Farmers' lack of bees might be solved by going wild

articles.latimes.com...

Wild bees pollinate orchards more efficiently then rented honeybees, and for no cost, a study finds. They may provide the solution to the mass die-off of the domesticated bees from disease.

Farmers who have watched helplessly as a mysterious disease wiped out millions of domesticated bees needed to pollinate their almonds, apples and other crops may have an easy solution: make their crops more accessible to wild insects that do the job for free.







Not only are they cheaper, they fertilize blossoms with much greater efficiency, new research shows. After observing bees in hundreds of fields on multiple continents, scientists calculated that free-living bees were twice as effective as domesticated honeybees at prompting flowers to produce fruit. In addition, the proportion of flowers that matured to fruit improved in every field visited by wild insects, compared with only 14% of fields visited by rented honeybees, according to a report published online Thursday by the journal Science

The findings have important implications for agricultural and land-use policies worldwide, said study leader Lucas A. Garibaldi, an agricultural scientist at the National University of Rio Negro in Argentina: Unless habitats for wild insects are protected and nurtured, farmers around the world could face a future of drastically lower yields. Scientists have long warned that plowing landscapes into vast, single-crop fields and orchards eliminates the range of soil, wildflowers and other vegetation that is crucial to support multiple species of wild pollinators, including bees, flies, beetles and butterflies. As these insect populations have dwindled, farmers have resorted to using rented interlopers, generally Apis mellifera, during flowering season.

"Honeybees cannot replace the service wild bees provide," Garibaldi said. "Biodiversity in agricultural landscapes matters and can help increase production."

Garibaldi and his colleagues from North and South America, Europe, Australia, Africa and the Middle East analyzed data that had been collected in earlier studies based on direct observation of insect activity in small swaths of 600 fields in 19 countries. Researchers generally counted insects, flowers and pollen grains over varying periods of time on crops that represented different landscapes and management techniques. Some fields were heavily dependent on domesticated bees; in others, wild insects prevailed. Even in fields dominated by domesticated bees, farmers often get more effective pollination services from native insects, said study coauthor Rachael Winfree, a pollination ecologist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J.

"At 90% of farms studied in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, native wild bees are fully pollinating the watermelon crop," making rented bees unnecessary, Winfree said. But farmers don't realize this. "They're thinking they need them but they don't," she said. In California, the $3-billion almond industry spends $239 million annually to rent more than 1 million bee hives every year. To get that many pollinators, growers have been renting honeybees — an increasingly expensive practice as colony collapse disorder wipes out bees by the millions, for reasons that remain poorly understood. In some California orchards, the data showed that pollination by rented honeybees got a significant boost when wild bees were present, possibly because the wild insects prompted the hired guns to fly more frequently among different varieties of trees in an orchard, said Claire Kremen, a UC Berkeley conservation biologist who contributed to the study. However, she noted that most almond fields don't receive that benefit because habitat for wild insects has been destroyed. Laurence Packer, who studies wild bees at York University in Toronto and wasn't involved with the new report, praised the work for its breadth and geographical scope. The findings are important and should be taken seriously, he said.

]"Honeybees aren't all they're cracked up to be," Packer said. "Other bees are far more important than people thought."

I thought this was interesting and wanted to inform the community that the bees have a fighting chance for survival. For a while we were all shouting doom and gloom but with bio diversity integration * an ecosystem? durr?* we can push the survival of our little critters that keep the plants alive and blooming.

If this was posted elsewhere my apologies, But this is good news indeed.

reply to post by CrypticSouthpaw


My question with ALL this? How long will it take the wild bee to become infected with GMO based crops, if they haven't already?

S&F for the info.

for the past few days my place of employment has been swarmed by honey looking bee's. They looking for a new nest or something?

Originally posted by sonnny1
reply to post by CrypticSouthpaw

 

My question with ALL this? How long will it take the wild bee to become infected with GMO based crops, if they haven't already?

S&F for the info.

