Silent Spring, Revisited: Bee Dieoff Shows Importance of Watershed Based Commodity Ecology Oversight
"A mysterious illness is killing hundreds of thousands of honeybee colonies across the country, threatening honey production, the livelihood of beekeepers and possibly crops that need bees for pollination. Researchers are scrambling to find the cause of the ailment....Reports of unusual colony deaths have come from at least 22 states."
"From different maps, Dead bees on a cake
You’re sweeping the forest, Man, it’s getting late
The milkweed is growing, Through cotton crops;
You borrowed the car, But you didn’t ask
You’ve misunderstood the place where you stand, God Man"
--David Sylvian, "God Man"
Is this a "red state" disease? (Or is it even a disease: see comments.) It would be a shame if it is, since those who are conservative politically are just as environmentally concerned as anyone else.
The massive die-offs of honeybees, the real basis of agriculture instead of human activity, requires a more ecological sound and locally representative basis of agriculture as well as pest management.
This goes for all materials instead of only agriculture. Only when all material input choices and externalities are prioritized and monitored locally in the watershed, based on local variegation of interactive effects more successfully, will we have sustainability. This has been discussed in the Commodity Ecology institutional frameworks, and bees may be an ideal case example to discuss synergistic effects of ecological pollution as well as human interests in a healthy ecology.
This sad news about bee die-offs reminds me how important commodity ecology institutions of state, described below, are going to be (or is that bee).
In the article below, they are calling what is potentially a pesticide or insecticide mass die-off a novel obfuscating term: 'colony collapse disorder'. Is that like calling pesticide pollution a strange unknown "bird dieoff disorder"--without touching on the powerful and deadly pesticide and herbicide industry?
Are they deliberately obfuscating the issue? The verroa mite, which seemed to be the harbinger of this feedback loop die-off, has recently gone immune from a major pesticide treatment. (However, see comments--since bees are hardly showing verroa mite infestation despite hardier mites being now in existence; bees are simply flying away presumably healthy, and unable to find their way back to the hive and/or die away from the hive.)
Pesticide treatment used unsparingly only raises better bugs--immune to pesticide treatment. Pesticides are a "short term solution"--which is an oxymoron when talking of ecological relations. All solutions are long term and iteratively sound or are nothing except destructive. (And Bt addled GM-crops seem to be involved in facilitating this in some way, as one factor.)
Toward this long term solution, would be the commodity ecology framework of jurisdiction for democratic material use in a watershed.
Particularly since weakened bee immune systems are suspect along with massive expansion of the varroa mite right before, it seems like a corporate public relations gesture to attempt to classify bee die-off as a novel isolated 'disorder' instead of simply calling it what it may be: more pesticide immune varroa mites along with weakened bee immune systems from overuse of pesticide treatments? (In the comments, it may have issues to do with electromagnetic 'confusion' in bees as well, that scrambles their ability to re-find the hive once they leave.)
Though it's still up in the air what is going on, this probably has a great deal more to do with predictable synergistic effects of massive ecological pollution and pesticide use, which is in the category of the unknown feedback loops that people like Rachel Carson (Silent Spring), Sandra Steingraber (Living Downstream), or Julia Whitty (on the oceans) have been warning us about for generations: that faulty chemical intensive forms of agriculture that ignore local externalities are innately deadly.
To widen the theme though outside of just concentrating on agriculture or apiary, any material use without some form of local democratic watershed jurisdictional oversight would be dangerous. It is required more than ever to check and balance against current 'regulatory capture' by corrupt state and federal governments. As suggested in Toward a Bioregional State, all materials should be moved to more democratic input in materials choices based on local feedback against externalities--human and otherwise.--to integrate materials and the politics of our consumption in them into ecological relations.
Only then will all commodity relationships be based on ecologically sound frameworks as people gain novel watershed institutions which gives voice to their local concerns and the interrelated issues of human health, ecological health, and economic health that are always there. Such interrelationships are very plain in this bee die-off story:
Feb. 11, 2007, 9:57PM
Thousands of honeybees die of enigmatic illness
"Colony Collapse Disorder" [sic] is taking a toll in 22 states
By GENARO C. ARMAS
Associated Press ...Commercial beekeepers in 22 states have reported deaths of tens of thousands of honeybee colonies. ....
...Researchers with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Penn State University and the University of Montana are trying to figure out what is causing it.
...The problem threatens honey production, the livelihood of beekeepers and...crops that need bees for pollination.
STATE COLLEGE, PA.— A mysterious illness [sic, or hardly mysterious, perhaps only intentionally mystified] is killing hundreds of thousands of honeybee colonies across the country, threatening honey production, the livelihood of beekeepers and possibly crops that need bees for pollination. Researchers are scrambling to find the cause of the ailment....Reports of unusual colony deaths have come from at least 22 states. Some affected commercial beekeepers — who often keep thousands of colonies — have reported losing more than 50 percent of their bees.
A colony can have roughly 20,000 bees in the winter, and up to 60,000 in the summer.
"We have seen a lot of things happen in 40 years, but this is the epitome of it all," Dave Hackenberg, of Lewisburg-based Hackenberg Apiaries, said by phone from Fort Meade, Fla., where he was working with his bees.
The country's bee population had already been shocked in recent years by a tiny, parasitic bug called the varroa mite, which has destroyed more than half of some beekeepers' hives and devastated most wild honeybee populations. Along with being producers of honey, commercial bee colonies are important to agriculture as pollinators, along with some birds, bats and other insects. A recent report by the National Research Council noted that in order to bear fruit, three-quarters of all flowering plants — including most food crops and some that provide fiber, drugs and fuel — rely on pollinators for fertilization.
Hackenberg, 58, was first to report...[it]..to bee researchers at Penn State University. He notified them in November when he was down to about 1,000 colonies — after having started the fall with 2,900. "We are going to take bees we got and make more bees ... but it's costly," he said. "We are talking about major bucks. You can only take so many blows so many times."
One beekeeper who traveled with two truckloads of bees to California to help pollinate almond trees found nearly all of his bees dead upon arrival.
Scientists at Penn State, the University of Montana and the U.S. Department of Agriculture are among the growing group of researchers and industry officials trying to solve the puzzle. Diana Cox-Foster, a Penn State entomology professor investigating the problem, said an analysis of dissected bees turned up an alarmingly high number of foreign fungi, bacteria and other organisms and weakened immune systems. Researchers are also looking into the effect pesticides might be having on bees.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/4544838.html
Sisyphus and Pesticides: The Varroa Mite
(Varroa Mite infestation)
Are "health department" sprayings and agricultural insecticides and pesticides having a domino effect on bees at last? This is known to be what happened with the pesticide-immune varroa mite, which was precursor to this massive "Colony Collapse Disorder" die-off:
"The parasitic disease caused by varroa mites is called varroatosis. Its treatment has been of limited success. First the bees were medicated with fluvinate which had about 95% mite falls. It was a good product, but the last five percent became resistant to it and later, almost immune."
Thus, the pesticide applications have intentionally bred "better mites"--and very recently.
This massive varroa mite explosion decimated bee populations, then soon after there is a massive bee dieoff (really a "disappearance") which may be related to already immune hampered bee colonies throughout the United States.
With colonies almost suddenly dying out (via dispersal, see comments) in 22 US states right after the varroa mite became pesticide immune we should look for a synergistic solution.
These mites are capable of reproduction on a 10-day cycle, where, in 12 weeks the number of mites in a Western honey bee hive can multiply by 12. So with a particularly hardy varroa mite infestation becoming systemic, I think it shows clearly we have a paradigm difficulty still reaching for the whole "chemical fix" sort term solutions. I suppose honeybee populations will drop down to a lower homeostatic base until mites once more balance themselves out by killing off the bees they feed upon alone.
That the mites came before shows that it may be a human-ecological intermixed tragedy--with origins in the ongoing addictions to expecting short term solutions.
Seemingly from after varroa mite infestation, bees are far worse systemically, for wear and tear?
Regardless, it's bees and human agriculture and human health--versus the wealth generated from the pesticide and insecticide industry. Even though there are many alternatives to such chemical uses in alternative frameworks of agricultural organization or in natural free pesticides more healthful and safe for all species involved, U.S. agriculture has increasingly become an industrially dangerous wasteland for people as well as other species because scale instead of quality has been the driving ideology influencing these material relations. Seems the next scale crop is the varroa mite.
This bee die-off may be more serious than deaths from insecticides, as a combination of parasites and microbes working synergistically. (Or it may be something else, see comments.) So a more synergistic approach to all materials that humans use in ecological situations is required: commodity ecology.
With that said, I would refer you to a previous post for some solution ideas:
COMMODITY ECOLOGY: From mere "End of Pipe" Remediation, to Ecological Engineering for a Sustainable Economic Watershed
This section veers outside the formal institutional discussion toward a proposal of how to make economically sustainable frameworks across each watershed in the world. This is done by going further than the "end of pipe" remediation strategies of both ecological modernization as well as Living Machines, toward democratizing a process by which we choose and use materials locally in the first place. Commodity ecology is the local watershed democratization of commodity choice and their interactions.
posted by Mark at 2:46 AM
44 Comments:
Mark writes:
Bee Extinction On A Rise, Fruit And Vegetable Industry Threatened
February 27, 2007 1:30 p.m. EST
Ihuoma Ezeh - All Headline News
Visalia, CA (AHN) - Beekeepers are facing a career shock as 24 states throughout the country reporting bee disappearance at a startling rate.
The shocking loss highlights the critical importance of honeybees in the fruit and vegetable food chain.
David Bradshaw, a Californian beekeeper said he was stunned by the sudden disappearance of his bees.
"I have never seen anything like it. Box after box after box are just empty," Bradshaw told the New York Times.
A research at Cornell University estimated that honeybees yearly pollinate more than $14 billion worth of fruits, vegetables and nuts in the U.S.
Zac Browning, vice president of the American Beekeeping Federation said most seeds and crops are honeybee dependent.
"Every third bite we consume in our diet is dependent on a honeybee to pollinate that food," said Browning.
Researchers say the bees are apparently dying in the fields, perhaps becoming exhausted or simply disoriented and eventually falling victim to the cold.
"The real question is why they leave," Jerry Hayes, a bee expert for the Florida Department of Agriculture told the Orlando Sentinel newspaper.
This attack is the first national honeybee crisis ever. The losses are ranging from 30 to 60 percent on the West Coast and 70 percent in Texas.
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7006587883
Mark reposts from ericswan 's post 'The Bees Knees' something interesting about induced atmospheric confusion in bees from "extra electromagnetic waves" that may be responsible for bees simply being unable to get back to the hive, because the EM waves are increasingly confusing them.
