Millions of honey bees killed in apparent poisoning

Here is a map showing the cell phone towers in Brevard County.
www.city-data.com...

I doubt this is the cause since you can see Micco on the map and the closest cell tower is a good distance away.

reply to post by rbrtj


Good question and it has rained recently, but I doubt radioactive fallout would be the cause. If it were, I believe we'd be seeing hives dropping across the state and not isolated to one county.

I believe we can also rule out any radiation and frequency interference emitting from radio and cell towers, too. As well as Wi-Fi.

reply to post by Afterthought


Coincidentally - I just had revisited one of burntheships old threads on colony collapse disorder. Could be relevant here.

Caught Red Handed! USDA Bee Extinction Study Kept Secret!

reply to post by soficrow


Thanks for posting that and pointing out the devious plot they have for the honey bees.

Looking at the map in the Op, I noticed that there haven't been any bee deaths along the New Madrid. I find this peculiar. Maybe they're staying away from this area so they know if bee deaths start happening here, they'll know it's from a different trigger other than what's being caused by their experiments?

I'll have to read the thread and come back to say if I notice anything else that strikes me as odd as well as anything that is similar to this die-off.

reply to post by Afterthought


I'm with Maxmars on that.

I'm assuming some of the dead bees have gone to a scientific lab to be tested?

Very important data from another ATS member, this was sent for me to post to this thread.

Pesticide issues in the works: Honeybee colony collapse disorder
world of pollinators poster illustrating a variety of animals and plants on around a picture of the earth


Current as of February 18, 2011
Discovering a problem

During the winter of 2006-2007, some beekeepers began to report unusually high losses of 30-90 percent of their hives. As many as 50 percent of all affected colonies demonstrated symptoms inconsistent with any known causes of honeybee death: sudden loss of a colony’s worker bee population with very few dead bees found near the colony. The queen and brood (young) remained, and the colonies had relatively abundant honey and pollen reserves. But hives cannot sustain themselves without worker bees and would eventually die. This combination of events resulting in the loss of a bee colony has been called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).

Though agricultural records from more than a century ago note occasional bee “disappearances” and “dwindling” colonies in some years, it is uncertain whether the colonies had the same combination of factors associated with CCD. What we do know from the most recent data from beekeepers for 2009 is that that CCD appears to still be with us. www.epa.gov...

Dead bees don’t necessarily mean CCD

Certain pesticides are harmful to bees. That’s why we require instructions for protecting bees on the labels of pesticides that are known to be particularly harmful to bees. This is one of many reasons why everyone must read and follow pesticide label instructions. When most or all of the bees in a hive are killed by overexposure to a pesticide, we call that a beekill incident resulting from acute pesticide poisoning. But acute pesticide poisoning of a hive is very different from CCD and is almost always avoidable.

There have been several incidents of acute poisoning of honeybees covered in the popular media in recent years, but sometimes these incidents are mistakenly associated with CCD. A common element of acute pesticide poisoning of bees is, literally, a pile of dead bees outside the hive entrance. With CCD, there are very few if any dead bees near the hive. Piles of dead bees are an indication that the incident is not colony collapse disorder. Indeed, heavily diseased colonies can also exhibit large numbers of dead bees near the hive.
Why it's happening

There have been many theories about the cause of CCD, but the researchers who are leading the effort to find out why are now focused on these factors:

increased losses due to the invasive varroa mite (a pest of honeybees);
new or emerging diseases such as Israeli Acute Paralysis virus and the gut parasite Nosema;
pesticide poisoning through exposure to pesticides applied to crops or for in-hive insect or mite control;
bee management stress;
foraging habitat modification
inadequate forage/poor nutrition and
potential immune-suppressing stress on bees caused by one or a combination of factors identified above.

Additional factors may include poor nutrition, drought, and migratory stress brought about by the increased need to move bee colonies long distances to provide pollination services.www.epa.gov...

reply to post by Destinyone


Thanks for forwarding that important info! I wish the member who sent it to you would've contributed it, but that's OK. As long as it got added, the rest doesn't matter.

As one poster asked on this page, yes, the bees have been sent for testing and I'll post it as soon as I see it. Unless someone beats me to it!

There are just so many reasons for the deaths that it's almost as if the cause of death will be stated as unknown. Unless parasites or chemicals are found, they'll probably just chalk it up as another case of CCD. But the more I read about CCD, the more it seems as though it's just some answer to give instead of stating "I don't know". Sometimes I feel as though scientists and government agencies are allergic to this phrase, so instead they make up an illness or cause in order to sound smarter and more professional.
"Let's just call it CCD!" It's almost as if you could put CCD, ADD, and ADHD all in the same alphabet "catch phrase" catagory. (I don't mean to offend anyone who believes in ADD or ADHD, I'm simply saying that it is sometimes overused when there might be another reason.)

We'll have to wait and see....

He would have, if he could have....time out in the corner methinks...

Des

reply to post by Destinyone


Ah! Understood.
Please tell him I said, "Thank you!"

reply to post by Afterthought


Have you heard of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) They have reported that up to 96% of the bees have died off worldwide. They think they are losing their way when they try to go back to their hive. They have also noticed that they are diseased...possibly from strong pesticides and GMO food. www.dailykos.com...

burt's bees commercial in 2007 when only 70% of population of bees was gone...www.youtube.com...

en.wikipedia.org...

