]

19. Gee, nobody is reading the link.

There is no single entity that has killed the honeybees. But there is a virus (not allowed to mention here) that has been identified as the culprit in the Australian bees shipped to the US.

Watch the vid.

Hope for the Bee Return...

[killbotfactory]

22. I heard that pesticide use has been weakening the bees health

which makes them much more likely to either get the virus or die because of it.

[Dems Will Win]

23. You can help right now - Plant A Bee Garden this spring and have your community plant

thousands of Silver Linden Trees, those are the best bee trees. FEED THE BEES!

GET YOUR SCHOOL INVOLVED!

That is all for now...