Ericswan implies that the HAARP project of Gakona, Alaska (and elsewhere lots of "miniHAARPs throughout the USA)--which is a project of mass global weather manipulation and 'storm steering' for military applications--may be electromagnetically confusing bees so much that they are unable to make it back to the hive.
Such a theory of "electromagnetically confused bees" might explain why the bees are simply missing instead of dead in the hive.
Here's ericswans post:
Monday, February 19, 2007
THE BEES KNEES
1 comments - Click for Blog
February 16, 2007
Putin Orders Russian ‘Queens’ Home, Decimates US Bee Industry
By: Sorcha Faal,
In reviewing reports from our Kremlin sources today I could not help but call to mind the words of the great German scientist Albert Einstein, and who when asked what kind of weapons World War III would be fought with, Einstein responded, “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
These thoughts of mine were due to the information contained in these reports relating to the decimation of the domestic bee industry in the United States, and as we can read about as reported by the Mongabay.Com News Service in their article titled "Mysterious outbreak killing millions of bees", and which says:
"An mysterious outbreak is causing the deaths of millions of honeybees in 22 states according to an entomologist from the University of Montana.
Jerry Bromenshenk says that Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) is "causing agricultural honeybees nationwide to abandon their hives and disappear."
“Individual beekeepers are really taking a beating,” Bromenshenk said. “A guy down in Oklahoma lost 80 percent of his 13,000 colonies in the last month. In Florida, there are a whole lot of people facing 40, 60 and 80 percent losses. That’s huge.”
"With CCD, most adult honeybees abandon a hive and disappear, leaving the queen and a remnant of younger bees. The malady also is characterized by uncapped brood -- when the cells of young bees in the pupa stage are not covered and protected by their older sisters -- probably because most of the adult bees have left. Dead adult bees aren't found near the hive; they are just gone," explains a news release from the University of Montana."
Now, it is very important to understand that these bees are not dead, or dying, they are simply ‘disappearing’, and which led me to remember my studies under Russian biophysicist and molecular biologist Pjotr Garjajev in the 1980’s, and where a great deal of Soviet effort was then being put into the saving of the American domestic bee industry due to devastating losses caused by varroa mites.
To the success of the Soviets efforts we can read as reported by the Science News, Vol. 154, No. 6, August 8, 1998, and which said:
"Federal scientists hope to establish a Russian dynasty throughout the United States—one populated by the progeny of Asian-hatched honeybees, renowned for their resistance to mites.
That goal moved a step closer last week. The first generation of bees produced by 90 expatriate queens, just released from quarantine, has significantly outperformed U.S. members of their species, Apis mellifera, in resisting infestation by varroa mites.
This parasite, which first turned up among U.S. honeybees 11 years ago, has taken a devastating toll. Feeding off their hosts' blood, the energy-sapping mites weaken and soon kill the bees (SN: 2/8/97, p. 92). Moreover, mites in four states have developed resistance to the one pesticide approved for use against them, notes Thomas E. Rinderer of the U.S. Department of Agriculture honeybee laboratory in Baton Rouge, La.
Such pesticide-resistance leaves beekeepers defenseless, he says. Indeed, he notes, because wild honeybees never received treatment, "they're gone." Though swarms that stray from beekeepers' colonies may survive a few months in the wild, he says, these days "they're doomed, too."
The parasites develop on bee pupae. Once a bee emerges as an adult, it normally lives 30 days or more, depending upon how hard it works. But an infested worker may survive only 3 to 5 days in its sickly state. The mites, which also attack adults, reproduce on a 10-day cycle, allowing them to quickly kill off a colony.
In the new tests, Rinderer's team exposed 90 parasitefree colonies to mites. Each colony contained a Russian-hatched queen and up to 60,000 of her offspring. About 12 weeks later, the USDA scientists tallied how many mites infested the adults and pupae.
From previous data on U.S. colonies, "we would have expected an 11.4-fold increase in mites during the test period," Rinderer says. Instead "we got an average 3.9-fold increase—and many colonies had no increase. This is extremely exciting."
Though many honeybee populations along the Primorski region of Russia's Pacific coast have had a century to develop natural resistance to the varroa mite, bees who arrived there more recently show little ability to coexist with the parasite. The current tests were designed to identify and eliminate these weaker bees from any U.S. breeding program.
Imported a year ago, the queens, which can live up to 3 years, are becoming quite elderly. Colonies headed by their daughters, however, are now beginning a new wave of tests to compare them directly with U.S. hives. The queens, which mate only once, carry sperm from descendants of Primorski-hatched bees. By next spring, Rinderer's team plans to begin distributing mated Russian queens to beekeepers for experiments to evaluate how well they pollinate plants and produce honey under field conditions.
The Russian queens are fueling considerable excitement among apiarists, says Troy Fore of the American Beekeeping Federation in Jesup, Ga. The cost of treating colonies with the varroa miticide can eat up 20 percent of a beekeeper's gross earnings—or about 80 percent of the intended profit, he says. Bees with Russian genes should reduce the need for some or all of these expensive treatments, he adds."
The Russian queens also "offer to throw the [mite] resistance gene into [stray] bees," reestablishing a self-sustaining feral community, notes beekeeper Kim Flottum, who edits Bee Culture in Medina, Ohio.
Unknown to the Americans, however, relating to the saving of their domestic bee industry by the massive introduction of Russian Queen Bees was the Soviet research on bees that built upon the research being carried out by Würzburg Zoologists, and which resulted in their groundbreaking study titled "Bursts of magnetic fields induce jumps of misdirection in bees by a mechanism of magnetic resonance"
Now, without making this a pure science report, and which is not our intention as we only seek to provide general information that can lead to your further research, these scientists discovered that “bursts at a frequency of 250 Hz oriented parallel to the field-lines of the EMF induce unequivocal jumps of misdirection of up to +10°” in colonies of Russian bees, and which is highly significant should ‘someone’ wish to destroy bee colonies by causing their workers to ‘disappear’ and not be able to find their way back to heir hives.
(It is important to note that domestic bees that have lost their domestic hives are able to produce a new feral queen and continue to survive in the wild.)
The greater significance of these events, though, rests with the 250 Hz range (The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the SI unit of frequency. Its base unit is s-1 (also called inverse seconds, or 1/s). In English, hertz is used as both singular and plural. One hertz simply means one per second.), and which not only will cause Russian domesticated bees to lose their ability to re-find their domestic hives, but is the frequency attributed to causing great anger in human beings.
It has long been known that both the United States and the Soviets have conducted decades long research into the use of mind control technologies, with the greater aim being towards the control of their own citizens, but also towards its uses in warfare, and which these events appear to be coming into line with past predictions of the unintended consequences should these esoteric be unleashed.
What is occurring in the United States today relating to hundreds of millions of their domestic bees disappearing, and who are descendants of their original Russian Queen ancestors, is that their Military Leadership has unleashed upon their citizens through their propaganda media organs (television/radio) the ‘fearful’ 250 Hz signal intended to ‘anger’ their population in the buildup towards war with Iran.
But! One of the unintended consequences produced by their provocative actions against their own citizens is that they have likewise ‘signaled’ the demise of their agricultural industry through the decimation of their domestic bee industry.
Is it indeed possible that the Soviets in the 1980’s were foresighted enough to plant this ticking time bomb in the very heart of America should the United States at some future date become intent upon Global domination?
A simple phone call to our Kremlin sources provided this cryptic answer, “The ‘Honey Plot’ does exist, Putin himself gave the order.”
posted by ericswan at 2/19/2007 04:33:00 AM
1 Comments:
ericswan said...
We're in the middle of a bee emergency. Albert Einstein said, "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would only have four years left to live." A mysterious ailment called Colony Collapse Disorder is causing agricultural honeybees nationwide to abandon their hives and disappear. It's a kind of mass suicide in the bee world.
Entomologist Jerry Bromenshenk says, "Individual beekeepers are really taking a beating. A guy down in Oklahoma lost 80% of his 13,000 colonies in the last month. In Florida, there are a whole lot of people facing 40, 60 and 80 percent losses. That’s huge."
With CCD, most adult honeybees abandon a hive and disappear, abandoning the queen and a remnant of younger bees. This is unheard of, since normally a bee colony will do almost anything to protect its queen. Since the tasks done in the hive are very stratified, bees cannot survive on their own.
One of the strongest instincts that bees have is protecting and nurturing the next generation, but with CCD, the cells of young bees in the pupa stage are not covered and protected by their older sisters, probably because most of the adult bees have left. Dead adult bees aren't even found near the hive; they are just gone.
Bromenshenk says, "We don’t want to panic the beekeeper industry because we are not sure it's time to push the panic button yet, but we do know this is real, it's severe and it's widespread."
Field technician and self-professed bee lover Scott Debnam describes visits to the impacted bee yards as "spooky," and says, "Fortunately the sites I've visited have been recovering, but in Georgia I saw a lot of small colonies, a lot of uncapped brood and a lot of early-stage brood. The adults had flown the coop."
Author's Note: This disruption in the bee population is not a shock to my readers who know that fertility in all species is linked to sunspot cycles and, more so, that I share how we are facing mass starvation that will lead to mass migration, and therein lies the crisis. How do we feed the masses worldwide; it is my recommendation that we each begin to grow food in our urban as well as rural homesteads. That we construct greenhouses personally and professionally nationwide now!
Tue Feb 20, 12:04:00 AM PST
Post a Comment
http://eastsouthwestandnorth.blogspot.com/2007/02/bees-knees.html
Mark comments:
The supposed Putin authorized "Honey Plot" is interesting, as is the bee electromagnetic confusion research. Thus one of the implications is that the introduction of the Russian bees (seemingly more naturally annoyed or confused by electromagnetic radiation which was known), may be
1. either having a multiplier effect of HAARP issues
2. was a form of intentionally seeding HAARP-able confused bees by the Russians.
This is hardly strange given that the forms of electromagnetic weather control for weather wars started off back in the 1970s by the Russians, and then by the 1980s with the USA, according to cheniere.org:
Title: Move Over G.E. & Big Oil, SCALAR Energy is Everywhere! Third-world nations set to rise
Author: summarizer
Date: 2004.09.15 11:07
Description:
SAID IN APRIL 1997 BY THE U.S. SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, WILLIAM COHEN: "Others [terrorists] are engaging even in an eco-type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves… So there are plenty of ingenious minds out there that are at work finding ways in which they can wreak terror upon other nations…It's real, and that's the reason why we have to intensify our [counterterrorism] efforts." --- Secretary of Defense William Cohen at an April 1997 counterterrorism conference sponsored by former Senator Sam Nunn. Quoted from DoD News Briefing, Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen, Q&A at the Conference on Terrorism, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and U.S. Strategy, University of Georgia, Athens, Apr. 28, 1997.
