Scientists Discover What's Killing the Bees and it's Worse than You Thought

reply to post by JohnPhoenix



Agreed.

Let's use basic logic here folks, we don't need a study, high IQ, or millions of bees dying off to tell us that pesticides being used everywhere effect bee population.

Let's look at the word again. "Pesticide"

Let's look up the definition.

en.wikipedia.org...

Pesticides are substances meant for preventing, destroying or mitigating any pest.[1] They are a class of biocide. The most common use of pesticides is as plant protection products (also known as crop protection products), which in general protect plants from damaging influences such as weeds, diseases or insects. This use of pesticides is so common that the term pesticide is often treated as synonymous with plant protection product, although it is in fact a broader term, as pesticides are also used for non-agricultural purposes.

I'm sure all of the companies that produce pesticides have an additive which excludes bees.

reply to post by JohnPhoenix


If they didn't do any research why is there a frog safe type of glyphosate?

Is it Monsanto's fault that a farmer will double the dose to his crops?

Or rent hives for pollination at the same time as spraying crops?

Mis-management is the problem here, to blame the makers of it is just a mindless witch hunt.

Next we'll blame drug companies for overdoses using your's and others logic.

Originally posted by Realtruth

Being a certified Beekeeper here in Michigan this is pretty big news, since it's the first of its kind study.

You can read the abstract here.

www.plosone.org...

Always follow the money trail and who is funding the studies and this ones shows a great cross-section of input.

I wish people could understand the implications of what would happen to the world if bees disappear. Seriously folks!

One other person had a thought about the bee population too.

“If the bee disappeared off the face of the earth, man would only have four years left to live.”


― Albert Einstein

But hey wth did he know.

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

edit on 25-7-2013 by Realtruth because: (no reason given)

Einstein never said that. Some guy at a protest did and attributed it to him to gain attention.

reply to post by Phage


Yes but its not as simple as that. There is tons of information about monsanto, gmos, roundup and bees all across web and even ats. I am not capable, at this time to discuss this topic as I would like to due to surgery yesterdayon both arms and 40+ staples in them but I am sure someone would post the research and information about this. I apologize for my inability.

reply to post by Realtruth


I think there was a documentary on this. Beekeeping is interesting. Recently met a few guys who do this and I am having them teach me the ropes.

Thanks for this article. It should help clarify that it is the domestic honey bee apis mellifera that is being affected. Not all of the "bees" (and other pollenators) in general.

For example, from USGS.Gov - The Buzz on Native Bees

Colony collapse disorder, the cause of which is unknown, affects only European honeybees and has been recorded across the county. The primary symptom of the disorder is having no or low numbers of adult honeybees present in a hive; no dead honeybees are present, but a queen is.

From the source link:

As we’ve written before, the mysterious mass die-off of honey bees that pollinate $30 billion worth of crops in the US has so decimated America’s apis mellifera

If I were to rewrite the article I might include reasons of the cause including monocropping, chemical cocktails the bees drink, and also how unnatural modern apiarists are; traveling cross country with countless hives to pollenate whatever monocrop, and then be transferred to another climate and another crop... The whole time being exposed to new chemicals on each farm, and each different climate.

I'll post it again:

ScientificAmerican - Hive and Seek: Domestic Honeybees Keep Disappearing, but Are Their Wild Cousins in Trouble, Too?

"When you look at what's out there in the public press, the implication is that pollinators are all under threat, that there's some kind of mysterious decline across the board," says Sam Droege, a biologist at U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) Patuxent Wildlife Research Center. "The problem is, there's really no data to show that either way."

reply to post by superman2012


In this world everything fits together like a huge jigsaw puzzle. When you change one piece's shape you have to modify the other so it will fit. Now another piece may have to be adjusted and so on so forth. Soon the picture on the puzzle is so distorted that you can't tell what it is. We need to look at the big picture.

Originally posted by Realtruth

Originally posted by Zcustosmorum
reply to post by Realtruth

 

I'm just waiting for all those bee-keepers out there to start hitting the corps with big lawsuits

If the studies like this are correct and applicable, then I am sure we will see some monster lawsuits coming up real soon.

