Has anyone else been following the honeybee colony collapse dissorder? The recent problem appears to have been triggered somehow back in October of 2006, and recent reports have estimated that the mortality rates of bee colonies nationwide has been as high as 90%.

One of the scarriest things about this is the potential harmful effect to our agriculture. More than 1/3 of our food crops our dependant on honeybees to pollinate them. From fruit crops like melons, to many nuts, vegetables, forage crops and flowers.

I hope that someone gets to the bottom of this, and soon.

http://www.ag.ndsu.nodak.edu/aginfo/entomology/ndsucpr/Years/2006/july/27/honey_bee.jpg


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_Collapse_Disorder

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0416bees0416.html

http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/agriculture_dem/pr_032907_HOAbees.html

I had heard at one point that the bee population was being killed off by mites, but this massive die-off is something we brought upon ourselves. Here in NJ, it's corn and tomato country, and farmers have been planting a genetically modified corn that manufactures its own pesticide. The bees are all over the corn, which is all over NJ, and they're dying from the corn's pesticide. Thank you, Monsanto.

Yeah, scary stuff. I read something about how it might be cell phone frequencies that are interfering with the bees' ability to navigate their way back home to their hives. But that's just one theory among many. And I certainly don't want to let Monsanto off the hook. If you see a lost bee, help it find it's way home!!!

-g

I would go with the chemicals-they have decimated other populations of beneficial insects when trying to eliminate destructive ones.

Let's get back to organic gardening and no till farming and have an acceptable loss ratio for crops. Better yet, lets create a brain trust/think tank to consider the ramifications of this in the very long term (Soylent Green anyone?) and Look to nature for indigenous plants materials or farming methods that will ensure a decent harvest and not introduce non-native species of anything. Just ask the Aussies and Hawaiians what non-native imports have done to their wildlife populations. Cane toad-brought in to eat some insect that destroyed sugar cane and is so poisonous it is killing off any creature-the snakes included that bits it-the animals die instantly. Illinois has Zebra mussels that came in on the bottom of ships going through the locks on the Great Lake and the Missisippi, and then there is the infamous Kudzu-the scourge of the Southeast.

Think globally, think locally.

I agree. The chemicals, or some sort of pollution. (incl. noise or radio wave)

Can we trust the maker of 'Roundup' weedkiller to engineer the safety of our entire fresh Food Supply?

http://www.netlink.de/gen/monsanto.htm

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Chemical gurus Monsanto and their GMO products, 'suicide-terminator seeds', and other 'technologies' are really really scary.

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Monsanto also developed the Herbicides known as 'Agent Orange' and 'Agent Purple'. Those chemicals were used in Vietnam and North America (at various Forces Bases).

We have a bunch of sick soldiers here in Canada who were exposed at CFB Gagetown in Oromocto, New Brunswick. (e.g. East Coast)

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They also make BGH (bovine growth hormone) which is used to boost milk production. This is used in the USA, to a degree, I understand. That has not been tested on humans. (Thank goodness it is banned in Canada.)

Vietnam is full of children with visible and invisible hideous birth defects arising out of the Vietnam War.


http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11638


And they (Monsanto) SUE THE BUTT off anyone who tries to print that their chemicals and inventions are dangerous...</PUTS duct tape back over mouth>

[so sue me.)

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Farmers in poor countries (India, etc) are reportedly committing suicide b/c of the Monsanto "terminator seeds" or "suicide seeds". (Ironic name, huh?)

These are seeds that cannot be used more than 1x. The farmers and sharecroppers sometimes cannot afford to buy next years' expensive seeds, so they are driven to desperation.

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/suicide-seeds


http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/rough/2005/07/seeds_of_suicidlinks.html
Rather than face bankruptcy, they kill themselves. (Often by drinking Monsanto's weedkillers! Sheesh. The irony...)


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N.B. Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" book is coming true. :S People tried to sue her & shut her up, too.

U go girl!! I'll stand behind you, uh, I'll stand behind this bullet-proof window! :p:D

I read about this last week. Indeed a very scary situation.

Bill Maher was on Leno tonight and said that Einstein had a theory that if bees were not present on Earth that mankinds existance on this planet would last about 4 yrs.

Maher was not joking, he is very green, and said he too hopes someone gets this figured out sooner than later.

Mysterious phenomenon has researchers baffled

April 27, 2007 - What happens to them is unknown. The adults are simply gone - thousands of them. No corpses left behind, nothing out of place. They are just gone.

It may seem like the set-up for an episode of CSI, but this mystery isn't about missing people - it's about missing bees. Strange as it may seem, a mysterious phenomenon called Colony Collapse Disorder is threatening bees across the United States and may be making its way into Canada.

The problem has researchers baffled. All of the adult bees in a colony will suddenly disappear without a trace, leaving behind only a small number of juveniles. The hive appears unaffected, just deserted. Remaining juveniles refuse to eat the stores of honey or pollen left behind. Other bee colonies meanwhile avoid the deserted hive - even though healthy colonies normally raid abandoned hives for leftovers.

What's going on? Scientists don't really know, but concern is high enough to have prompted a working group of researchers in the U.S. to study the problem. From what they've been able to determine so far, stress may play a key role.

Colony Collapse Disorder is hardly the first problem honeybees have encountered in North America. Bee populations are in serious trouble - suffering losses from mites, pesticides, and monoculture crops, especially in the United States. There, five species of bumblebees have disappeared in less than a decade. In fact, the dirth of natural pollinators in the United States has led to a growing industry of migrant domesticated bees. Each spring, tens of thousands of bee colonies are packed onto flatbed trucks and driven across the United States to stop at various farms and pollinate crops.

But all that travel isn't good for bees. Bees are naturally used to having a variety of food in their diets, but on these trips, they are stuck with a single food source - the crop they are expected to pollinate. They are also packed into their hives for long periods of extended driving, exposed to temperature fluctuations and high levels of carbon dioxide. In addition, this kind of large-scale movement of stressed-out insects creates ideal conditions for the spread of pathogens.

All of this adds up to bad news for bees. But researchers still don't know which of these factors, or all of them, or something else entirely, is triggering the collapse of colonies in the United States. Fortunately, we haven't seen the problem in Canada - yet. Although bees here are also declining and under tremendous pressure, we don't have such a large-scale migrant bee industry right now, which could be preventing Colony Collapse Disorder from getting a foothold on this side of the border.

Why should you care about the fate of some insects? Well, honeybees are of course important for the honey they make. But they are also one of the most effective pollinators we have. In the United States, they pollinate over $3 billion worth of fruits and vegetables every year. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 30 per cent of all American fruits and vegetables come from plants that have been pollinated by insects - especially bees.

So bees are very important indeed. Pollinators in general provide an essential service that would be extraordinarily expensive, if not impossible, to replicate in other ways. Yet, natural and domesticated pollinators are by and large considered irrelevant or "externalities" to our economic system. If we want to ensure that this essential service is available in the future, we need to look at all the factors resulting in their declining numbers - from pesticide use, to monoculture crops and genetically modified crops, to the loss of forested areas that provide homes for wild bees, and work to reduce these pressures and keep this critical ecosystem service functioning. Colony Collapse Disorder may be the most recent and dramatic of bee mysteries, but their consistently declining numbers is just as disturbing.

MafaldaMay and I just became friends of the David Suzuki Foundation.
www.DavidSuzuki.org