North America has not had "normal" weather since July 1976, and we are likely never to have "normal" weather again.
In 1975, the Soviets attempted to obtain a treaty with the rest of the world, outlawing the development of frightful new weapons of mass destruction - "more frightful than the mind of man had ever imagined", according to Brezhnev himself. Gromyko introduced the draft treaty into the 1975 session of the United Nations General Assembly. No one knew what the Soviets were referring to. Failing to obtain the treaty, [mostly because of U.S. desires to not ratify it because the US was working on the same global conquest] the Soviets in 1975-76 embarked on the greatest military buildup in history. This buildup was nothing short of a full-fledged preparation to be ready to take over the world, beginning in 1985 (the "ready" time per Brezhnev's 1972 statement at a secret Prague meeting of European Communist Party leaders). The Soviets met this scheduled goal.
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/09/297526.shtml
[Sorry for the duplication of some points, though this was a summary I posted elsewhere that I thought was clearer.]
Shrub writes in the RigInt blog:
"So, IC and Mark...are you asserting that it is definitively not the Varroa Mite that is responsible for the disappearance of the Honey Bees?
The varroa mite occurred before. According to what ericswan posted that I was interested in tracking down, the solution then was to interbreed lots of Russian Queen bees that carried more immunity to the varroa mite.
True, that recently a major varroa mite pesticide has bred an immune crop of varroa mites.
However, currently, U.S honeybees are not dying of these immune varroa mites. They are just disappearing from the hive healthy and alive, presumably unable to get back or find their way back. On this point:
As eric's post notes interestingly the introduction of Russian bees for breeding more immunity to varroa mites as the strategy additionally may have piggybacked another issue intentionally--as a parapolitical outcome of the lack of treaty agreement. The Soviets attempted to get to have everybody worldwide ban electromagnetic weather wars, back in the 1970s, according to information from Tom Bearden.
The Russians knew that the bees they were helping the Americans with to breed for more hardiness against the varroa mite was introducing simultaneously a succeptability to electromagnetic wave confusion at the same moment.
The Sorcha Faal piece that eric reposts at his blog in "The Bees Knees" is interesting information.
It took me a while to find it so I posted it as a comment to my blog's article on the bee dieoff here, with a link to eric's blog post for it as well.
If what (Eric relays in) Sorcha's argument is correct, then this bee thing may be the parapolitical fallout outcome of the lack of global ban on HAARP weather manipulation weapons that the Soviets attempted to get passed in the 1970s.
When the USA refused to cooperate, only then did the Soviets start to ramp up their military, seeing that the people then in charge of the USA, the rightwing Nixonites from the 1970s, was basically announcing that it was planning to militarily conquer them--by refusing to collectively ban such global weather war research.
In addition to linking to Sorcha/ericswans post about it, I put this at my blog as well as a comment--based on some Tom Bearden information and other things from another post elsewhere I saved:
SAID IN APRIL 1997 BY THE U.S. SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, WILLIAM COHEN: "Others [terrorists] are engaging even in an eco-type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves… So there are plenty of ingenious minds out there that are at work finding ways in which they can wreak terror upon other nations…It's real, and that's the reason why we have to intensify our [counterterrorism] efforts." --- Secretary of Defense William Cohen at an April 1997 counterterrorism conference sponsored by former Senator Sam Nunn. Quoted from DoD News Briefing, Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen, Q&A at the Conference on Terrorism, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and U.S. Strategy, University of Georgia, Athens, Apr. 28, 1997.
[Tom Bearden's contention is that] North America has not had "normal" weather since July 1976, and we are likely never to have "normal" weather again.
In 1975, the Soviets attempted to obtain a treaty with the rest of the world, outlawing the development of frightful new weapons of mass destruction - "more frightful than the mind of man had ever imagined", according to Brezhnev himself. Gromyko introduced the draft treaty into the 1975 session of the United Nations General Assembly. No one knew what the Soviets were referring to. Failing to obtain the treaty, [mostly because of U.S. desires to not ratify it because the US was working on the same global conquest] the Soviets in 1975-76 embarked on the greatest military buildup in history. This buildup was nothing short of a full-fledged preparation to be ready to take over the world, beginning in 1985 (the "ready" time per Brezhnev's 1972 statement at a secret Prague meeting of European Communist Party leaders). The Soviets met this scheduled goal."
Though by the 1990s, the Reagan-Bushes of the USA had collapsed their economy with ramping up other military spending here, as well as massive currency counterfeiting. The money for that operation has never been returned to the U.S. treasury, and has been a criminal slush fund for the Bush-Clintons ever since, according to Greg Symanski:
Title: Netting the Bush-Clinton Crime Family? Fitzgerald's Plamegate to Switzerland for $27.5 Trillion
Author: Symanski report, with many others
Date: 2006.04.15 09:37
Description: This is a judicious summary of a big story that should be blown wide open. Fitzgerald's Plamegate heads to Switzerland for approx. $2T stolen U.S. dollars from $27.5T belonging to U.S. Treasury?
Who can say. It does connect with the same banking account names mentioned by Wayne Madsen's (ex NSA whistleblower) sources though! Below connections click well, and despite being immense, make sense of a lot of (1) Bush-Clinton two steps particularly Hillary Clinton's connections and motives in Vince Foster's death, (2) in the CIA's "Children's (Slush) Fund" out of Wisconsin (with Clinton's Shalala and Bush's Tommy Thompson looking over the CIA nest egg in Wisconsin for explaining back-to-back, Bush-to-Clinton double Wisconsinite appointments to the Sec of Health and Human Services of Shalala and Thompson; (3) the deaths of Vincent Foster, connected to the murder of Israeli PM Rabin, who attempted to help Foster get U.S. Treasury Agent Wanta out of illegal jail "disappearance" in Switzerland; (4) Wanta himself, due to recent federal court suit 2003 verification that he is the public trustholder of 27.5 trillion dollars of U.S. public money that Bush-Clinton have been slushing off of privately and illegally for 15 years; the corporate media is desperate to keep this trillion dollar theft of Bushite-Clintons from being public; the money came from U.S. "Cold War booty" grown to $27.5 TRILLION dollars [dealing with the U.S.'s success in massive counterfeiting operations to crash the Russian currency], and once Wanta was thrown in jail to stop him from turning it back into the Treasury, the Bush-Clintons for 12 years have been using it as their personal drug/gunrunning/global bribery for NWO creation slush fund.
Most of what is below is as quick of an outline to get the picture, with links to follow for more. THE WHOLE BUSH-CLINTON VOTE FRAUDING, DRUG DEALING, ILLEGAL GUN RUNNING, RIGHT-WING ZIONIST, STATE TERRORIST NETWORK links up, here, in this story."
Check the links for more.
It would be some kind of confirmation or lack of either way to note exactly
1. where are these 22 states where this is occurring mostly.
2. Are these states areas where much of the "Russian Queen bees" were inbred into the domestic U.S. honeybees?
I have yet to see either such maps, particularly the one where this "Colony Collapse Disorder" has occurred. If you have any such maps, post a link for them.
A GMO 'perfect storm' developing and affecting bees as well? Bee "disappearances" are happening in Germany and several other countries, as well as the United States and Canada which is the core of it right now. The Spiegel.de article below is worth close reading, among 5 other ones additionally placed below mostly about the GM-crop angle.
As "Iridescent Cuttlefish", IC, said on another blog in a galaxy not so far away:
"For a short overview of the situation, try this article from Gunther Latsch, which begins with the question, "Are GM Crops Killing Bees?" At this point, it looks bloody well likely, except that there's more to the story. Quite unconnected to my mysterious source, I'm thinking that there are several, if not many elements that are contributing to this crisis. I am not a big fan of the mono-causal explanation of complex issues mode of thinking (bloody self-serving, single-minded mechanistic determinism, as far as I'm concerned.) Also, there are some parapolitical dimensions..."
At that link, reposted here:
SPIEGEL ONLINE - March 22, 2007, 06:21 PM
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,473166,00.html
COLLAPSING COLONIES
Are GM Crops Killing Bees?
By Gunther Latsch
A mysterious decimation of bee populations has German beekeepers worried, while a similar phenomenon in the United States is gradually assuming catastrophic proportions.
The consequences for agriculture and the economy could be enormous.
Is the mysterious decimation of bee populations in the US and Germany a result of GM crops?
Walter Haefeker is a man who is used to painting grim scenarios. He sits on the board of directors of the German Beekeepers Association (DBIB) and is vice president of the European Professional Beekeepers Association.
And because griping is part of a lobbyist's trade, it is practically his professional duty to warn that "the very existence of beekeeping is at stake."
The problem, says Haefeker, has a number of causes,
[1] one being the varroa mite, introduced from Asia, and
[2] another is the widespread practice in agriculture of spraying wildflowers with herbicides and practicing monoculture.
[3] Another possible cause, according to Haefeker, is the controversial and growing use of genetic engineering in agriculture.
As far back as 2005, Haefeker ended an article he contributed to the journal Der Kritischer Agrarbericht (Critical Agricultural Report) with an Albert Einstein quote: "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man."
Mysterious events in recent months have suddenly made Einstein's apocalyptic vision seem all the more topical. For unknown reasons, bee populations throughout Germany are disappearing -- something that is so far only harming beekeepers.
But the situation is different in the United States, where bees are dying in such dramatic numbers that the economic consequences could soon be dire.
No one knows what is causing the bees to perish, but some experts believe that the large-scale use of genetically modified plants in the US could be a factor.
Felix Kriechbaum, an official with a regional beekeepers' association in Bavaria, recently reported a decline of almost 12 percent in local bee populations.
When "bee populations disappear without a trace," says Kriechbaum, it is difficult to investigate the causes, because "most bees don't die in the beehive."
There are many diseases that can cause bees to lose their sense of orientation so they can no longer find their way back to their hives.
Manfred Hederer, the president of the German Beekeepers Association, almost simultaneously reported a 25 percent drop in bee populations throughout Germany. In isolated cases, says Hederer, declines of up to 80 percent have been reported. He speculates that "a particular toxin, some agent with which we are not familiar," is killing the bees.
Politicians, until now, have shown little concern for such warnings or the woes of beekeepers. Although apiarists have been given a chance to make their case -- for example in the run-up to the German cabinet's approval of a genetic engineering policy document by Minister of Agriculture Horst Seehofer in February -- their complaints are still largely ignored.
