Millions of honey bees killed in apparent poisoning

Originally posted by Maxmars
Local economic sabotage?
Monsanto grudge?
Industrial sabotage (competitors)?


Frankly, we need to see more details flowing in. It's a shame we can't hear from those victimized by this; but I guess their on-going investigation may be compromised by interviews....

edit on 30-9-2011 by Maxmars because: (no reason given)

I'll go with number 2 for $1,000, Alex.

The pressure is coming down on these guys. They even started a PR campaign.

Found some potentially interesting information that may warrant further inquiry:

MICROBIOLOGISTS at Cardiff University have found that a spoonful of honey packs more punch against bacteria than many antibiotics.

In fact, it can even kill off the notorius MRSA superbug which is resistant to antibiotics and plagues many hospitals. Honey can also attack bacteria inside the body such as heliobacter pylori- the resistant bacteria that causes stomach ulcers.

This could be indicative of sabotage. Pharmaceutical companies hate to lose profits and fear public knowledge concerning natural treatments. Although, why Brevard County would still be questionable.

To make matters worse a new pest to honey bees, named the Hive Beetle has raised it's ugly head. The small hive beetle, was first discovered in Florida in June of 1998 and has now been found in 3 other states, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. The small hive beetle can be a destructive pest of honey bee colonies, causing damage to comb, stored honey and pollen. If a beetle infestation is sufficiently heavy, they may cause bees to abandon their hive.

This says that they will abandon the colony, not necessarily die as if from poisoning. Perhaps a pesticide designed to kill these beetles, if problematic in Florida, has inadvertently also killed the bees?

WHERE HAVE ALL THE BEES GONE?

A warm fall, a long cold winter and to top it off a cold spring and a nasty, parasitic mite have brought Quebec's and Ontario's bee industry to its knees.

Half of Quebec's 35,000 beehives have been lost, along with countless others in Ontario affecting not only honey producers but also fruit cultivators who rent bees for pollination.

I distinctly remember Florida having a particularly cold winter. The main concern was the citrus crops, but perhaps the threat to bee colonies was overlooked? About this mite:

The major cause of this is the varroa mite which are becoming resistant to known treatment. The Mite has spread all through Europe leaving beekeepers with none or very few bees. Losses of 95% have been reported in the Niagara region with the average loss in Ontario sitting at 50%. The long cold winter has not helped. Honey bees cannot move at temperatures below 45%F and with extendedthe periods of cold Ontario experienced this winter, bees were not able to move over to fresh supplies of honey and therefore starved with frames of honey only inches away.

The blood-sucking varroa mite arrived from the United States in 1991.

The below interested me since it specifically mentions that the bees die from apparent poisoning. Again, not sure yet if it has any relevance specifically to Brevard County. I will continue to look for information related to this residue.

It was found that high levels of spinosad residues (about 10 times what bees should experience in the environment) caused rapid colony death. Colonies exposed to more realistic levels of spinosad in pollen did not show any lethal effects and only minimal immediate colony health effects.

and last, but not least:

Adult bees that have been exposed to a pesticide during larval development may display symptoms of poisoning that are not detected with current tests required by regulatory agencies. In order to ensure sustainable food production, agricultural pesticides need to be safe for wild pollinators.

Source: www.weatherbee.on.ca...

reply to post by chasingbrahman


Monsanto started a PR campaign?
Can you post a link to this? I'm very interested in what it entails.

reply to post by lpowell0627


Thank you for adding that wealth of information!

I didn't know that honey was a natural antibiotic. The fact that Florida just started allowing natural honey to be sold has the bells going off in my head. Seeing as bacterial infections are getting stronger and more resistant to pharma antibiotics, I've been researching holistic treatments. I've found Oregano as well as an oil called On Guard sold by doTERRA kills MRSA.

I've heard that eating honey from other areas other than the one you live in can give you an allergic reaction, so I best be stocking up on the honey in my area before all the bees are gone and I can't get any.