Bees are already infected with viruses, In fact a lot of their seeking flowers and such has to do with the co-existence of the viral genes that allow them to do so. But its not lot scientists are gunna rush out to conclusions without gathering every piece of evidence and then coming forward and saying. *Viruses are terrible things. But in light of things, Are inactively programmed*

But such a statement would beg the question of GMO crops and population control.

I can show you a little about what i mean, The dis-information is there for a reason- because these tests are actively being done on all wakes of life humans alike. Take a gander at some of the veiled science that is pretty much shielded from the public.

Inactivation of a non-enveloped RNA virus by artificial ribonucleases: honey bees and acute bee paralysis virus as a new experimental model for in vivo antiviral activity assessment.

Abstract RNA-containing viruses represent a global threat to the health and wellbeing of humans and animals. Hence, the discovery of new approaches for the design of novel vaccines and antiviral compounds attains high attention. Here we describe the potential of artificial ribonucleases (aRNases), low molecular weight compounds capable to cleave phosphodiester bonds in RNA under mild conditions, to act as antiviral compounds via destroying the genome of non-enveloped RNA viruses, and the potential of utilizing honey bee larvae and adult bees (Apis mellifera) as a novel experimental system for the screening of new antiviral compounds. Pre-incubation of an Acute bee paralysis virus (ABPV) suspension with aRNases D3-12, K-D-1 or Dp12F6 in a concentration-dependent manner increased the survival rate of bee larvae and adult bees subsequently infected with these preparations, whereas incubation of the virus with aRNases ABL3C3 or L2-3 had no effect at all. The results of RT-PCR analysis of viral RNA isolated from aRNase-treated virus particles confirmed that virus inactivation occurs via degradation of viral genomic RNA: dose-dependent inactivation of ABPV correlates well with the cleavage of viral RNA. Electron microscopy analysis revealed that the morphology of ABPV particles inactivated by aRNases remains unaffected as compared to control virus preparations. Altogether the obtained results clearly demonstrate the potential of aRNases as a new virus inactivation agents and bee larvae/ABPV as a new in vivo system for the screening of antiviral compounds.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...
Such viruses are only killing the bees because 1. they attached to a host hive where some bees were adequately genetically viable for vial mutation. 2. The bees that have not developed the niche against it are at risk, all of them. And until those bees start reproducing it will be mass extinction for a while. People are thinking OH MY GOD THIS ISN"T NATURAL

Actually it is, And it's been going on for a very very long time. We just recently had a population boom as well as technology boom and WHAT. OMG MY GOD MASS EXTRINNSTINSS? HOWWW?

^ its simple. Evolution. Survival of the fittest. And the method of saving the bees that are not carrying the appropriate genes will be administered them. The problem in this tho, is that the experiments cannot stop. Once they start, humanity must keep up with all the advancing bacteria and viruses. And it really is a race, We dance with our survival and the survival of other beings on all spectrums of life.

GMO is terrible. because of a couple reasons. 1. The grains and such are not meant for people, they are GMO pet grade pretty much but they don't tell you that because they feed all the same. 2. They are not telling people about the genetic experiments on the masses they are doing. Which is quite obvious. 3. The people who are doing the GMO... We all know how main stream science works. The guidelines and morals and such behind them. They can only learn and go so far, People will see the younger generation push advancements beyond current understandings very soon. A lot of the stigma must be lifted. And disclosure about these experiments must be done, as well as offering the viral gene therapy that has been discovered. If we are to be a free race from outside influences, And understand our sickness and cure it. But not banish it. We will become a powerful race.... very.... very quickly. As long as we avoid conversion into nano-bionics. The people of the virus will always triumph. But with this, The evolution must be applied to many wakes of life in order to prevent mass extinction. But the rewards, Are evolution with leaps and bounds.

A good use in nano robots would be air born robots with properly activated viral material. The possibilities with these could be devastating if used to kill or could be quite beneficial in rapidly evolving species before our eyes. Wait for a niche to pop up. Find it isolate it. then take samples and reactivate, send the bots out again for another bio update.

