Mysterious disappearance of American honey bees

Mysterious disappearance of American honey bees

news.yahoo.com

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US beekeepers have been stung in recent months by the mysterious disappearance of millions of bees threatening honey supplies as well as crops which depend on the insects for pollination.

(visit the link for the full news article)

This could be bad. Whats your take on it? It could be detrimental to the economy and the food supply. So much for bio fuels.

news.yahoo.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

I found some more information out on this . I too have noticed a decrease in the amount of Bees in my area. For the past couple of years, I have seen less and less around my yard and my pool. Now that could be because we recently re-sided the house and took a bunch of the flowers out but it might not be. Here is what I found.

"How much of our food production do we want to turn over to other
countries that might be friendly now and not friendly in the future? The federal government is looking at this and my question is: Are honey bees the canary in the coal mine? What are honey bees trying to tell us that we humans should be paying more attention to?" - Jerry Hayes, Chief, Apiary Section, Florida Dept. of Agriculture, Gainsville, Florida

www.organicconsumers.org...

Sounds a bit ominous, if you ask me. Could Bees be the Canary in the coal mine? For what Global Warming maybe, or as this article states pesticides could be the cause.

March 16, 2007 Washington, D. C. - In my previous February 23, 2007, Earthfiles and Coast to Coast AM news updates about the mysterious honey bee disappearances, I interviewed a Pennsylvania honey beekeeper who has had nearly 2,000 of his 2900 hives disappear - a 60% loss to date. That is David Hackenberg of Hackenberg Apiary in Pennsylvania. He said he had never seen so many deserted hives that were also left alone by predator moths and beetles. That's why he suspects some kind of pesticide is getting into the flower pollen and nectar and poisoning the hives.

www.organicconsumers.org...

WOW...That is pretty much all I can say. That is a huge decrease in Bee Hives, in just that one area of the country. This can have a drastic impact on many things. If we keep going down this road, of killing off our own agricultural areas because of pesticides, we are in for some big trouble, on many levels. One big one I see is having to rely more on stuff from over-seas. That is no good, I would think, especially with the "Bunk" Chinese Pet Food.

China is investigating U.S. claims that a Chinese company exported contaminated wheat gluten implicated in pet deaths in the United States, a Chinese official said Friday, the first time the government has weighed in on the issue.

"We are investigating this," Zeng Xing, an official with the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, told The Associated Press. The administration monitors the export of food, animals and farm products.

Chinese Pet Food Deaths

How long do you think it will be until We start to get sick mysteriously from 'Tainted' food we get from over-seas?

Another thing, I think, less Bees will effect is our corn crops. If this happens we are screwed. Even more so now that we can use corn for fuel and are actually planning to increase our nation wide corn production.

(CBS) Gas prices are passing $3 a gallon and climbing, oil companies are making record profits and there is serious concern about this country’s dependence on foreign oil. Those things have sparked a lot of talk about using something else, instead of oil, to fuel our cars.

As correspondent Dan Rather reports, Brazil faced similar problems and already has solved most of them. Instead of gasoline, many Brazilians are using ethanol – which can be made from plants into a kind of alcohol – to power their cars. It’s cheaper and cleaner. As a result, Brazil has virtually stopped importing expensive foreign oil.

Corn For Fuel

I know many people hate Bees and are glad to see them go. However, this is a very big deal. First the Bees, then the Crops, then Us. Not now, but years in the future, this will be effecting our society and our way of life.

I hope honey dont run out , I also hope bees stay alive

I know at one time there was a lot of 'buzz' over the North American influx of Africanized (killer) bees. If memory serves me correctly there were attempts at the state and federal level in the mid 90's in some parts of the USA to eradicate the "Africanized Bees".

I am not sure what methods or possible pesticides where used, but I wonder if it may have some how affected the population of American honey bees?

The decline is obvious where I am living now, especially on fruit bearing trees, last year there were hardly any, this year could be worse.

Well I must say this is kind of odd. As much as I hate bee's I've noticed a substantial decrease in their numbers around my area too. Which of course I can't say I'm too depressed about, but it is kind of unusual considering I live in upstate Illinois where there hasn't been any kind of worry about Africanized bee's that I know of. Come to think of it, mosquito's haven't been to prevalent either so it makes me wonder what's going on.

Could there be some sort of virus or bacteria that's going around and killing them off? Perhaps it's a natural response to overpopulation. Or maybe it's just like that episode of Smallville where some girl was controlling all the bee's.

in the Fragile Earth and Science sections, there are at least two threads covering the issue and possible causes:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

www.abovetopsecret.com...


i doubt it's all that mysterious, honey stocks of abandoned hives are reportedly left untouched by predators and other bees, which means that something is wrong with them.

in other words, analysing for toxins sounds like a good idea and i'm sure it has been done already, it's just likely that people weren't too enamored with the results.

Originally posted by digitalassassin

Another thing, I think, less Bees will effect is our corn crops. If this happens we are screwed. Even more so now that we can use corn for fuel and are actually planning to increase our nation wide corn production.

Don't worry, corn doesn't require bees for pollination.

I read about this a while back . . .

all the honey bees were at my house for an entire week!!!!!!!!! in my holy flowering bushes.

For the first time since I planted the holy bushes in my driveway I noticed that this year with the warm weather we had for two weeks my bushes were flowering . . .