Even when beekeepers actually go to court, as they recently did in a joint effort with the German chapter of the organic farming organization Demeter International and other groups to oppose the use of genetically modified corn plants, they can only dream of the sort of media attention environmental organizations like Greenpeace attract with their protests at test sites.
But that could soon change. Since last November, the US has seen a decline in bee populations so dramatic that it eclipses all previous incidences of mass mortality. Beekeepers on the east coast of the United States complain that they have lost more than 70 percent of their stock since late last year, while the west coast has seen a decline of up to 60 percent.
In an article in its business section in late February, the New York Times calculated the damage US agriculture would suffer if bees died out. Experts at Cornell University in upstate New York have estimated the value bees generate -- by pollinating fruit and vegetable plants, almond trees and animal feed like clover -- at more than $14 billion.
Scientists call the mysterious phenomenon "Colony Collapse Disorder" (CCD), and it is fast turning into a national catastrophe of sorts. A number of universities and government agencies have formed a "CCD Working Group" to search for the causes of the calamity, but have so far come up empty-handed.
But, like Dennis vanEngelsdorp, an apiarist with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, they are already referring to the problem as a potential "AIDS for the bee industry."
One thing is certain: Millions of bees have simply vanished. In most cases, all that's left in the hives are the doomed offspring. But dead bees are nowhere to be found -- neither in nor anywhere close to the hives. Diana Cox-Foster, a member of the CCD Working Group, told The Independent that researchers were "extremely alarmed," adding that the crisis "has the potential to devastate the US beekeeping industry."
It is particularly worrisome, she said, that the bees' death is accompanied by a set of symptoms "which does not seem to match anything in the literature."
In many cases, scientists have found evidence of almost all known bee viruses in the few surviving bees found in the hives after most have disappeared. Some had five or six infections at the same time and were infested with fungi -- a sign, experts say, that the insects' immune system may have collapsed.
The scientists are also surprised that bees and other insects usually leave the abandoned hives untouched. Nearby bee populations or parasites would normally raid the honey and pollen stores of colonies that have died for other reasons, such as excessive winter cold. "This suggests that there is something toxic in the colony itself which is repelling them," says Cox-Foster.
Walter Haefeker, the German beekeeping official, speculates that "besides a number of other factors," the fact that genetically modified, insect-resistant plants are now used in 40 percent of cornfields in the United States could be playing a role. The figure is much lower in Germany -- only 0.06 percent -- and most of that occurs in the eastern states of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Brandenburg. Haefeker recently sent a researcher at the CCD Working Group some data from a bee study that he has long felt shows a possible connection between genetic engineering and diseases in bees.
The study in question is a small research project conducted at the University of Jena from 2001 to 2004. The researchers examined the effects of pollen from a genetically modified maize variant called "Bt corn" on bees. A gene from a soil bacterium had been inserted into the corn that enabled the plant to produce an agent that is toxic to insect pests. The study concluded that there was no evidence of a "toxic effect of Bt corn on healthy honeybee populations." But when, by sheer chance, the bees used in the experiments were infested with a parasite, something eerie happened. According to the Jena study, a "significantly stronger decline in the number of bees" occurred among the insects that had been fed a highly concentrated Bt poison feed.
According to Hans-Hinrich Kaatz, a professor at the University of Halle in eastern Germany and the director of the study, the bacterial toxin in the genetically modified corn may have "altered the surface of the bee's intestines, sufficiently weakening the bees to allow the parasites to gain entry -- or perhaps it was the other way around. We don't know."
Of course, the concentration of the toxin was ten times higher in the experiments than in normal Bt corn pollen.
In addition, the bee feed was administered over a relatively lengthy six-week period.
Kaatz would have preferred to continue studying the phenomenon but lacked the necessary funding.
"Those who have the money are not interested in this sort of research," says the professor, "and those who are interested don't have the money."
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,473166,00.html
IC additionally linked to
http://www.newheadnews.com/
which has some more articles on the CCD phenomenon:
[the one above]
# 1. COLLAPSING COLONIES; Der Spiegel Mar 22 07, Gunther Latsch
"The problem, says Haefeker, has a number of causes, one being the varroa mite, introduced from Asia, and another is the widespread practice in agriculture of spraying wildflowers with herbicides and practicing monoculture. Another possible cause, according to Haefeker, is the controversial and growing use of genetic engineering in agriculture."
[others:]
# 2. Could genetically modified crops be killing bees?; SF Chronicle Mar 10 07, John McDonald
"That there is Bt in beehives is not a question. Beekeepers spray Bt under hive lids sometimes to control the wax moth, an insect whose larval forms produce messy webs on honey. Canadian beekeepers have detected the disappearance of the wax moth in untreated hives, apparently a result of worker bees foraging in fields of transgenic canola plants."
SF Chronicle
Mar 10 07
Could genetically modified crops be killing bees?
By John McDonald
With reports coming in about a scourge affecting honeybees, researchers are launching a drive to find the cause of the destruction. The reasons for rapid colony collapse are not clear. Old diseases, parasites and new diseases are being looked at.
Over the past 100 or so years, beekeepers have experienced colony losses from bacterial agents (foulbrood), mites (varroa and tracheal) and other parasites and pathogens. Beekeepers have dealt with these problems by using antibiotics, miticides or integrated pest management.
While losses, particularly in overwintering, are a chronic condition, most beekeepers have learned to limit their losses by staying on top of new advice from entomologists. Unlike the more common problems, this new die-off has been virtually instantaneous throughout the country, not spreading at the slower pace of conventional classical disease.
... That there is Bt in beehives is not a question. Beekeepers spray Bt under hive lids sometimes to control the wax moth, an insect whose larval forms produce messy webs on honey. Canadian beekeepers have detected the disappearance of the wax moth in untreated hives, apparently a result of worker bees foraging in fields of transgenic canola plants.
at:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/10/HOG5FOH9VQ1.DTL
# 3. The Mysterious Disappearance of Honey Bees; Permaculture Mar 5 07, Joe Cummins
"The cogent point is that the bees in the colonies appear to have lost their immunity to viruses, bacteria and fungal diseases. The loss of resistance to disease may be caused by parasites, virus infections, or pesticides (both applied and present in GM crops)."
Permaculture
Mar 5 07
The Mysterious Disappearance of Honey Bees
By Joe Cummins
In October 2006 United States National Research Council published the report of their Committee on the Status of Pollinators in North America. The report pointed out that an existing decline in honey bee pollinators was devastating North America. The report pointed out the importance of pollinators noting that three quarters of the earth's flowering plants depended on pollinators for propagation.
The extensive report dealt with bureaucratic issues aimed at dealing with the catastrophe and delineated ways that more human and financial resources should be focused on honey bee decline.
The report did not pin down causes in decline but instead focused on introduced parasites and microbial disease causing organisms such as fungi, bacteria and viruses Other causes included habitat decline, fragmentation and deterioration.
The remedies suggested included testing commercial pollinators to insure that they were disease free and similar bureaucratic measures rather than a sharp focus on the primary causes of decline (1).
The impact of pesticide on bees the uses and the spread of genetically modified (GM) crops modified for insect resistance and herbicide tolerance were barely discussed in the report leaving the impression that these were not considered important by the committee.
The following discussion will deal with those important issues regardless of the views of the NRC Committee.
Science Magazine reported on the pollination crisis but emphasized the need to replace the current pollinators with more robust insects (2). The New York Times emphasized the impact of bee decline on farmers and reported a salient observation that bees were flying off from the hive and simply not returning.(3). The Independent commented on the swift colony decline and noted that the problem of a tremendous pathogen load in the remaining members of a colony (4). The cogent point is that the bees in the colonies appear to have lost their immunity to viruses, bacteria and fungal diseases [which seems to be related to GM-crops and their use of Bt, which is very prevalent in the USA particularly].
The loss of resistance to disease may be caused by parasites, virus infections, or pesticides (both applied and present in GM crops). The disappearance of bees may have originated with one thing that diminished the bee's immunity or by a combination of environmental factors diminishing the immune system, all hitting the bee colonies at the same time.
at:
http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/permaculture/2007-March/026349.html
# 4. Link Between Disappearing Bees and GM Crops?; Bifurcated Carrots Mar 14 07, Patrick
"It's hard to overstate the importance of this problem. The vast majority of our food crops are pollinated by insects, and quite simply without the insects there can be no harvest. Bees are among the most important pollinating insects."
Bifurcated Carrots
Mar 14 07
Link Between Disappearing Bees and GM Crops?
By Patrick
For some time now bee keepers in the US have noticed their bees have been disappearing, the so called Colony Collapse Disorder.
It's hard to overstate the importance of this problem. The vast majority of our food crops are pollinated by insects, and quite simply without the insects there can be no harvest. Bees are among the most important pollinating insects.
A Pennsylvania bee farmer has a theory why this is happening. He thinks it's because of GM crops engineered to produce Bt, a naturally occurring pesticide.
I say naturally occurring, because it's present in small quantities in the environment. In these GM crops however, it's another story. Crops engineered to produce Bt do so in very large quantities. It's produced by every cell in the plant including roots, stems, leaves and flowers. It's also present in the pollen of these plants.
The amount of Bt in these plants is enough to trigger allergies in some people, and irritate the skin and eyes of farmers who handle the crops.
In India, when sheep were used to clear a field of left over Bt cotton, several sheep died after eating it.
Even if this farmer's theory turns out not to be true, it should really serve as a wake up call. The genetic contamination from these GM crops has long ago left the fields where they were grown, and if it is necessary to clean it up, it could prove to be enormously difficult.
GM contamination is after all the only self-replicating contamination human beings have ever released into the environment.
at:
http://www.patnsteph.net/weblog/?p=111
# 5. Colony Collapse Disorder; Wikipedia
"Late in the year 2006 and in early 2007, however, the rate of attrition was alleged to have reached new proportions, and the term "Colony Collapse Disorder" was proposed to describe this sudden rash of disappearances."
Colony Collapse Disorder
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is closely related to a current event.
Information may change rapidly as the event progresses.
A healthy honey bee on a Geraldton Wax Flower, New South Wales, Australia, 2005.
Colony Collapse Disorder (or CCD) is the name of the phenomenon that describes the massive die-off affecting an entire beehive or bee colony. The BBC has referred to it as VBS (Vanishing Bee Syndrome).
It was originally apparently limited to colonies of the Western honey bee in North America,[1] but European beekeepers have recently claimed to be observing a similar phenomenon in Poland and Spain, with initial reports coming in from Switzerland and Germany, albeit to a smaller degree.[2] The cause (or causes) of the syndrome is not yet well understood and even the existence of this disorder remains disputed. Theories include environmental change-related stresses[3], malnutrition, unknown pathogens, mites, pesticides, disease[4], or genetically modified (GM) crops[5]. [or a combination of all of these spurned by Bt affects, and even HAARP electromagnetics.]