If used in the right hands, we could be looking at the elimination of all current diseases( there would be new ones! lol well same effects sort of but different viruses alltogether)

but there will always be random flesh eating diseases that nanobots wouldn't be-able to do much about in certain cases.

So even tho people may get sick or appear to be sick a lot less. People will actually be sick, Toxic. But just wont show symptoms.

This is the beauty of it all. If there is exposure to this, The *cures* can be adminsters and no the cures are not vaccines. That is totally different. You don't weaken a virus *facepalm* You code it differently. lol.
But i can see this being a scary topic. People die from disease all the time everyday and people die in epidemics and such. But if the gov would administer them after full complete testing, We would see great changes in the population. BUT it has to be FULL disclosure. They cannot just hand you something without telling you what it will fully do. If this system works out. We would see really GOOD change in humanity, Loss of colorblindess. Control over schizophrenia, Resistance against parasites.

This is why we get abducted yo, for these reasons. If the government finds a psychic person with strong TK or telepathy they ususally check out their genes for mutated proteins. Isolate them and inject them into an virus. TADA. Hey jim * shoves niddle in * you know what im thinking? * slaps knee ( I love puns)

reply to post by CrypticSouthpaw



so the answer is to stop trying to control nature..

and let it do its thing..naturally.

Well we would have to stop now. I pointed out that once the process starts you can't exactly stop. Because of the methods they are using in making people sick, creating deficiencies and vaccines as well as the many people that exist out there and are perfect homes for viruses to mutate. We really cannot stop once we start. The conditions we have right now would be pretty ideal for an epidemic if we were not advancing in this stuff and silently distributing them.

The truth is there are some nasty bugs coming from chemicals and such, Not really a plan of the population control but never the less Its happening. And without this stuff you can pretty much garentee another great breakout. Take the resistant virus spreading around the US thats becoming a pandemic. Without this stuff.. those people... You know the chances of a human having the proper genetic codes with slots for the that virus to just plot down protiens? Rare. Extremely rare. This is why evolution is is such short bursts. So its gunna effect a lot of people before people start becoming immune, Possiblity also there are immune people already out there who has a precurser of the virus, ancestor who carries the similar proteins and just becomes a carrier of the virus.

If evil people were not behind all this. We could reduce alot of the unnecessary stuff. Tell people whats going on with humanity and the truth about why viruses are getting stronger. The anti-biotics will only work so long till we ACTUALLY need viral gene therapy. At that point we will be immune till the next wave. And possibly have heightened senses. Id rather be what i am than a robot lol. But if this stuff was made public. IT would be much harder for them to silence people from asking about it and where they are hiding the cures at.


Thanks for your comment, i love troll dad lol.

I also wanted to point out that some epidemics are really really bad. If we went back to the ways of nature all it takes is another white man (figuratively speaking) to wipe all the tree huggers out. At some point humanitah has got to grow up and utilize these things when we need them... not produce cow/chicken feed and sell it as bread... LOL

or like the corn. A lot of the GMO corn is made to feed the never ending line of hungry mouths. The left over is sold anywhere else they can kinda dump it. Hey look i made a plant that already grows crazy grow even more crazy and resistant to disease! * that's fantastic news johnson Begin production right away*

Like iceburge lettuces, Just because its big don't mean it has a lot of nutrients in it. So like, If it was intended for a human. It was a pretty terrible job. And tweaking plants to make them more color appealing? What the hell, how is that useful. Sure it looks nice in the market but people buy organic because its nutritious and not altered to look like a plastic wax apple everytime. These just a small number of the useless things, people with no imagination come up with. Marketing food like a consumer product. Lol.

People can hate on GMO all they want. i'm just pointing out that the guys in the lab coats are making all the plants based on what some suit behind him is telling him what he wants created. Plus Most of the real problems are caused by the pesticides and other crap they spray on it. Its not really the fruits fault if its covered in substances... If this is public those scientists would have a voice, We would see a better light on GMO for sure.

And stop with the whole perfect red apple every time. Its kind of stupid. Make a turbo apple that has the nutrient density of 3 apples so you only have to eat 2 and your like turbo. Now that sounds Ideal. Anyone want a turbo apple?

