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The disappearing hone-bee situation
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Posted by joel_bc (My Page) on Thu, May 3, 07 at 18:48
| I've been hearing about and seeing a thing here and there about a disappearance of honey-bee colonies in many of the U.S. states, and in some other parts of the world. Apparently this is something more serious than a rumor, though I'm in British Columbia and our Provincial Apiarist was on the radio yesterday morning saying it isn't yet a problem in our part of Canada - and that he thinks of it as something occuring mainly in the warmer portions of the U.S.
But some of the info floating around - whether good analysis or not - claims the phenomenon, whatever its cause(s) - is very widespread. Apparently it is associated with huge-scale beekeeping in industrial agricultural situations. Clearly it's not happening everywhere.
So now I'm wondering what the more down-to-earth and sober perspective on this mass die-off may be.
Anyone have some good solid info? or a Web source they can point me toward?
Joel |
Follow-Up Postings:
RE: The disappearing hone-bee situation
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| Here ya go, Joel...is the NY Times solid enough for a start? Regards,
Shax |
Here is a link that might be useful: Bees
RE: The disappearing honey-bee situation
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| Thanks, Shax. (I should say "thanks once again" - you've helped me in my info quests before.) I guess the core of it is where the article says: "Beekeepers have fought regional bee crises before, but this is the first national affliction. Now, in a mystery worthy of Agatha Christie, bees are flying off in search of pollen and nectar and simply never returning to their colonies. And nobody knows why." On the other hand, here in my region, beekeepers are heartened by the health of colonies that made it through the bee-mite problems of the last 10 or 15 years. But beekeepers here are small-scale and use TLC. But, back on the North-American scale, this is a rather unsettling development. Downright scary, in fact. Joel |
RE: The disappearing hone-bee situation
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| The under-pollenation of many crops that need yearly pollenation will mean a lot of crop failures and near failures. I just thought of something - the importance of buying bulk food. I'm not Chicken Little, predicting famine, but prices on hard-hit crops will rise relative to their shortage on the market. I understand that about 150 of the familiar food crops are in need of annual pollenation. But I haven't seen an itemized list. In my household, we sometimes buy 50 or 100 lb sacks of certain food staples (items we cannot grow here), and caselots of others. So I wonder which crops are most likely to see a shortage, thus a sharp price rise? Has anyone seen a list of the crops likely to be scarcer by next autumn? Joel |
RE: The disappearing hone-bee situation
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| According to this site... "Honeybees are used to pollinate some of the tastiest parts of the American diet, Pettis said, including cherries, blueberries, apples, almonds, asparagus and macadamia nuts. "It's not the staples," he said. "If you can imagine eating a bowl of oatmeal every day with no fruit on it, that's what it would be like" without honeybee pollination." Regards,
Shax |
Here is a link that might be useful: Pollination
RE: The disappearing hone-bee situation
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| Asparagus? Doesn't that reproduce vegetatively? My gut feeling is that its a result of the apparently widespread practice of feeding the bees high-fructose corn syrup when building up the colonies before blooming-time. It porbably makes the bees crazy. Another appalling practice is the gassing of colonies at the end of the fruit season - they've done their work, so they are exterminated. These un-natural practices at huge scale are bound to have an effect at some point. One hopes the native pollinators will be able to take advantage of this opportunity. |
RE: The disappearing hone-bee situation
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I wonder if chemicals factor in at all or if this is even thought of.
Agribusiness in its infinite wisdom moves bee colonies around to polinate crops, yet carpet bombs the same crops with fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. This is one of the reasons bees are moved around to the crops, the natural insect populations are largely exterminated on a regular basis. Could a residue or byproduct of these chemicals be the culprit? On a more cheery note, as the population has declined here, the bumble bee population has increased. Ziggy |
RE: The disappearing honey-bee situation
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| I'd still like to find out more about how this is unfolding, in terms of impacts in the agribiz world. Concerning which crops are likely to be affected, possibly significantly, this is a *partial* list I found: almonds, peaches, soybeans, apples, pears, cherries, raspberries, blackberries, cranberries, watermelons, cantaloupes, cucumbers and strawberries. But it's a brief list of examples, not nearly complete. So if anyone has more information or can point to a Web site that covers the list more comprehensively, I'd still like to find out. Joel |
RE: The disappearing hone-bee situation
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Joel,
this is a good site that will give you hours of reading, cross-referencing etc... http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/99/26/16812 A more easily read list is below. Regards,
Shax |
Here is a link that might be useful: Bigger List
RE: The disappearing hone-bee situation
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| Thanks, Shax. Yes, this is excellent. I took the liberty of posting it over at the GW Bees & Bee Keeping forum. I'd posted a similar request for a list of insect-pollinated crops over there... other than knowing that many crops ARE and must be insect pollinated, the people on that forum seemed oddly unaware of which ones exactly - or of how to find out (via Web sources). So your link should help them, too. Joel |
RE: The disappearing hone-bee situation
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| Alot of the problem in my opinion is depending on european bees. We have native bees that pollinate our native fruits very well. I grow a few blueberies for the birds in my tiny yard and I see the native pollinators around them there's a stamp that's supposed to come out about native pollinators |
Here is a link that might be useful: native pollinator stamps
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