From 1971 to 2006 approximately one half of the U.S. honey bee colonies have vanished, but this decline includes the cumulative losses from all factors such as urbanization, pesticide use, tracheal and Varroa mites and commercial beekeepers retiring and going out of business, and has been fairly gradual.
Late in the year 2006 and in early 2007, however, the rate of attrition was alleged to have reached new proportions, and the term "Colony Collapse Disorder" was proposed to describe this sudden rash of disappearances.[1]
Limited occurrences resembling CCD have been documented as early as 1896,[4] and this set of symptoms has in the past several decades been given many different names (disappearing disease, spring dwindle, May disease, autumn collapse, and fall dwindle disease).
Most recently, a similar phenomenon in the winter of 2004/2005 occurred, and was attributed to Varroa mites (the "Vampire Mite" scare), though this was never ultimately confirmed. In none of the past appearances of this syndrome has anyone been able to determine its cause(s). Upon recognition that the syndrome does not seem to be seasonally-restricted, and that it may not be a "disease" in the standard sense (in that there may not be a specific causative agent), the syndrome was re-named.[6]
Contents
* 1 Phenomenology
* 2 Possible causes and research
o 2.1 Poor nutrition or malnutrition
o 2.2 Pesticides
o 2.3 Pathogens and immunodeficiency
o 2.4 Poisonous plants
o 2.5 Genetically modified crops (GMO)
* 3 Scale of the disorder
* 4 See also
* 5 References
* 6 External links
Phenomenology
A colony which has collapsed from CCD is generally characterized by all of these conditions occurring simultaneously:[7]
* Complete absence of adult bees in colonies, with no or little build-up of dead bees in or in front of the colonies.
* Presence of capped brood in colonies. Bees normally will not abandon a hive until the capped brood have all hatched.
* Presence of food stores, both honey and bee pollen:
i. which is not immediately robbed by other bees
ii. when attacked by hive pests such as wax moth and small hive beetle, the attack is noticeably delayed.
Precursor symptoms that may arise before the final colony collapse are:
* Insufficient workforce to maintain the brood that is present
* Workforce seems to be made up of young adult bees
* Queen is uncharacteristically evident outside the hive
* The colony members are reluctant to consume provided feed, such as sugar syrup and protein supplement.
Possible causes and research
While the exact mechanisms of CCD are unknown, pathogens, pesticides or mite associations are suspected as causative agents. Whether any single factor is responsible, or a combination of factors (acting independently in different areas affected by CCD, or acting in tandem), is still unknown; it is likewise still uncertain whether this is a genuinely new phenomenon, as opposed to a known phenomenon that previously only had a minor impact.
At present, the primary source of information, and presumed "lead" group investigating the phenomenon, is the Colony Collapse Disorder Working Group,[4] based primarily at Penn State University.
Their preliminary report pointed out some patterns, but drew no strong conclusions.[6]
Poor nutrition or malnutrition
One of the patterns reported by the aforementioned group at Penn State was that all producers in a preliminary survey noted a period of "extraordinary stress" affecting the colonies in question prior to the die-off, most commonly involving poor nutrition and/or drought.[6] To date, this is the only factor that all of the reported cases of CCD have in common; accordingly, there is at least some significant possibility that this phenomenon is correlated to nutritional stress, and may not manifest in healthy, well-nourished colonies.
Some researchers have attributed the syndrome to the practice of feeding high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) to supplement winter stores. [Bt heavy: most U.S. corn is GMO corn, Bt-added by Monsanto]
The variability of HFCS may be relevant to the apparent inconsistencies of results.
European commentators have suggested a possible connection with HFCS produced from genetically modified corn.[8] However, if this were the sole factor involved, this should also lead to the exclusive appearance of CCD in wintering colonies being fed HFCS, but many reports of CCD occur in other contexts, with beekeepers who do not use HFCS.
Pesticides
One recently published view is that bees are falling victim to new varieties of nicotine-based pesticides;[9] beekeepers in Canada are also losing their bees and are blaming neonicotinoid pesticides[citation needed].
CCD is possibly linked to pesticide use though several studies have found no common environmental factors between unrelated outbreaks studied.
One of the more common general hypotheses concerns pesticides (or, more technically, insecticides).
For example, the effects of the top Bayer product, labelled Gaucho (based on the agent imidacloprid) on insects would be perfectly in keeping with the symptoms;[10][11] e.g., the effects of imidacloprid on termites are apparent failure of the immune system and disorientation[citation needed].
However, it is particularly difficult to evaluate pesticide contributions to CCD for several reasons. First, the variety of pesticides in use in the different areas reporting CCD makes it difficult to test for all possible pesticides simultaneously.
Second, many commercial beekeeping operations are mobile, transporting hives over large geographic distances over the course of a season, potentially exposing the colonies to different pesticides at each location.
Third, the bees themselves place pollen and honey into long-term storage, effectively, meaning that there may be a delay of anywhere from days to months before contaminated provisions are fed to the colony, negating any attempts to associate the appearance of symptoms with the actual time at which exposure to pesticides occurred.
Pesticides used on bee forage are far more likely to enter the colony via the pollen stores rather than via nectar (because pollen is carried externally on the bees, while nectar is carried internally, and may kill the bee if too toxic), though not all potentially lethal chemicals, either natural or man-made, affect the adult bees - many primarily affect the brood, but brood die-off does not appear to be happening in CCD.
Most significantly, brood are not fed honey, and adult bees consume very little pollen; accordingly, the pattern in CCD suggests that if contaminants or toxins from the environment are responsible, it is most likely to be via the honey, as it is the adults that are dying (or leaving [or unable to find their way back]), not the brood. To date, most of the evaluation of possible roles of pesticides in CCD have relied on the use of surveys submitted by beekeepers, but it seems likely that direct testing of samples from affected colonies will be needed, especially given the possible role of systemic insecticides such as imidacloprid (which are applied to the soil and taken up into the plant's tissues, including pollen and nectar), which may be applied to a crop when the beekeeper is not present.
No detailed studies of toxicity or pesticide residue in remaining honey or pollen in failed colonies are yet published, however.
Most beekeepers affected by CCD report that they use antibiotics and miticides in their colonies, though the lack of uniformity as to which particular chemicals are used[6] makes it seem unlikely that any single such chemical is involved. However, it is possible that not all such chemicals in use have been tested for possible effects on honey bees, and could therefore potentially be contributing to the CCD phenomenon.
Pathogens and immunodeficiency
Some researchers have commented that the pathway of propagation functions in the manner of a contagious disease; however, there is some sentiment that the disorder may involve an immunosuppressive mechanism,[12] not unlike the analog of HIV in humans, potentially linked to the aforementioned "stress" leading to a weakened immune system.
Specifically, according to researchers at Penn State:
"The magnitude of detected infectious agents in the adult bees suggests some type of immunosuppression."
These researchers have further suggested a connection between Varroa destructor mite infestation and CCD, suggesting that a combination of these bee mites, deformed wing virus (which the mites transmit) and bacteria work together to suppress immunity and may be one cause of CCD.[13]
This research group is reported to be focusing on a search for possible viral, bacterial, or fungal pathogens which may be involved.[6]
Some have suggested that the syndrome may be an inability by beekeepers to correctly identify known diseases such as European foulbrood or Nosema. The testing and diagnosis of samples from affected colonies (already performed) makes this highly unlikely, as the symptoms are fairly well-known and differ from what is classified as CCD. A high rate of Nosema infection was reported in samples of bees from Pennsylvania, but this pattern was not reported from samples elsewhere[6]. Despite this, in Europe it is supposed that CCD is due to Nosema ceranae[citation needed].
When a colony is dying, and there are other healthy colonies nearby (as is typical in a bee yard), those healthy colonies may enter the dying colony and rob its provisions for their own use. If the dying colony's provisions were contaminated (by natural or man-made toxins), the resulting pattern (of healthy colonies becoming sick when in proximity to a dying colony) would suggest that of a contagious disease. However, it is often reported in CCD cases that provisions of dying colonies are not being robbed, suggesting that at least this particular factor is not involved in CCD.
Poisonous plants
Certain plants' nectars (and even some pollens) such as rhododendrons, azaleas, Passiflora, almond[citation needed], aconites, hellebore, skunk cabbage, golden rain tree, Yellow Jessamine, Aloe littoralis, oleander and Chamaecrista fasciculata (Partridge-pea) are a few of the species known to be mildly toxic and poisonous to bees (and humans).
These plants' nectars are known to include toxic or poisonous substances including alkaloids, anthraquinones, and grayanotoxin. Catalpa speciosa (makes bees mildly to very inebriated), honey from Kalmia latifolia, the "mountain laurel" of the northern United States, and allied species such as sheep laurel, Kalmia angustifolia, can produce sickness or even death.
The nectar of the Wharangi Bush, Melicope ternata, in New Zealand also produces toxic honey, and this has been fatal. Datura plants, belladonna flowers, henbane (Hyoscamus niger), and Serjania lethalis (a liana used in making fish killing mixtures) from Brazil also produce toxins at dangerous to deadly levels in honey.
The changing climate, cultural, and other environmental factors may be enabling more of some of these plants' nectars to affect bees and other nectar gatherers, either through changes in the distribution of the plants (both natural and artificial, the latter due to use of these plants as ornamentals), changes in the likelihood of exposure to these plants due to movement of beehives by beekeepers, or a lack of alternative nectar sources driving bees to use plants they might normally avoid.
Genetically modified crops (GMO)
Potential effects of gathering pollen and nectar from genetically modified (GM) crops that produce Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) toxin have been investigated to a minor degree, but corn, the primary crop involved, is not a preferred plant for honey bees, although beekeepers who keep bees near corn fields state that "corn is an excellent source of pollen when in tassel" (David Hackenberg, former president of the American Beekeeping Federation).[14] Cotton, the second important Bt crop, is highly subject to bee visitation for nectar (pollen is only consumed if there is no other pollen available[15]), but there is little evidence of toxicity of GM cotton, other than that from insecticides used during bloom. [though see the Speigel.de article above that this Wikipedia article leaves out.]