I'm considering taking biology. I would love to be at the forefront doing my own experiments on this stuff. I would love to have my own lab so i could create an evasive species of nutrient rich vegetables. I would rather make it from a vegetable that does not require a lot of water and make it resistant to hot climates. Or evasive strawberries muhahaha. Now that would be badass. We can't stop them!

Oh MY GOD THEY ARE EVERYWHERE lol. The apple trees. the apple trees! RUN!

reply to post by CrypticSouthpaw


Do you work for monsanto? Everything this corporation does goes against nature. You can eat all the frankenfood you like. Tampering with the genetic code of anything could yield disasterous results. Would this mean that you are against gmo labeling? I prefer natural food to something created in a lab. Recent studies have shown that mice fed gmo food develope cancerous tumors all through there bodies. Monsanto are terrorists against nature, plain and simple.

I've been saying the same thing for years now. I've said this in almost every post I've made on the bee topic.

Glad to see they are catching up with me finally!

im 21 and no i don't work for monstanto. But all that crap in my oppinion isin't made to be food. Its made to grow fast, grow big, grow sweet and a certain pigment. Beyond that, It was engineered for animals... Most of it anyways. And the apple and such, Its only made to look good. If you tweaked an apple to have more vitamines and nutrients its not gunna show up as a red apple perfectly everytime. This is the point im trying to make.

And deny the viruses all you want, Viral gene therapy is the future of humanity and an number of elites are already *super human* because of this. It wont be long till critters start mutating inside them and a mega virus gets out and wipes out all the cabbage eaters.

I am not advocating what monsonto is doing, Im saying someone should take over their job with the seed department. Get some other company in on this that isin't trying to make wax apples to sell to people. Just my oppinion. Chemically laced food is pretty gross. And so is the GMO crap they have. Its a sorry excuse for food.

For those who really desperately need to have a supply of polinating bees.....
I would suggest a bee called a Mason bee....
These bees do not make honey, they feed polen to their young....
These smallish bees can polinate a patch of anything...they dont really have a sting and they are easy to keep.
These bees can be ordered online or bought locally, from farmers who have found out how useful and efficient these bees are..as they work right through till fall, then die off leaving their babies behind in mudded up nests to await the next spring and hatch out again....
One merely hangs a wood block with holes drilled in it for a bee nest, and they fill the drilled tunnels with eggs and mud.....
one simply pops the block into a fridge for the winter and rehangs it next spring when its warm enough.....
rinse repeat every year therafter.

Those Honeybees were brought over from England, no wonder they are frail.

Time to get some American insects to save the day once again.

Originally posted by Hopechest
Those Honeybees were brought over from England, no wonder they are frail.

Time to get some American insects to save the day once again.

Yes, integration is an entirely different subject all together. Your are dealing with entirely different ecosystems region to region. A place can look similar but temperature elements and compounds all play a part in what develops there. You bring over a species that isn't immune and non compatible with the viruses and bacteria here. On top of that food is being exported from other continents.

Speaking in logical terms here, If you go to Mexico and you have been living in a place like B.C Canada (like myself) And i drank the water there. Chances are i wont be accustomed to the bacteria and such in the water. Or the certain mineral content and such. You can imagine the same for Brazil Chile Argentina.

Its no different for plant life. This is why cooking food has become a sanitary precaution world wide. Not everyone is accustomed to what the other village has to offer. And if the other village comes what they will bring with them unknowningly. Seeds, disease ext.

Eating foods from other areas can make you sick as well because of the same bound logic above. This is why scientists scratch their head and say * well the reason why these people here can eat this poisonious plant is because their people have been cultivating it for years. * Yup, there can be a symbiotic relationship given enough time and lucky enough circumstances that a person who develops immunity lives and passes it on. In theory, Many disease can be eliminated for bees and such with the same methods. But it gets a little more complex than eating some leaves/seeds/or roots

reply to post by CrypticSouthpaw


Hehe, your far more intelligent on this than I am, I was just making a funny against the Brits.