If these bee's were intentionally poisened the way these hives were spread out it seems to me it would have taken several people to pull this off. But i'm no bee expert so i don't really know. This thread needs to be kept updated, this is a mystery indeed.

Originally posted by Manhater
If only it would kill my yellow jacket hive, I'll be happy. Omg, have they doubled.

I was severely stung my a yellow jacket nest several years ago. Had them covered all up and down my legs, hundreds of stings. All through my hair, all over my back, it was horrid.

Put me down and out for a couple of days.

Then, I went back one night with several cans of Spectracide. All I could think of was the line from Independence Day... "Hello boys, I'm BACK"!!!

No more Yellow Jackets.

You need to get rid of them, once they get the nest large enough, they almost turn into killer bees, they start to expand the distance that they will defend the nest.

Well, India is suing monsanto for a reason..
Also the post stating about a possible tie-in to big pharma-- honey is a natural antibiotic, is the only food source that will not go bad, can still (gasp) be sold in a fairly natural state without all those processing chemicals, also has been proven personally for aiding asthma - any asthma sufferers out there?

Try about a tablespoon of honey a day and see how much you need your asthma meds in a few short months.

Killing the bees may seem to fit into a few agendas.

This thread does need to be watched and updated.

Its a "birds and the bees" thing - once they go, thats about it.
Will state the obvious - pollination.

I'll do the best I can keeping this thread updated with the latest info. Hopefully the results of the tests they're running won't take too long. I just hope they aren't buried and never reported on. If I don't see anything further about this, I'll contact the beekeeper in the article myself and ask him what was determined.

All the best in your digging - wouldn't surprise me if its extra tough to do.
Which makes your reporting of this all the more important.

We'll keep our eyes/ears open for more as well.
What is happening before our eyes??

reply to post by ItsEvolutionBaby


Thank you for your wishes and, yes, I'll take all the help I can get!
Together we can get to the bottom of this.

And, folks, please keep an eye out for any articles in your area that may report similar bee deaths. This would be a huge help. I don't believe this is going to stay as an isolated incident. This may have been an experiment to see if the chemical(s) used did the job. After all, whatever was used to kill them only took one day to erradicate several colonies.

This article mentions how the beekeeper is reporting that there was no tampering noticed with his gate either. So, it must've come from the air.
www.tcpalm.com...

I just performed a search for "recent bee colony deaths" and this article from March 2011 came up:
blog.targethealth.com...

In the US, bee keepers are experiencing unprecedented die offs of bees some losing as much as 80% of their colonies. Commercial beekeepers in 22 states have reported deaths of tens of thousands of honeybee colonies. So far the cause remains unexplained and somewhat mysterious. It is being called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) and is causing agricultural honeybees nationwide to abandon their hives and disappear and raising worries about crops that need bees for pollination. It’s a kind of mass suicide in the bee world. “There have been cases where there have been these die-offs of bees before, but we have never seen it to this level,” said Maryann Frazier, a Pennsylvania State University entomologist. “One operation after another is collapsing.”

The unusual phenomenon was first noticed by eastern beekeepers starting last fall. Researchers, including some connected with the Penn State University College of Agricultural Sciences, have identified some of the possible contributors, but have not yet found a single cause.

Why on the eastern side of the country?

The article goes on to speak about Florida:

Florida apiarists say citrus growers are compounding the problem by spraying pesticides to kill off a dangerous pest that menaces fruit trees, wiping out bees at the same time. While a combination of problems is putting the bee population in peril, it’s the phenomenon of the animals suddenly deserting their hives, never to return, that has observers most baffled.

And this:

No single cause drought chemicals/pesticides, mites, bacteria, a fungus or virus seems to be common to all the events or even indicated as a cause in any single event. Extreme weather and temperature fluctuations seem to play a major role stressing the bees and weakening their immune systems.

Another unusual factor is that bees sensing a dying colony nearby aren’t going in right away and killing the other bees and robbing the hive of honey, like they usually do for example when the bees have died of parasites or disease.