In 2006 the "Committee on Status and Trends of Pollinators" of the United States National Research Council published a report on the "Status of Pollinators in North America"[16], and mentioned in short, besides a list of other factors, that GMO might contribute to honey bee decline, because according to one scientific review of "the small literature on this topic,...in some cases, there are negative but sublethal effects attributable to consumption of transgenic pollens."[17]
The Sierra Club Genetic Engineering Committee recently published a letter to Senator Thomas Harkin on the web with the title "GE and bee Colony Collapse Disorder -- science needed!".[18]
They are of the opinion that "highly respected scientists believe that exposure to genetically engineered crops and their plant-produced pesticides merit serious consideration as either the cause or a contributory factor to the development and spread of CCD." Nine literature references which might support this theory are cited.[19]
[Corporate Science to the rescue (i.e., lying? See the Speigel.de article above to compare!]
On March 28 2007, the "Mid-Atlantic Apiculture Research and Extension Consortium"[20] published a new "Summary of Research on the Non-Target Effects of Bt Corn Pollen on Honeybees", which states that according to "a field study...(soon to be published in the bee journal Apidologie) there is no evidence thus far of any lethal or sub-lethal effects of the currently used Bt proteins on honey bees", and, specifically regarding the possible causal connections between Bt pollen and CCD, stated "While this possibility has not been ruled out, the weight of evidence reported here argues strongly that the current use of Bt crops is not associated with CCD"[21].
Most of the short summaries of US risk assessment studies on Bt in relation to honey bees are published on the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) homepage for Biopesticides Registration Action Documents[22], especially there is a document concerning the environmental effects of Bacillus thuringiensis as plant incorporated protectant.[23] (Literature references of studies, which are in the public domain, are included.)
For Bt cotton there are written some paragraphs in a fact sheet with the title "Bacillus thuringiensis Cry2Ab2 protein and the Genetic Material Necessary for Its Production in Cotton".[24]
These tests were usually made according to "Honey bee testing Tier I".[25] Such tests seem to have a rather short duration time.
("Control and treated bees should be observed for at least 30 days after dosing.") The Fact Sheets for plant-incorporated protectants[26] - retrievable and not retrievable - are listed in a special EPA homepage. The original studies on the effects of Bt pollen on honeybees do not seem to be in the public domain. [!]
The primary effects of Bt on insects is in the larval stage. Thus the studies on Bt-toxins and effects on honey bees originally concentrated more on larvae and their development. However, as pollen is an important part of bee bread, ["bee bread"?] which is also food for adult bees, some beekeepers think that adult bees may be more affected by ingredients of pollen, because adult bees are something like a filter for larvae. And as the CCD phenomenon involves the disappearance of the adult bees, some think there could be a direct connection[27] despite the absence of symptoms in the larvae, and despite any evidence that the bees experiencing CCD have ever been exposed to GM crops. [! another trustworthy Wikipedia lie, see the Spiegel.de article above]
Research conducted in Germany suggests that exposure to corn pollen containing genes for Bt production may weaken the adult bees' defense against Nosema, though in the absence of such an infection, there were no detectable effects: "When the trial was repeated the colonies were treated prophylactically with antibiotics to prevent re-infection...This indicates that healthy bee colonies are not impaired in any way by the toxin in any of the tested vital functions of colony size, foraging activity, brood care activity or development, even when exposed to extreme levels of Bt maize pollen over a period of six weeks."[28].
However, if "the bee colonies happened to be infested with parasites (microsporidia), this infestation led to a reduction in the number of bees and subsequently to reduced broods....This effect was significantly more marked in the Bt-fed colonies."
It has further been suggested that "genetically modified corn may have altered the surface of the bee's intestines, sufficiently weakening the bees to allow the parasites to gain entry -- or perhaps it was the other way around" though it was also noted "Of course, the concentration of the toxin was ten times higher in the experiments than in normal Bt corn pollen. In addition, the bee feed was administered over a relatively lengthy six-week period."[29].
Other more recent studies have similarly failed to show any adverse effects of Bt pollen on healthy bee colonies[21].
The preliminary report of the Colony Collapse Disorder Working Group[4] concerning "Fall Dwindle Disease"[6] indicated that "all PA samples were found to have nosema spores in their rectal contents.
The sting gland of many examined bees were obviously scarred with distinct black “marks”; this type of pin-point melanization or darkening is indicative of an immune response to some sort of pathogen." If the bees in Pennsylvania were gathering Bt-toxin-containing corn pollen, it could potentially have interacted with Nosema and thus contributed to CCD in those colonies; however, there is no evidence that these colonies were gathering corn pollen at any point prior to their deaths, [what kind of nearsighted statement is that--what does the writer of that sentence think BEES DO all the time?] nor has it been reported that colonies afflicted by CCD elsewhere had been collecting corn pollen.
The vast majority of the colonies reported to be dying from CCD occur in locations where GM corn is not grown (at least in the United States), nor were bees from other areas outside of Pennsylvania reported to be significantly infected by Nosema, meaning that even if GM crops were involved in this fashion, it could only potentially account for a very small number of the reported cases of CCD.
In 2005 Bt maize, which is commercially planted in the US since 1996, accounted for 35% (10.64 million ha) of total US maize plantings. GM insect resistant Bt cotton has also been grown commercially in the US since 1996 and by 2005, was planted on 52% (2.8 million ha) of total cotton plantings.[30] According to David Hackenberg, former president of the American Beekeeping Federation and leading the public information concerning CCD as a beekeeper, "beekeepers that have been most affected so far have been close to corn, cotton, soybeans, canola, sunflowers, apples, vine crops and pumpkins."[14] [Trumping even the other sentence above in ever unreliable Wikipedia, the encephalitic encyclopedia]
Thus some of the commercially grown Bt plants seem to be included in gaps of pollination management.
However, similar massive bee die-offs have been recorded for decades prior to the introduction of these crops[4], and also occur in areas in Europe and Canada where there are no GM crops grown at all[21]. [back to the HAARP potential?]
Scale of the disorder
In North America, at least 22 different states[31][citation needed] as well as portions of Canada are known to have been affected by Colony Collapse Disorder.
The disorder has been identified in a geographically diverse group of states including Georgia, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and California[32]. In some states the loss of honey bee colonies is estimated as high as 75 percent of the population.
The phenomenon is particularly important for crops such as the almond growing in California, where honey bees are the predominant pollinator and the crop value in 2006 was $US 1.5 billion.
In 2000, the total U.S. crop value that was wholly dependent on the honey bee pollination was estimated to exceed $US 15 billion.[33]
Honey bees are not native to the Americas, therefore their necessity as pollinators in the US is limited to strictly agricultural uses.
They are responsible for pollination of approximately one third of the United States' crop species, including such species as: almonds, peaches, soybeans, apples, pears, cherries, raspberries, blackberries, cranberries, and strawberries; many but not all of these plants can be (and often are) pollinated by other insects, including other kinds of bees, in the U.S., but typically not on a commercial scale.
While some farmers of a few kinds of native crops do bring in honey bees to help pollinate, none specifically need them, and when honey bees are absent from a region, the native pollinators quickly reclaim the niche, typically being better adapted to serve those plants (assuming that the plants normally occur in that specific area). On the 30% of crop types where honey bees are used -- even though many other creatures are actually more efficient at pollinating, on a per-individual basis -- most native pollinators cannot be mass-utilized as easily or as effectively as honey bees, if they will visit the plants at all.
[Thus the whole issue of bees as a supply-side solution for pollination, when many more local pollinators would do in the niche.]
Beehives can be moved from crop to crop as needed,...
[and beehive tractor trailers could have been a video clip in Koyaanisqatsi:
Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of Balance is a 1982 documentary film directed by Godfrey Reggio with music composed by minimalist composer Philip Glass and cinematography by Ron Fricke. The film consists primarily of slow motion and time-lapse photography of cities and natural landscapes across the United States. The documentary contains neither dialog nor narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and the music that accompanies them. In the Hopi language, the word Koyaanisqatsi means 'life of moral corruption and turmoil, life out of balance', and the film implies that modern humanity is living in such a way.]
...and the bees will visit many plants in large numbers, compensating via sheer numbers for what they lack in efficiency. The commercial viability of these crops is therefore strongly tied to the beekeeping industry.
[No! Actually, what they are talking about is that the issue of the scale of a particular field is tied to it. With less bees, what will occur is that other pollinators will take over, as well as smaller fields will be utilized--which would be less degradative actually.]
In Europe, the same (or similar) phenomenon has been recently reported in Spain and Poland, and to a lesser degree in Switzerland and Germany [34]and Turkey.[citation needed]
See also
* Bees and toxic chemicals
* Diseases of the honey bee
* Pollinator decline
* Endangered arthropod
* Pesticide toxicity to bees
* Imidacloprid effects on bee population (This pesticide, while banned in France, has been rapidly increasing in usage in the USA)
References
1. ^ a b HONEY BEE DIE-OFF ALARMS BEEKEEPERS, CROP GROWERS AND RESEARCHERS Penn State University College of Agricultural Sciences; Jan 29, 2007
2. ^ http://www.sueddeutsche.de/,ra13l5/wissen/artikel/352/105247/
3. ^ The mysterious deaths of the honeybees - CNN Money
4. ^ a b c d e Colony Collapse Disorder Working Group
5. ^ "GE and bee Colony Collapse Disorder -- science needed!" (2005-03-21). Retrieved on March 23, 2007.
6. ^ a b c d e f g [1] Colony Collapse Disorder Preliminary Report
7. ^ Discussion of phenomenon of Colony disorder collapse Canadian Honey Council, Jan. 27, 2007
8. ^ http://www.sueddeutsche.de/,ra13l5/wissen/artikel/352/105247/
9. ^ Matt Wells. "Vanishing bees threaten US crops", www.bbc.co.uk, 'BBC News', 11 March 2007. Retrieved on 2007-03-12. (in English)
10. ^ http://www.cbgnetwork.org/Ubersicht/Zeitschrift_SWB/SWB_2003/SWB_02_2003/Gaucho_02_03/gaucho_02_03.html
11. ^ http://www.cbgnetwork.org/536.html
12. ^ Fruit Times published by Penn State University, Volume 26, Number 1, Jan. 23, 2007
13. ^ Bee Mites Suppress Bee Immunity, Open Door For Viruses And Bacteria
14. ^ a b "Letter from David Hackenberg to Amercan growers from March 14, 2007 - published by 'Plattform Imkerinnen' - Austria" (2007-03-14). Retrieved on March 27, 2007.
15. ^ McGregor, S.E. (1976)Insect Pollination of Cultivated Crop Plants. USDA Agriculture Handbook #496. USDA-ARS, Washington DC. 411 pp.
16. ^ "Status of Pollinators in North America - Committee on the Status of Pollinators in North America - THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS Washington, D.C. www.nap.edu (2006). Retrieved on March 27, 2007.
17. ^ "Transgenic crops as a cause of honey bee decline" (2006). Retrieved on March 27, 2007.