Albert Einstein once said: “If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live. No more bees, no more pollination … no more men!” He wasn’t an entomologist, but entomologists around today agree that the sudden and mysterious disappearance of bees from their hives poses serious problems!


We are headed for a famine mentioned in Revelation in the Bible. Black horse of the apocalypse.

reply to post by kwell


Thanks for posting the Burt's Bees commercial. I do enjoy their products! (And now I know there's really a Burt!)

I found it eerie that the commercial says (paraphrasing) "If you haven't heard of Colony Collapse Disorder, you will". It's as though they knew it was going to get worse and there wasn't anything anyone could do about it.

Originally posted by Quadrivium
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.

Beekeeping is also a hobby of mine, taught to me by my grandfather. My dad (who is a parapaledgic), shares in my interests, and we are both members of our local county's beekeeping association. We have 4 hives, about 8 supers this year for harvest, and I estimate our yield to be about 200-300 pounds of honey. We had a wet spring, but the goldenrod did well, and we'll have to extract in a few more weeks.

As my grandfather used to say, (god rest his soul for over 25 years now) you can move a hive 10 miles, but not 10 feet. You have to be careful about stressing them too much.

Bees being poisoned is heinous. I'll be throwing in more comments. I consider myself to be an active apiarist.

Got more reading to do....

reply to post by Druid42


Thanks for your input! I hope you don't experience any devastation with your hives and that your yield is high.
Your grandfather sounded like a very wise man. Since he had an appreciation and fondness for bees, I'm sure the latest news has him rolling in his grave. You're lucky he taught you what he knew and are using it. I'm sure you're making him proud!

Here's an interesting article about how hives in cities (specifically Chicago) are thriving:
"Amid bee die-off, healthy hives thrive in cities" - July 2011

The Chicago bees' success could be due to the city's abundant and mostly pesticide-free flowers. Many bee experts believe city bees have a leg up on country bees these days because of a longer nectar flow, with people planting flowers that bloom from spring to fall, and organic gardening practices. Not to mention the urban residents who are building hives at a brisk pace.

Beekeeping is thriving in cities across the nation, driven by young hobbyists and green entrepreneurs. Honey from city hives makes its way into swanky restaurant kitchens and behind the bar, where it's mixed into cocktails or stars as an ingredient in honey wine.

news.yahoo.com...

One word. MONSANTO
It's a shame it had to bee honey bee's of all things.

I hope ya don't mind, but here are a few pics of my beekeeping activities. Bees are a very important part of the eco-system, and so far, our hives are strong and healthy. No worries in the NE part of the country.

Here's a pic of Dad and I with a cart of four supers to add. "Supers" is the term used to denote the small crate like boxes we stack on top, with honeycomb and ten "frames" of honey. They haven't been painted yet, much to my groanings, but Dad wanted them on asap. We'll paint them after we extract this year, as they are extra add ons to the hive. That is the surplus honey bees make each year, and depending on the hive strength, they'll have a hive body and one or two supers to survive the winter.


Here's a "frame" of honey. Notice in the upper left corner it's whiter than the rest of the frame. The bees have "capped" that portion of the comb off already. This frame, from the middle of the hive, is 50% full. Time to add another super.


Empty, the super weighs about 5 pounds. When we go to extract this fall, it'll weigh 30-50 lbs. All honey. Thanks bees!


If you count carefully, there is the main hive body, plus the 6 inch tall "supers". All total, there are twelve supers, the four unpainted ones added in a several weeks ago. I said earlier, 8 for extracting, leaving 1 per hive, but before we think about extracting, we'll inspect each hive carefully, and determine which ones need the extra honey. Even 6 supers for extracting is 180-300 lbs of honey per year.


I'm considering my own beekeeping thread now. I'd love to make a thread detailing the extraction process in a few weeks. Hhmmm, something to ponder.

Being an apiarist after TSHTF will be a valuable skill to teach. Bee honey is basically free, after the initial expense of the wooden frames, it is a natural sweetener, and sugar supplies (processed sugar) will be in short demand. I think it will be a valuable commodity to trade then, but in the meantime, it's one of those nearly forgotten skills that druids are so fond of.

Here is the latest on the bee die-off in Brevard (updated two hours ago).
It includes a video and states that the police are sure that the bees have been poisoned. Since this is getting so much attention, I'm hoping their determination from the lab results are soon in coming.

Millions of bees were found dead, and investigators said they believe the bees were poisoned.

www.wesh.com...

reply to post by Druid42


Wow! Thanks for adding the pics!

I'd love for you to put a beekeeping thread together! I'd certainly read up on it and pass it onto my sister and her husband. They have 3 acres and could do this easily. I have to say though, I was disappointed to read that they weigh 30 to 50 pounds when they're full. This rules out me doing this on my own.

reply to post by Afterthought


I am definitely interested in this story. Thanks for keeping the updates flowing.

I hope it is a criminal act, and not a naturally occurring thing.

Will stay tuned...