[quote]VISALIA, Calif., Feb. 23 — David Bradshaw has endured countless stings during his life as a beekeeper, but he got the shock of his career when he opened his boxes last month and found half of his 100 million bees missing.
In 24 states throughout the country, beekeepers have gone through similar shocks as their bees have been disappearing inexplicably at an alarming rate, threatening not only their livelihoods but also the production of numerous crops, including California almonds, one of the nation’s most profitable.
“I have never seen anything like it,” Mr. Bradshaw, 50, said from an almond orchard here beginning to bloom. “Box after box after box are just empty. There’s nobody home.”[/url]
This is a terrifying story. More than just honey is dependent on bees. The article claims that a third of the food we eat needs bees for pollination.
VISALIA, Calif., Feb. 23 — David Bradshaw has endured countless stings during his life as a beekeeper, but he got the shock of his career when he opened his boxes last month and found half of his 100 million bees missing.
In 24 states throughout the country, beekeepers have gone through similar shocks as their bees have been disappearing inexplicably at an alarming rate, threatening not only their livelihoods but also the production of numerous crops, including California almonds, one of the nation’s most profitable.
“I have never seen anything like it,” Mr. Bradshaw, 50, said from an almond orchard here beginning to bloom. “Box after box after box are just empty. There’s nobody home.”
This is a terrifying story. More than just honey is dependent on bees. The article claims that a third of the food we eat needs bees for pollination.
Pesticides and herbicides can affect bees and wasps and should be used, if at all, with extreme caution. Wasps are only harmful to humans if they nest in a place where humans go frequently—a wasp nest on a wall well away from doors and unscreened windows is no threat at all. Wasps are natural scavengers and, as such, are environmentally very useful.
It hasn’t been borne in on scientists yet that populations vary chaotically. A few mathematicians realise it but it hasn’t pervaded popular understanding.
By all means see if there is a cause, but it’s possible it’s a combination of so many causes it’ll be ten years before they are identified.
Dormice slumped. They’re back. Starlings slumped. They’re back. All this business of “was it something we did?” implies a level of power and control which humans do not have.
Our priest is a bee keeper (he makes and sells honey and candles).
There was a mite that was decimating hives back in the 90’s but I think that has been pretty much cleared up. His hives have been slowly coming back. Part of the problems he faces is weather - too wet and the bees can’t fly. Too hot, and the flower dry up before they flower or pollenate.
Plus, of course, you need to have the plants to pollenate.
What I’m trying to say is there are many, many things that can effect a hive. Pinpointing it down to one or two causes may be impossible.
There’s been a decline in honeybee population in the US for at least the last 15 years or more; I suspect in fits and starts rather than a steady decline. Part of this is a decline in beekeepers – that by itself might not lead to a decline in overall honeybee population, but it does mean a decline in the useful honeybee population, as beekeepers truck their hives seasonally to where they’re needed for pollination. (A few years ago I narrowly missed an accident that closed I-287 due to an overturned semi that was transporting honeybees.)
The decrease in honeybees may be a bigger economic issue, but the bigger environmental issue is the decline in pollinators across the board. The majority of pollinators are actually beetles rather than bees.
I’m surprised this hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves. A few years ago everywhere I turned, there was stuff about the declining amphibian population, but I’ve only seen a few articles about the declining pollinator population.
This story is over a month old. I’m surprised it is only coming up here now. The problem isn’t with this one keeper. It is sweeping the US. Either a fungus or virus is expected. The size and rate of the collapse of domesticated bees in the US is beyond any natural fluctuation. This really is a disaster occurring right before our eyes, and for all the reasons mentioned above.
Tell that to the next species in line for extinction.
Estimates of the number of extinctions each year vary widely. What doesn’t vary in studies I’ve seen is the enormous rate of increase in the estimated number of extinctions through the 19th and 20th centuries. I think it would be utterly fanciful to think that human beings weren’t largely responsible. In the case of the large charismatic megafauna, we know that they have simply lost their habitat to farming, logging, and grazing as well as being hunted.
Of course, there have been huge increases in the rate of extinction before; any massive climatic change will have a huge impact.
You can get really depressed reading the obituaries in your newspaper if you don’t read the birth announcements as well.
It’s only recently that the scientific establishment twigged that new species are coming into being - not just being discovered, but coming into existence. Agreed that the human race responsible for more than one extinction. But you cannot automatically assume that
a) diminishing population numbers is an extinction or
b) the diminution is the result of human activity.
I guess there is a certain populist appeal to the idea that “them scientists just don’t understand this basic fact that we all know.”
I think this is a special case of the “those smart people have no common sense” idea. Ironically, this lacks common sense: of course scientists know that populations vary chaotically. Whom do you think gave us nonlinear dynamics, the Butterfly Effect, strange attractors etc? What do you think Lorenz did for a living?
If scientists are puzzled by something, specifically scientists with loads of expertise in bee populations and population dynamics etc, likely their befuddlement isn’t because they have all collectively missed a simple explanation that is obvious to all us normal folk. Again, there is a populist appeal to this sort of idea, but it’s not very likely.
Are you talking about European European starlings? In the United States, American European starlings are such a pest because their population just keeps growing and growing and growing. Rescue centers refuse to take them in, in fact, because there are so many of them.
I see what you’re saying, but, where we do have hard evidence, I don’t think it bears it out. The species whose current membership we have the best estimates of are probably mainly the largish mammals. Here we have numerous extinctions or near extinctions—some animals are perhaps being kept around mainly through breeding in captivity. I haven’t heard of any new largish mammals arriving recently—have you? Furthermore, we know it’s humans who have destroyed their natural habitat or hunted them to extinction or near extinction. Nothing takes over their ecological niche since their habitat disappears. Humans take over the space they occupied, not new species. Not to be concerned you would have to think that a) variety at the top of the food chain doesn’t matter and b) that there is good reason to believe that what is happening to largish mammals is highly atypical despite the fact their disappearance, complete or in large part, affects the whole ecosystem on which they prey.
What I find really strange about the above news s1m0n posted (and yes, it’s about a month old) is that there are no deceased bees to study; they’re just…gone. Disappeared. Like, poof. Nobody can even say that there’s a disease involved.
I mean, how do entire populations of bees just plain disappear???
That’s where the stuff about possible virus of fungus infections comes from. I was watching an interview with a bee researcher from some US university (Penn State maybe? can’t remember) who said that bees instinctively know to get the far away from the hive when they feel they are sick and dying. So they make themselves scarce for the safety and security of the hive.
You mean to tell me no one here has looked into raising bees for honey
but decided not to bother because of all the toxic chemicals one needs to use in order to keep the bees “healthy” instead of dying off to viruses, fungi, and various other predators?
My herbalist buddies over at a local American Indian center have reminded me that honey bees aren’t indigenous to North America. They were introduced by immigrating Europeans.
Perhaps their survival in North America was doomed from the start.