According to North American beekeepers, between 40% to 70% and more of the bees they usually keep in their honeycombs are disappearing, and without a trace at that. Toxins or chemicals in the area are the main suspect, but no proof has been provided as of this time.
While seasonally a beekeeper’s hives are expected to be reduced by about 20% ever winter, the current figures are devastating to the industry, and in some cases catastrophic, individually. Many honey farmers are calling for government aid.
The honey farmers may prove to be subsidized by the government, and the consumers can learn to sweeten their foods and beverages with other ingredients. However, a greater immediate concern now may be that without the volume of pollinating that the beekeepers’ colonies provide yearly to the vegetation crops local to the beekeeper farms may not be adequate, which will result in far lower crop yields for fruits and vegetables. The shock wave effect may be dramatic, given that these industries provide billions to state revenues.
What makes the situation that much more complex and mysterious is the lack of bodies. The bees have simply vanished without a trace. Perhaps something is eating them?
Mysterious disappearance of US bees creating a buzz [shoutwire.com]
I think that’s the best Photoshop effort ever, by far.
This is really serious. Albert Einstein said that if bees disappeared, we’d all have about four years before we were toast as well. I’m paraphrasing, of course.
Yeah, the potential ramifications of this situation are pretty scary.
It is being touted most recently as ‘colony collapse disorder’ (at least they’ve given it a name now) and seems to be moving from East to West across the continent and is beginning to show up in Europe.
Honey bees are responsible for about 90% of all pollination of flowering plants in the US. Yes if they’re gone (and we haven’t developed their robotic replacements yet) we’re at least in for wildly inflated produce prices if not outright shortages.
This makes me so angry I don’t even know where to begin. But more than anything, it speaks directly to our dietary and shopping habits. Seems like a good time for people to reevaluate what they’re putting in their mouths and start speaking out with their dollars by not buying commercially and factory farmed foods. Thanks Monsanto!
Well, to be fair, nobody knows exactly why this is happening yet. Could be fertilizers and pesticides, could be global warming, could be a hive fungus, could be all sorts of things.
Still, it’s a wake up call, imho.
My understanding is that its been pretty much pegged as a pesticide which doesn’t kill the Bees, but effects their sense of direction. When the bees leave the hive they can’t find their way back so they simply die trying to find their way home, which explains why they can’t find any of the bodies.
I would find it hard to believe that an increase in temperature would cause these deaths since Bees flourish in warmer climates.
There’s a big business in “migrant bees” where bee keepers truck hundreds of bee hives around the country to pollinate whatever crops need pollinating at the time. Many farmers can’t operate without these bees but the problem is they may now be spreading whatever this mystery disorder is throughout the nation.
As for a “wake up call”, I certainly hope everyone is finally paying attention to the global environmental problems by now.
That chart in “An Inconvienient Truth” where Al Gore needed a ladder to show the C02 emission trend was pretty convincing that we’ve screwed things up already.
I refuse to believe in global warming until you can show me definitive prove that we are not just going through a cycle of higher temperatures, and by definitive proof I mean something that goes back more than a few thousand years, the planet is ~4.5 Billion years old, claiming that the planet is going to keep heating up based on temperature readings from the last 2000 years is akin to saying that because it’s hotter at 10 am this morning than it was at 6am this morning the temperatures just going to keep climbing. And Al Gore is just an attention whore, didn’t he Study Political Science or Theology in college? What makes him knowledgeable about science at all?
I’ll get off my soap box and sit down now.
Whatever, I’m glad. Fuck Bees.
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/wildlife/article2449968.ece
A follow-up article claiming that cell phones may be to blame.
Could it possibly be cause by cell phones and the towers that support them ? Would people be willing to give up their cell phones to save the bees? Just a thought !!!