Most of the large corporations will do there best to quash, or discredit findings like this, since they know that is exactly what will happen to them.

Why do we as a society find the need to keep lying to ourselves?

edit on 25-7-2013 by Realtruth because: (no reason given)

There were supposed to be big lawsuits against Obama for all his #. Nothing happened there, and i doubt anything will happen to the corporations responsible for these bees dying off. Something like that.

reply to post by JohnPhoenix


To do a thorough investigation costs money. Companies generally want a big turnover (or whatever you call that in English - profit?).
I'm afraid the only reason convincing enough for companies to spend money and time, would be if the costs of losing a lawsuit exceed the costs of research.

reply to post by Realtruth


We'd all suicide because we love honey? Is this a joke???!?

reply to post by Phage
I saw that the article doesn't list a cause and I got to wondering if perhaps the bees are being cooked to death, maybe the hives are just going slightly above what the bees can tolerate in temperature.

Much like the Japanese Honey bees do to kill off an intruding Japanese Hornet as seen in this video:


Seems nature gave the bees a slight advantage by being able to withstand a few more degrees then the hornet.

Perhaps there is a frequency in the air that the bees are picking up that is signaling them to collectively raise the hives temperature above what they can handle. I know I am reaching here but no one else seems to have an answer yet. (unless they are hiding it from us, that is) .

reply to post by Realtruth


I believe France banned the use of a bunch of different pesticides and basically solved their colony collapse disorder. "The disappearance of the Bees" is a pretty depressing, but informative movie. You really get a feel for the plight of those bee keepers, some of whom were completely destroyed by CCD.

I think it was also pesticides that are programmed right into the plant itself, from seed, permeating the entire plant structure with the stuff, but it's been awhile since I watched it.

I really hope this is the answer, our whole food production system relies on bees. It's not even just fruits and vegetables. You like meat? Guess what, they need the bees to pollinate their food too.

*Spends years on a scientific report on what's killing the beehives complete with advanced chemical analysis but still cant reach any real conclusion*

*Throws everything in the trashcan and scribble on a post-it... "Man"*

Want to know something Really scary? modified TREES.

Someone posted it on FB a while back, one of those artistic new age sites, think from South America, well anyway I watch a lot of the Nature photo animal sites etc and this one post, the title was so horrifying so I clicked on it. I don't think many are aware of this because even the video didn't have many watchers. I'll look it up in a bit and post link here,

Sorry I don't know how to embed videos with this iPad but anyway,

The document tray was, what I remember this man, name Suzuki, geneticist but anyway he was talking about the plans of genetic modified TREES much like the GMO plants, etc. and how this would severely change the composition of trees and all the animals and insects that feed off of trees...

Which you know bees would be effected, and since we depend on trees to breathe, etc. who knows what these modifications would do there.

I only watched once and I need to watch it again as I put it on the do watch again and learn thing to do for myself, sorry I'm not that great at this type of science so I have to watch and read to get as in those subjects, I'm a tad slow. (anything mathematical type of processing my brain just goes aaaarg, I have to process it in totally different way, but anyway)

I'll just get the video, but yea it's the most doomsday creepy thing I've ever seen.

Ok found it

www.youtube.com...


It's called Silent Forest, Genetic Engineered Trees.

Relevancy here, we often have honey bees come to our yard from the Linden trees in our area. This year we have not seen any honey bees on the trees but we have noticed a Huge hornets nest, which is odd for our area. Normally it's yellow jackets, carpenter bees and honey bees, some bumble bees. Mud daubers, but not hornets,

This year it's the Exact opposite. Very few wasps and yellow jackets which is VERY VERY ODD and an infestation of black hornets, not daubers (they look similar but have totally different nests) but hornets. And I am not sure about bees but wasps Won't form nests in hornet areas as hornets are very territorial and vice versa. That's why they sell those fake hornet nests to deter wasps from building nests under your eves, etc.