Also, unlike when bees are killed by some other causes (disease, mites), there are no dead bees littering the bottom of a hive. The bees are simply gone, he said, or perhaps a queen and a few younger bees remain, but the adults have disappeared.

“Replacing the Gulf Coast bee colonies, although highly important, is not enough. It is obvious that the huge losses suffered during the past 16 years must be dealt with to provide security for our future honey bee-dependent food supplies. It will take a well-defined series of coordinated efforts by all components of the beekeeping industry and the involvement of local, state and federal governmental entities to solve this potentially disastrous situation,” says John Roberts, a beekeeper and President of Nature Technics Corporation.

It's quite a lengthy article and I encourage everyone to take the time to read it in its entirety. It appears that most of the studies are being conducted in Pennsylvania.

It's disheartening to hear that the scientists, so far, have not identified a cause for the mass die-offs. I just hope that Monsanto isn't funding the studies.

I sure hope the deaths in Brevard County help figure this mystery out as this is the only silver lining I can see.

Aargh! Not the bees again? Wasn't it only last year the same thing happened? I'm not a great bug or flying thing lover but bees are special and deserve all our help. I hope you don't mind me posting this, 20 bee facts but I love the little critters and maybe some out there find it informative. Thanks for posting!

1. The honey bee has been around for millions of years.
2. Honey bees, scientifically also known as Apis mellifera, are environmentally friendly and are vital as pollinators.
3. It is the only insect that produces food eaten by man.
4. Honey is the only food that includes all the substances necessary to sustain life, including enzymes, vitamins, minerals, and water; and it's the only food that contains "pinocembrin", an antioxidant associated with improved brain functioning.
5. Honey bees have 6 legs, 2 compound eyes made up of thousands of tiny lenses (one on each side of the head), 3 simple eyes on the top of the head, 2 pairs of wings, a nectar pouch, and a stomach.
6. Honey bees have 170 odorant receptors, compared with only 62 in fruit flies and 79 in mosquitoes. Their exceptional olfactory abilities include kin recognition signals, social communication within the hive, and odor recognition for finding food. Their sense of smell was so precise that it could differentiate hundreds of different floral varieties and tell whether a flower carried pollen or nectar from metres away.
7. The honey bee's wings stroke incredibly fast, about 200 beats per second, thus making their famous, distinctive buzz. A honey bee can fly for up to six miles, and as fast as 15 miles per hour.
8. The average worker bee produces about 1/12th teaspoon of honey in her lifetime.
9. A hive of bees will fly 90,000 miles, the equivalent of three orbits around the earth to collect 1 kg of honey.
10. It takes one ounce of honey to fuel a bee’s flight around the world.
11. A honey bee visits 50 to 100 flowers during a collection trip.
12. The bee's brain is oval in shape and only about the size of a sesame seed, yet it has remarkable capacity to learn and remember things and is able to make complex calculations on distance travelled and foraging efficiency.
13. A colony of bees consists of 20,000-60,000 honeybees and one queen. Worker honey bees are female, live for about 6 weeks and do all the work.
14. The queen bee can live up to 5 years and is the only bee that lays eggs. She is the busiest in the summer months, when the hive needs to be at its maximum strength, and lays up to 2500 eggs per day. Click here to learn more about the Honey Bee Life Cycle,
honey bee facts image
15. Larger than the worker bees, the male honey bees (also called drones), have no stinger and do no work at all. All they do is mating.
16. Each honey bee colony has a unique odour for members’ identification.
17. Only worker bees sting, and only if they feel threatened and they die once they sting. Queens have a stinger, but they don’t leave the hive to help defend it.
18. It is estimated that 1100 honey bee stings are required to be fatal.
19. Honey bees communicate with one another by "dancing".
20. During winter, honey bees feed on the honey they collected during the warmer months. They form a tight cluster in their hive to keep the queen and themselves warm.

reply to post by Afterthought

CCD (colony collapse disorder) is not nessasarily a "die off" in most cases the bees just up and leave the hives.
They leave all the honey, brood and everything behind, with no sign of where or why they went.

