[quote]The phenomenon is recent, dating back to autumn, when beekeepers along the east coast of the US started to notice the die-offs. It was given the name of fall dwindle disease, but now it has been renamed to reflect better its dramatic nature, and is known as colony collapse disorder.
It is swift in its effect. Over the course of a week the majority of the bees in an affected colony will flee the hive and disappear, going off to die elsewhere. The few remaining insects are then found to be enormously diseased - they have a “tremendous pathogen load”, the scientists say. But why? No one yet knows.
… The disease showed a completely new set of symptoms, “which does not seem to match anything in the literature”, said the entomologist.
… the few bees left inside the hive were carrying “a tremendous number of pathogens” - virtually every known bee virus could be detected in the insects, she said, and some bees were carrying five or six viruses at a time, as well as fungal infections. Because of this it was assumed that the bees’ immune systems were being suppressed in some way.[/quote]
[quote=“TainanCowboy”]This is serious business. These bees are a vital part of the ecology of our planet.
Pollination via bees is serious food chain business.[/quote]
Careful now. You’re starting to sound like an environmentalist.
[quote=“Belgian Pie”]The suspect a new nicotine containing herbicide/pesticide that has an effect on the bees immune system … or something …[/quote]The nicotine based chemical disorientates the bees and they can’t find their way back “home.” It doesn’t explain the diseases in bees, though. Another brilliant invention to be added to our portfolio…
Interesting graph showing bees’ contribution to producing human food. Alarming indeed.
[quote]Pollution is dulling the scent of flowers and impeding some of the most basic processes of nature, disrupting insect life and imperilling food supplies, a new study suggests.
The potentially hugely significant research – funded by the blue-chip US National Science Foundation – has found that gases mainly formed from the emissions of car exhausts prevent flowers from attracting bees and other insects in order to pollinate them. And the scientists who have conducted the study fear that insects’ ability to repel enemies and attract mates may also be impeded.
The researchers – at the University of Virginia – say that pollution is dramatically cutting the distance travelled by the scent of flowers. Professor Jose Fuentes, who led the study, said: “Scent molecules produced by flowers in a less polluted environment could travel for roughly 1,000 to 1,200 metres. But today they may travel only 200 to 300 metres. This makes it increasingly difficult for bees and other insects to locate the flowers.”
The researchers – who worked on the scent given off by snapdragons – found that the molecules are volatile, and quickly bond with pollutants such as ozone and nitrate radicals, mainly formed from vehicle emissions. This chemically alters the molecules so that they no longer smell like flowers. A vicious cycle is therefore set up where insects struggle to get enough food and the plants do not get pollinated enough to proliferate.
Already bees – which pollinate most of the world’s crops – are in unprecedented decline in Britain and across much of the globe. At least a quarter of America’s 2.5 million honey bee colonies have been mysteriously wiped out by colony collapse disorder (CCD), where hives are found suddenly deserted.
The crisis has now spread to Europe. Politicians insist that CCD has not yet been found in Britain, but the insects have been declining here too, and the agriculture minister Lord Rooker has warned that “the honey bee population could be wiped out in 10 years”.[/quote]
Scary. There a very similar scare back in the early 70s, when insect life in UK was being wiped out by agricultural pesticide and herbicide use and the changeover to big farms that saw thousands of acres of hedgerows grubbed out and replaced by wire fences, removing “safe” natural habitat for wee beasties. Yet here we still are. The sky didn’t fall.
[quote]Organic Beekeepers Report No Losses While Conventional Operations Report Massive Colony Losses
Who should be surprised that the major media reports forget to tell us that the dying bees are actually hyper-bred varieties that we coax into a larger than normal body size? It sounds just like the beef industry.[/quote]
A significant percentage of the world’s beehives are failing and that all the bees are dying. It is called Colony Collapes Disorder (CCD).No one seems to know why, but there are explanations aplenty, ranging from global warming to mites and viruses. Of course the conspiracy therorists have thier veiws but I’ll spare ya. Albert Einstein’s predicted that if the world’s bees were ever to die off, owing to the lack of pollinators, humanity would follow about four years later.
Here’s what dept of agriculture has to say about it. Probably downplayed a little as not to scare the bejesus out of everyone.
It was in The Economist this week too. Hardly bloody surprising though, is it? Insecticides are designed to, um, kill insects. Since the difference between a “good” insect and a “bad” insect is defined by our perceptions of them rather than any specific physical characteristic, it’s not possible to make a selective insecticide. Yes, it’s a nicotine analog that’s implicated - nicotine itself was once used as a pesticide but proved to be so indiscriminately toxic it’s now banned in most places.
Yet another reason for not using this shit. It absolutely drives me nuts when politicians say, “ah yes, but this is the only way we can feed the world”. What a load of cobblers. Even the pesticide/fertiliser advocates estimate that, in aggregate, the chemicals add only a 20% productivity gain, and 30-40% of our food (in Europe/US) apparently ends up in landfill anyway.
Yes, I think the current theory is that it’s a combination of different factors. The particular item in The Economist suggests that sublethal doses cause a hive to produce fewer queens, or none at all.
However, the really scary part is, it’s not just the bees - many insects are pollinators (typically with different plant preferences), and insecticides get them all, to a greater or lesser extent.
It’s like these friggin old fart idiots on the road where I walk my dogs everyday, cutting trees (letting them die actually by removing the bark) and planting more and more bamboo … results in less and less flowers for bees and other insects as butterflies … adding a shitload of chemical fertilizer on the bamboo … just to get more shoots every year, they’ve never enough. No conservation of hillside land as this kind of bamboo farming does not add anything at preventing landslides because root growth is just local around the bamboo and the loose soil needs artificial support.