They got full of hundreds of honey bees they were buzzing so much that I became scare of an invasion

But I was able to do my early spring yard work around them and while they will buzz me around to tell me I was getting to close to them . . . I didn't got attacked by any of them. . .

Also I had plenty of bumble bees all around.

BTW I have a big garden with plenty of flowering bushes and other seasonal flowering plants.

Perhaps that is why I had so many honey bees in my yard.

Pause and play... pause and play. I couldn't resist while watching the trailer for "Happening" by M. Night.

If you pause in the very beginning, look on the blackboard and there the old Einstein statement pops up:

"If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man."

I know there's gonna be made gallons of soup of M. Nights movie, and I somehow feel that he's just doing what every smart business man would do... talk about what is happening here and now.

Below the Einstein statement is a R. Frost poem:

On glossy wires artistically bent,
He draws himself up to his full extent.
His natty wings with self-assurance perk.
His stinging quarters menacingly work.
Poor egotist, he has no way of knowing
But he's as good as anybody going.

An ironic poem that depicts the fall of the proud.

There is no doubt in what M. Night wants to say here and while it may only be an artists anger towards an establishment that has failed the small man, the relations between current events and his choice of strong words both in subtle and direct comments are nice enough to build more conspiracy on... aren't they?
Also note that from the year 2007 we have - 4 years left. So we will see the end of 2011 and then, well, either we have bees again or... I don't know.

I'm pretty sure there's more to this than just bees dying... both in that movie and in real life.

On a side note... my father inlaws, previously thriving, bee colony died out last year too...

[edit on 25/2/08 by flice]

I've read that corn pollinates itself.
From one stalk to the next as the wind blows.

Ironic that we'll still be able to grow 'fuel' honeybees or not.

I don't know what other - if any - veggies can grow without bees, but it's probably not too many.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`

Marg, I don't know what part of the country you're in, but if you're in the South/West be very careful of bee swarms.

Killer Bees have crossed the border from Mexico and are creating problems in Arizona and have been found as far north as Central California.

Seems that typical gasoline powered yard equipment sets them off and perhaps that could set off the usual honey bees.

Just a few days back a Phoenix man, his son and two dogs were attacked by killer bees.
The father and son made it into the house although a few bees followed.
Bad part was, the two dogs were stung to death.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Didn't we have some posts here on ATS 6-10 months back or so?
And some findings were that the honey bees had contracted a virus?

Almost 80% of the bee colonies here in the Netherlands did not survive the winter due to illness. I suspect this illness is very likely to take place in more European (mainland) countries. I don't know much about bees but maybe it's related.

reply to post by Desert Dawg

You are correct about self pollination of the corn plant. Calm air and high humidity allows the pollen fall close. Windy and dry, the pollen will travel far.

Bees are naturally attracted to purple!



Plant pleny of purple flowers and watch them invade your garden!


they seem to love lavander

reply to post by MikeboydUS

There's not a single honey bee where I live in near Chester, Pennsylvania ( next to Linvilla Orchards ) as compared to last year of June( 2011). Fields of clover go unpollinated except for some small bumblebees doing the job. Possibly the magnetic field is too weak to follow back home or UV radiation is at a record high (which leads to blindness). Certain bacteria benefit by increased UV radiation to the shorter wavelengths and multiply so successfully as to even kill your white blood cells off at a rapid rate to build up deposits in your arteries and tubules in the Isles of Langerhans causing heart disease, Alzheimer's and Diabetes 2. The "clots" are not blood but mixtures of millions if dead white blood cells lying together with millions of dead spirochaetes(bacteria). Do people open their mouths toward the sun while sunbathing or tanning under tanning lights?

I've kept an eye on the bees in my area. The biggest indication for me is in the early spring, when the first trees begin to bloom. This is when the bees are just starting to get out after the winter and only a few wild flowers are blooming. During this time the woods are filled with a constant buzzing coming from the tree tops and the swarms of bees that are feeding on the newly opening buds. I think they are after the maples mostly.

Anyway, the buzz was quite loud all around our area this spring. After the violets and dandelions bloomed, I more closely observed the bees and found European honey bees, two or three types of wild honey bees and two different bumble bees, along with hover flies and beetles on the flowers.

I'm currently waiting to see if my garden is properly pollinated this year, but I don't think that will be a problem.

Here's a new article about a parasite that's spreading a virus through bee colonies. They are watching it spreading through Hawaii which up until now has been untouched.

Bee parasite

I hate yellow jackets but I have not seen any of them this year yet. I think that honey bees and yellow jackets are alomst tthe same bee so I am wondering about this. Something is going on and I think it is just getting started.

I've been attending Beekeeper meetups here in my area, I had planned to start a couple of hives this year, but I got started too late to get the worker bees. I'm going to wait until next Jan/Feb now. Anyway, the local beekeepers here are constantly battling Hive Beetle. Apparently the bees can keep it under control if the hive is in direct sunlight, and the hive is healthy, and if you keep it cleaned out every so often, but if the beetles get a decent foothold, they take over the hive and the bees move out or die.

I haven't heard of any dramatic die offs here in North Florida since I've been talking to folks.

I think a lot of the problem comes from the big major beekeepers transporting their bees cross-country. It spreads ailments, and it stresses the hives.

Also, I can't help but think of America as the "Land of Milk and Honey," but it seems we are losing our credit rating, our innovation, our work ethic, our morality, and so it makes sense we would also lose our milk and honey.

The mites are killin em....