Two summers a go we had one of those honey bee swarms in our small garden, scared me half to death first I saw it as I thought ok it's either a swarm of wasps or killer bees. LOL but anyway I had dealt with hives of honey bees before in other places and we just call the bee folks who keep them and they take them, but those times we Foind actual nests, in evergreens not actual huge Swarms. Anyway Found they swarm when breaking off to form new hives and these guys picked our yard to hang, inside a whiskey barrel planter we had beans growing in. There must have been a thousand or so. Pretty awesome thing, to see bee keepers take the entire barrel to the bee farm. But I felt sorry for the stragglers, would have let then stay but with small kids in close area it was not an option, when swarming they are pretty dang aggressive. Wasps I'm use to, as they stay about twenty a hive, and all summer we have those and not afraid of them and they aren't aggressive like yellow jackets, they Can be if you mess with them, but anyway they don't swarm etc. Hornets, uh we finding a different story altogether, and they hangin on the four Linden trees where honey bees use to hang. So Something very strange going on, even bird clusters are changing here, never seen so many huge crows in this area, the large ones often mistaken as ravens.

Because we walk Everywhere or bike, and spend a lot of time outdoors we notice these changes more than one would in a car day in day out. So it's not just bees, in the open spaces there is radical shifts in animal migrations and types of animals. So far though no mass die offs...in the area. I think some of it is related to water/drought which looks to be a coming as the bunnies are migrating in huge clusters near water sources in huge groups. So when I hear about genetic trees, immediately I see drastic changes in animal habitats, insects, etc. scary stuff.

Originally posted by votan
reply to post by Realtruth

 

I think there was a documentary on this. Beekeeping is interesting. Recently met a few guys who do this and I am having them teach me the ropes.

Just start working with them after you get the basics, the Bees will actually teach you.

Bees are the some of most amazing little creatures on this planet.

Good luck to you

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by inalienabletruth

 

The other connection is that they are a large producer of pesticides as everyone knows. Round up being one of their brands.

Roundup is a brand name. Many other manufacturers produce glyphosate based products, as well as other herbicides and insecticides.

How many have round up ready seed though?

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by Zcustosmorum

 

And, for the most part, guns are generally used for killing, chemicals are not

Really?
What are insecticides supposed to do then?


Oh, and BTW, contrary to the article about it, the study does not say what is causing CCD. And maybe the beekeepers have something to do with the problem.

In our study and those listed above, pesticides applied by beekeepers to control hive pests were present in a large proportion of the samples, often in quantities higher than most of the pesticides that are applied to crops.

www.plosone.org...

One other thing. There is no evidence that Einstein ever said that.

edit on 7/25/2013 by Phage because: (no reason given)

Dang sometimes you are just
one giant bowl of NO.

reply to post by superman2012

How many have round up ready seed though?

What does that have to do with the topic? Do you see glyphosate (or glyposate resistant GMOs mentioned in the study?) But both Dupont and Syngenta produce herbicide resistant GMOs.

But maybe this would be a good time to repeat a quote from the study which I posted earlier. Bee keepers seem to be more dangerous to bees than pesticide treated crops.

In our study and those listed above, pesticides applied by beekeepers to control hive pests were present in a large proportion of the samples, often in quantities higher than most of the pesticides that are applied to crops.

www.plosone.org...

Yet another reason to buy organic, or local, or get a CSA, or grow your own, or anything where you can know the means of production. I really wonder how people can see this happening, and then go on spending their money on food that was grown with these harmful chemicals, thereby supporting that harm...

Originally posted by Phage

But maybe this would be a good time to repeat a quote from the study which I posted earlier. Bee keepers seem to be more dangerous to bees than pesticide treated crops.

In our study and those listed above, pesticides applied by beekeepers to control hive pests were present in a large proportion of the samples, often in quantities higher than most of the pesticides that are applied to crops.

www.plosone.org...

It looks like Bee Keepers need extensive training and high certification to enter the field instead of any old hick who can't hold a normal job or get through college looking after our bees.