18. ^ "Sierra Club Policy on Genetic Engineering". Retrieved on March 26, 2007.
19. ^ "GE and bee Colony Collapse Disorder -- science needed!" (2005-03-21). Retrieved on March 23, 2007.
20. ^ "Mid-Atlantic Apiculture Research and Extension Consortium" (2007-03-28). Retrieved on March 29, 2007.
21. ^ a b c "Summary Of Research on the Non-Target Effects of Bt Corn Pollen on Honeybees" - Department of Entomology, University of Maryland (2007-03-28). Retrieved on March 29, 2007.
22. ^ "Biopesticides Registration Action Documents". Retrieved on March 25, 2007.
23. ^ "Bacillus thuringiensis as plant incorporated protectant" (2001-10-15). Retrieved on March 25, 2007.
24. ^ "Bacillus thuringiensis Cry2Ab2 protein and the Genetic Material Necessary for Its Production in Cotton". Retrieved on March 25, 2007.
25. ^ "Microbial Pesticide Test Guidelines - OPPTS 885.4380- Honey Bee Testing - Tier I". Retrieved on March 26, 2007.
26. ^ "Fact Sheets for plant-incorporated protectants". Retrieved on March 25, 2007.
27. ^ "Official comments of the German Beekeeper Federation in the German Bundestag (German language)" (2005-10-17). Retrieved on March 25, 2007.
28. ^ "Effects of Bt maize pollen on the honeybee" (2005-10-12). Retrieved on March 21, 2007.
29. ^ "Are GM Crops Killing Bees?" (2005-03-22). Retrieved on March 23, 2007.
30. ^ "GM Crops: The First Ten Years - Global Socio-Economic and Environmental Impacts". Retrieved on March 23, 2007.
31. ^ U.S. bee colonies decimated by mysterious ailment (2007-02-12). Retrieved on February 12, 2007.
32. ^ Lovgren, Stefan. "Mystery Bee Disappearances Sweeping U.S." National Geographic News. URL accessed March 10, 2007.
33. ^ Morse, R.A.; Calderone, N.W., The Value of Honey Bees as Pollinators of US Crops in 2000. Cornell University (2000)
34. ^ http://www.sueddeutsche.de/,ra13l5/wissen/artikel/352/105247/
External links
* John Finnerty, Agriculture: Disease Killing Bees, February 9, 2007
* February 5, 2007: NHB Funds Research for “Colony Collapse Disorder”
* Beebits and cases of honey poisoning
* BackYardHive Discusses Colony Collapse Disorder
* Comment On Blog about Bee Colony Collapse Disorder
* WikiNews Report about CCD
* Matt Wells, "Vanishing bees threaten US crops", BBC News 11 March 2007, (includes picture of a comb from an affected hive).
* "Honeybees, Gone With the Wind, Leave Crops and Keepers in Peril" New York Times article on CCD, 23 February 2007 (subscription required)
* "Mystery Bee Disappearances Sweeping U.S.", Stefan Lovgren, National Geographic News, February 23, 2007
* "Honey bees in US facing extinction", Michael Leidig in Vienna, telegraph.co.uk, 14/03/2007
* The American Beekeeping Federation
# 6. GM Crops, Transgene Flow and Honey Bees; Beekeeper's Association Newsletter Aug 2004, H. R. FULTON
"GM material has been detected in honey, and current regulations in the EU require testing of honey for GM material. As more GM crops are adopted, testing of honey for GM material could evolve into a daunting and expensive task due to the foraging behavior of bees. Producers of organic honey could face difficulties in marketing their honey since honey containing GM material cannot be certified as organic."
Beekeeper's Association Newsletter
Aug 2004
GM Crops, Transgene Flow and Honey Bees
By H. R. FULTON
...Approximately 58.7 million hectares (one hectare=2.5 acres) were planted with GM crops in 2002 in 16 countries dominated by the US (39 million hectares), Argentina (13.5 million hectares), Canada (3.5 million hectares), and China (2.1 million hectares). The principal GM crops to date have been soybean, canola, cotton, and corn, ["the four Frankencrops of the apocalypse"] genetically modified for herbicide tolerance [i.e., to allow for more and more pesticides to be applied without killing the plant which is what typically would happen!] or insect resistance [which is only a difficulty when you have unecological forms of agriculture like most industrial agriculture]. Honey bees visit all these plant species. Because of their pollination value and the producers of honey and other products, honey bees are one non-target insect species of importance in discussions about the impact of GM crops visited by honey bees.
Three areas of concern assume prominence when GM crops and honey bees are considered: (1) presence of GM material in hive products destined for human consumption; (2) the role of honey bees in cross-pollination (gene flow) among plants; and (3) the impact of GM plants on honey bee health.
GM material consists of transgene DNA or novel proteins produced from the transgenes, and these may be present in bee products if they occur in the plants tissues (pollen) and secretions (nectar, resins, sap) collected by bees.
The importance of the public's perception about contamination of hive products with GM material cannot be overestimated. Adverse public reaction can affect the beekeeper's ability to sell hive products that could then reduce the number of beekeepers in business along with a reduction in the number of bees available for free pollination of crops.
Pollen is the most likely source of GM material since it contains ample quantities of DNA and protein. On the other hand, nectar primarily consists of sugars accompanied by minute amounts of amino acids and proteins. Since the pollen content of most honeys is between 0.0006% and 0.3%, honey containing an "accidental" level of GM material due to pollen contamination would not require labeling as such.
Food labeling regulations require labeling when the GM material level reaches 0.9% in the European Union (EU), 1% in New Zealand and Australia, and 5% in Japan. At present, no labeling requirements for foods containing GM material exists in the US and Canada [which is the major core of the colony collapse disorder presently].
GM material has been detected in honey, and current regulations in the EU require testing of honey for GM material. As more GM crops are adopted, testing of honey for GM material could evolve into a daunting and expensive task due to the foraging behavior of bees. Producers of organic honey could face difficulties in marketing their honey since honey containing GM material cannot be certified as organic.
at:
http://www.msstate.edu/entomology/beenews/beenews0804.htm
Thanks to http://www.newheadnews.com/ for assembling these six links.
More evidence and citations for the electropollution line of exploration of explaining bee dispersal/dieoff:
from:
Millions of Bees Die - Are Electromagnetic Signals To Blame?
Categories
Environment http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/environment.htm
Health http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/health.htm
/Bees in the US are dying of some unknown cause - millions of them are leaving their hives and do not come back. What is happening? The problem has got a name - colony collapse disorder - but no apparent
cause./
/Bee hive/ - Image credit: EnviroZine
https://www.ec.gc.ca/EnviroZine/english/issues/33/email_story_e.cfm?page=feature3
Some years back, France and other European countries had a similar, if less severe die-off of honey bees. At the time Gaucho
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2003/11/26/millions_of_bees_dead_bayers_gaucho_blamed.htm, a poisonous seed treatment chemical produced by Bayer, was blamed http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2003/11/26/millions_of_bees_dead_bayers_gaucho_blamed.htm,
the die-off has continued in Europe, although at a comparatively slower pace.
The situation in the US seems even more severe than what happened in Europe, and certainly the onset is more sudden. According to The Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/wildlife/article2314202.ece, millions of honey bees are abandoning their hives and flying off to die, leaving beekeepers facing ruin and US agriculture under threat.
"Across the country, from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific, honey bee colonies have started to die off, abruptly and
decisively. Millions of bees are abandoning their hives and flying off to die (they cannot survive as a colony without the
queen, who is always left behind). Some beekeepers, especially those with big portable apiaries, or
bee farms, which are used for large-scale pollination of fruit and vegetable crops, are facing commercial ruin - and there is a
growing threat that America's agriculture may be struck a mortal blow by the loss of the pollinators. Yet scientists
investigating the problem have no idea what is causing it."
On one of my weekly news grabs
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2007/03/05/health_supreme_newsgrabs_5_march_2007.htm,
I linked an article on the mysterious die-off of honey bees, and a reader commented, suggesting that emissions of GWEN, the Ground Wave Emergency Network
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_Wave_Emergency_Network, might be to blame. Here is what he had to say:
After reading several articles on the disappearance of the
honeybee, the thought occurred that this appears to be happening
only in the US. A Google search turned up nothing on this
phenomenon in any other country, including Canada and Mexico.
Why only the US? Also, why are nonsensical excuses being offered
up by the pseudo-scientific community for the demise of the bee?
Researchers have dubbed the syndrome the "colony collapse
disorder." They say the bees presumably are dying in the fields,
perhaps becoming exhausted or disoriented and eventually dying
from exposure to the cold. Or, it could just be that the bees
are stressed out. Give me a break!
Tired bees? Dying from weather exposure? Stressed out bees?
Disoriented?
Just imagine a tired bee for a moment. When’s the last time you
saw a tired bee?
Dying from weather exposure? Weather cold enough to kill bees in
their hives would also decimate other insect populations. No
report on that, huh?
Stressed out bees? What, all of a sudden bees get stressed out?
What about bees in other countries? They don’t seem to be having
a problem at all.
Disoriented bees? Ah, well this is a possibility. But what would
make them disoriented? Perhaps it is the 250 HZ signals being
pumped out of GWEN stations all over America. This signal makes
people angry, so that they support the administrations idea of
going after Iran and violence in general. It works great for
mass manipulation of opinion. Unfortunately, the same signal
will induce a misdirection of up to 10 degrees
http://www.springerlink.com/content/v6406173767q7445/ in the
navigation ability of the honeybee. They go away from the hive
and never come back because they can no longer find it. That’s
why it’s only happening in the US.
Perhaps the most puzzling aspect of this is that US media has
never ventured to question why it is only happening here.
Somebody must have told them to clam up on this issue or the
current crop of US reporters got their degrees in journalism out
of a Cracker Jack box.
Now what the hell are GWEN stations, you might want to ask, and what
could they have to do with the catastrophic die-off of honey bees...
*GWEN, Microwave Arrays and Mobile Phone Radiation*
GWEN, the Ground Wave Emergency Network
http://educate-yourself.org/dc/gwentowersbybyronweeks.shtml, is a
military communications network, consisting of some 300 transmitters
dotting the whole of the continental United States. Each tower is
300-500 feet high. The stations are from 200 to 250 miles apart, so
that a signal can go from coast to coast from one station to
another. The official purpose is "to ensure adequate communication
between command authorities and land-based strategic nuclear forces
in the event of a nuclear attack on the United States mainland." But
others say a hidden use of the system may be "electromagnetic
mind-altering technology" by the use of ELF or Extremely Low
Frequency http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_low_frequency waves.