I love them dearly but really enjoy teasing them.

My apoligies.

Originally posted by Hopechest
reply to post by CrypticSouthpaw

 

Hehe, your far more intelligent on this than I am, I was just making a funny against the Brits.

I love them dearly but really enjoy teasing them.

My apoligies.

no apologies its, a valid point. Its totally related, but another subject all together because of the we are dealing with more then just a bacteria travelling. We are dealing with a full on organism, That would be carrying a number of host of pathogens. This the settlers did not know. LOL oh well. Thanks for the comment! Yes intergrated species either go extinct or drive other species extent. Why? because of all the reasons iv stated.

I'm going to learn the names of all the proteins humans have found and the rna sequences. Very interesting. You can learn everything online, biology is interesting. I love the fact that it does not grape one concept. Say a black smith will work in his shop. A biologist/scientist would be working in the field collecting specimens. Cultivating plants/animals and testing. Yeah sure people are probably mortified by me condoning testing on animals. But i have morals as well, I do not agree with cosmetics, and bio-weapon testing. Rather, if it will prevent diseases and make people stronger, well advancing life around us. These are the territories of an organism experimenting with the god force. In turn. Life creates more life. But life does pretty well on its own too. but sometimes it has mistakes, Actually quite a few, that's why people get sick most of the time from viruses is because the coding... you can think of it like a computer, they are .exe files. and they run on prompt command with programming to copy and paste into cells a series of codes not literal numbers but you could say 100100100101 because each strain composes of different microfragment programming. Over all. If a virus infultrates a body. But the body does not reconize or have the proper slots for the dna cods then it just replicats into a cell. Imagine rewriting a couple important files with giberish and then saving it. And the body is a systems 32 system. Anti viruses gain viral definitions and seal them in a chest.. well white blood cells and what not. Wither way. The matrix is hillarious because it really is plausible, not that we are in a computer.

But the *Material* programming. Just my understanding

I have read several articles related to these commercial bees and the problems occuring but do not claim a level of understanding, several of you clearly have mastered. Despite that I am somewhat concerned as to the matter of enough genetic diversity in these bees given there environment. I mean clearly they spend a lot of time being transported from place to place and if there methods of pollination are not as efficient as wild bees that is an indication of the conclusion that they are not as sophisticated. By that I am suggesting that commercial bees are in the process of loosing genetic diversity to such an extent they are no longer viable.

When a queen bee is born (feel free to correct me if I am wrong) in the wild she takes several drones with her and starts a new hive and with that, I hope you understand where I am comming from.

totally true. And its possible that bees from a certain geographic area need to be only in that area. If you try carrying them elsewhere without fully terraforming or creating a proper ecosystem identical * heat wind water humidity soil and other organisms* all are important to each zone. Each zone also has its own pathogens that evolved based on all of the above i pointed out. That a simple change in enviroment plays a key role in how these things evolve adapt and reproduce.

To fight off a sickness an organism has no slots for. A pathogen completely * alien* to the organism. Is almost certain doom. But, this is why biology exists. With it we can prevent extinction by fully understanding the genome of all known species. At least all the base proteins as its ever changing. BUT the thing is we would need knowledge of everything first. before we just start screwing with one plant. We need to have every plant modified. Every bug every tree. Same as us. Because the moment we start creating GMO (lol to late) and doing viral gene therapy for super enhancements. Is the moment super bug viruses get out. At first, The super viruses will wipe out plant life because that was the first GMO created. Second. Wild life will begin dying off in masses because of the enhancements we are using use a retrovirus as its base shell.

This means that it will evolve freely in the body, Tho the subject is immune. Other people are not. If someone shakes a hand of this person... They sneeze on a plane... get saliva on a podium when talking.

This will have an effect on anyone who does not have the genome. They will get pwnt. And it will be played off by anti biotics because no one wants to own up to it. But you will see. The new viruses to spread will be devastating for this reason. It is suggested they disclose this now to increase humanities survival rate.