I am not a commercial bee keeper as in I do not rent my hives out. Most of CCD cases have been observed in colonies that are frequently moved for hired pollination.
Honeybees are intelligent creatures, I enjoy just sitting and watching my hives, they do some amazing things.
With that being said, they do have a couple of interesting qualities.
Did you know that in some cases if you move a hive, in the middle of a warm spring day, just 10 feet, a lot of the worker bees will not be able to find the hive. They will go to where it was when they left it and just fly around and around?
It is recomended that if a hive must be moved, it should only be moved a couple of feet a day until it is in the desired location.
I have always felt that the constant movement of the hives by commercial beekeepers may play a role in CCD. But that's just my 2 cents. Many of the hives that are used to pollinate crops in the north east are wintered in SC, Gorgia and Florida.

reply to post by Quadrivium


Thanks for offering your knowledge on CCD, but I don't believe this is the case in Brevard. As you said, the adults simply don't come back to the hive. The hives in Brevard had several, several dead bees on the bottoms of the hives. (Please scroll through the posts and look at the article I posted and specified that a pic was included.)

If the deaths in Brevard are written off as CCD, I'll be very disappointed and be all that more suspicious that a cover up is going on.

Since some general information on bees is being shared here I though interested members may enjoy reading this:


Monsanto - Bayer Engineering Death: Bees, Bats and You?, December 8, 2010 www.abovetopsecret.com...

Sudden death of 20,000 bees in Toronto, March 2011 www.abovetopsecret.com...

Bees now disappearing worldwide, UN report warns.!!!, Spetember 2, 2011 www.abovetopsecret.com...

Originally posted by Afterthought
reply to post by Quadrivium

 

Thanks for offering your knowledge on CCD, but I don't believe this is the case in Brevard. As you said, the adults simply don't come back to the hive. The hives in Brevard had several, several dead bees on the bottoms of the hives. (Please scroll through the posts and look at the article I posted and specified that a pic was included.)

If the deaths in Brevard are written off as CCD, I'll be very disappointed and be all that more suspicious that a cover up is going on.

No, I do not believe that the lost hives in Brevard were caused by CCD either.
I was just commenting on the last article you posted which spoke about CCD.
I believe they will find that the case in Brevard was an intentional poisoning.
I will not say why I come to this conclusions until after more information has been brought forth by those working on the case.

Bees are dying all over the world at staggering rates. Birds are dropping out of the sky en masse.

Bee keepers have said publicly that only those bees with hives near cell phone tower sites seem to be affected.

Bees pollenate 80% of the food chain. If bees were to die out completely, the human race would be doomed in very short order.

reply to post by babybunnies


Yes, cell phone towers. Thanks for reminding me!

Here's a few articles covering how they may be the cause of trees, plants, and bees dying. As well as Wi-Fi.
omega.twoday.net...
www.dailytech.com...
www.bibliotecapleyades.net...

To Maxmars: Thanks for posting the ATS threads regarding this topic. I'm sure there's plenty of useful information in those as well!

Question...had it just rained recently?
Nuclear Fall out?
Rbrtj

reply to post by Quadrivium

Its easy to see who is the professional here and thanks for contributing to this thread. My uncle also had some beehives many years ago and he did the same thing as you sometimes, unprotected in their area. He would say the same thing too, it was my fault they stung me. I watched a youtube vid of their "communication dance". With the narrators explanation it just made so much sense but at the same time went to show just how intelligent and reactive to change these animals are. I must admit to not knowing about their location awareness, which for an animal that can tell others where to find the good flowers seems a little silly in hindsight, but ah well, we live and learn.

reply to post by Maxmars

I just watched the first video in the 1st thread. Very informative. When they mention E-coli it all becomes clear. Virus and cell invasion. I now know more about the whole GM thing, thanks for that. Before I had only heard of the gold injection method. An unholy science at best, methinks.

On a lighter note, it has now been scientifically noticed that despite the damage they have done, the bugs are starting to revolt against Monsanto. They are starting to develop immunity to their poison. some plants (weeds) have followed suit too, apparently.