According to a 1982 Air Force review of biotechnology, ELF has a
number of potential military uses, including "dealing with terrorist
groups, crowd control, controlling breaches of security at military
installations, and antipersonnel techniques in tactical warfare."
The same report states:
"Electromagnetic systems would be used to produce mild to severe
physiological disruption or perceptual distortion or
disorientation. They are silent, and counter-measures to them
may be difficult to develop."
Robert O. Becker, M.D., in his book "Crosscurrents: The Perils of
Electropollution
http://www.amazon.com/Cross-Currents-Robert-O-Becker/dp/0874776090"
said:
"GWEN is a superb system, in combination with cyclotron
resonance, for producing behavioral alterations in the civilian
population. The average strength of the steady geomagnetic field
varies from place to place across the United States. Therefore,
if one wished to resonate a specific ion in living things in a
specific locality, one would require a specific frequency for
that location. The spacing of GWEN transmitters 200 miles apart
across the United States would allow such specific frequencies
to be 'tailored' to the geomagnetic-field strength in each GWEN
area."
The bees seem to be playing the role that canary birds had in the
mines, warning us of impending desaster. Are these insects, by their
unprecedented behavior of flying off without returning to their
hives, showing that something insidious is going on?
According to a message from Paul Doyon, electromagnetic waves may
well have the capacity of disorienting not only bees but a number of
flying creatures. Here is a specific instance involving bees he quotes:
At Cornell Univ. honeybees in a hive relocated into a new
building became disoriented. After extensive research ruled out
other causes, someone noticed the hive was next to the
building's electric transformer. The bees were confused by 60 hz
magnetism strong enough to interfere with homing and
communication to gather nectar and pollen.
(http://www.ratical.org/ratville/RofD4.html)
In Germany, a study of honeybees irradiated with DECT
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DECT mobile phone base station
radiation found that only few of the irradiated bees returned to the
hive, and that they required more time to return than the non
irradiated bees. Also, the weight of the honeycombs of the
irradiated bees was found to be smaller than those in the hives of
non irradiated bees. (Stever H, Kuhn J, Otten C, Wunder B, Harst W.
Verhaltensaenderung unter elektromagnetischer Exposition.
Pilotstudie. Institut fuer Mathematik. Arbeitsgruppe
Bildungsinformatik. Universitaet Koblenz-Landau; 2005.
http://agbi.uni-landau.de/materialien.htm)
See also
www.mikrowellensmog.info/bienen.html
http://www.mikrowellensmog.info/bienen.html Bees die from
microwave irradiation - German site of Dr. Ferdinand Ruzicka,
University professor.
and
http://canterbury.cyberplace.org.nz/ouruhia/ Ouruhia Web, a New
Zealand electromagnetic waves website.
and
Firstenberg, A. 1997: Microwaving Our Planet: The Environmental
Impact of the Wireless Revolution. Cellular Phone Taskforce
http://www.laleva.cc/environment/taskforce_eng.html. Brooklyn, NY
11210.
See also Alfonso Balmori http://www.emfacts.com/weblog/?p=665 on
EMFacts.
Other indications put together by Doyon about the effects suffered
not only by bees but also birds and farm animals from the effects of
cell phone radiation:
The effects of EMR are being felt by wildlife and the environment as
a whole, Birds, bees, worms, trees are all being affected. We need
to fight for not only the future of mankind but for the future of
the whole environment.
Vienna physicians are displaying information posters in doctor's
surgeries. They state radiation from mobile phones is far from being
harmless as they have been told by the cell phone companies. They
have therefore, in order to act responsibly, the Chamber of Doctors
in Vienna, Austria, has decided to inform people about potential
medical risks.
http://www.mast-victims.org/
http://www.mast-victims.org/index.php?content=journal&action=view&type=journal&id=111
His findings, and subsequent related work by Dr Cyril Smith (Smith
and Baker, 1982), seem relevant also to the earlier and more
generally accepted studies on bees and homing pigeons, both of which
are known to have receptors which are able to sense the Earth's
magnetic field and its variations, which they use to help direct
their survival behavior. My own extraordinary first experience of
complete disorientation below the lines may also be relevant; I had
never experienced this before, though I have done so since, most
notably after I had held up a fluorescent tube for over an hour, to
be photographed under the lines; the next day, after a distressingly
sleepless night, I found what looked like a burn on that shoulder.
http://www.bewisepolarize.com/man-made%20emf%20sources.htm
Our cheap transistor radios can pick up and separate out hundreds of
radio signals at levels of a few hundreds of microvolts/metre. More
sophisticated communications receivers can work down to levels of
about 10 microvolts/metre. Radio-astronomers work on informational
signals from stars at less than 1 microvolt/metre - this is a power
level of about 0.000 000 000 001 microwatt/cm2 (1 attowatt/cm2 !!).
We can now detect and create pictures from signals from spacecraft
at our outer planets using transmit powers similar to those use by
mobile phones of a few watts!
Honeybees have been shown to be sensitive to magnetic flux
differences of 1 nanotesla (10 microGauss) [4][Theoretically humans
could also be sensitive down to less than this level (pineal thermal
noise c. 0.24 nanotesla - Smith, 1985). Various sea creatures can
detect voltage gradients of a few 10's of microvolts/metre.
Biological stochastic resonance from regular pulsing EMFs can
effectively amplify coherent signals (like power EMFs) by vast amounts.
What arrogant nonsense to suggest that living systems need to be
"cooked" before they realize they are being bombarded by signals and
that microwaves of 100 volts/metre are harmless to us.
http://members.aol.com/gotemf/emf/animals.htm
Honey bees navigate by observing changes as small as 0.6% in the
Earth's magnetic field (2.5 mG out of 400 mG). Other studies have
shown that other animals, such as sea turtles and homing pigeons,
can navigate using the Earth's magnetic field as a guide. In order
to navigate to precision, it is necessary to have many magnetosomes
with a permanent dipole moment which are able to maintain their
direction in the Earth's magnetic field while being buffeted by
Brownian thermal fluctuations.
V.3. Animals: Honey bees follow B fields (Walker/Bitterman, J. Comp.
Physiol. 157, 67-73, 1995, and Science 265, 95, 1994) down to a few
mG DC accuracy and sea turtles turn when B varies at earth's
locations (Science 264, 661 (1994).
42. "Honeybees Can Be Trained to Respond to Very Small Changes in
Geomagnetic Field Intensity," M.M. Walker and M.E. Bitterman, J.
Exp. Biology http://jeb.biologists.org/cgi/reprint/145/1/489.pdf
145, 489-494 (1989). (A)
- - -
Although the major trouble seems to be in the US, beekeepers in many
European countries are also reporting heavy losses. Perhaps we
should not concentrate, therefore, on one particular system of
electromagnetic emissions. Other candidates that have world wide
effects are the HAARP ionospheric heaters
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAARP and the explosive growth of the
cellular communications system in just about every country.
Mobile phone providers are covering the earth with a fine-mesh
network of microwave-emitting senders and repeaters, in addition to
the billions of mobile phones we are using.
One of the major points of trouble seems to be that the radiations
from mobile phones have passed from analog to digital in the last
few years, which means they are pulsed at around 220 "packets" per
second. That frequency is very close to the native frequency of the
bees' hum, which has been measured to be in the range of 190 to 250
cycles http://hypertextbook.com/facts/1999/MichelleFinnegan.shtml
per second.
There are those who warn of health dangers
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2006/04/20/mobile_and_wireless_largest_biological_experiment.htm
of the mobile phone craze, but the mainstream response seems to be
"here comes the tinfoil hat brigade".
Are we going to run our of food before we realize what we're doing?
*See also:*
When Bees Disappear, Will Man Soon Follow?
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/3545166/
On a recent conference call, Dr. Carlo laid the blame for the sudden
demise (often within 72 hours) of entire bee colonies on the recent
proliferation of electromagnetic waves (EMF). He cited the startling
statistic that, at present, there are some 2.5 billion cell phone
users around the world. While this (plus the explosive growth of
cell phone towers) used to be the major concern, the problem has
been significantly exacerbated by the recent introduction of
satellite radio. Dr. Carlo commented that the constant
electromagnetic background noise seems to disrupt intercellular
communication within individual bees, such that many of them cannot
find their way back to the hive.
/The problem could well be in our unbridled use of
electromagnetic radiation in communications, which is one of the
great unacknowledged health threats
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2006/04/20/mobile_and_wireless_largest_biological_experiment.htm
not only for humans, but it may be killing the bees as well. /
EMF frequencies or microwave frequencies are overriding normal
control mechanisms in the body and shutting off energy production
http://www.laleva.org/eng/2007/03/emf_frequencies_or_microwave_frequencies_are_overriding_normal_control_mechanisms_in_the_body_and_shutting_off_energy_production.html
As in radio and other transmitters, crystals act to convert certain
discrete frequencies into electrical signals. Before we had all of
the electro-pollution, animals could simply orient themselves to the
earths electromagnetic signature. Additionally animals could store
into memory at a subconscious level the discrete signatures of
subtle variations in electromagnetic signalling from various
regions. This would explain the highly specific nature of migratory
behaviour seen in certain animals. What has not been appreciated is
the ability which has probably evolved over time to see, complex
patterns that are generated from the earth's electromagnetic signature.
EMF frequencies or microwave frequencies are overriding normal
control mechanisms in the body and shutting off energy production
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/3385344/
http://www.hese-project.org/hese-uk/en/issues/emr.php?id=bees
Catastrophic Bee Population Decline May Be Related to Bt-Spliced GMO
Crops http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_4682.cfm
"Nobody knows why the bees are dying. There is evidence though that
GE crops contribute to this, in particular insect resistant crops
producing the Bt-toxin. Though healthy bees do not seem to be
affected by Bt pollen, a scientist called Hans-Hinrich Kaatz in
Germany has found that bees infested with parasites and fed with Bt
pollen were affected and died at a high rate.
City Beekeeping
http://citybees.blogspot.com/2007/04/bumpy-launch-of-spring-2007.html
Just to get a bit of an idea of what it involves to work with bees
A Natural Mystic: The Honey Bee is Speaking to Us
http://oneheartbooks.com/resources/videos/natural_mystic.htm
Other causes that are effecting the bees are electromagnetic
frequencies that are being pumped into the air by all the cell phone
towers and military technologies such as HAARP. These frequencies
are having an effect on the bees along with the chemtrails that work
in tandem with these frequencies as plasma antennas. Bees use
natural electromagnetic frequencies to hone in on where the flowers
are that they gather their pollen and nectar from and to speak to
one another. Birds do the same when it comes to traveling south for
the winter.
15 April 2007: Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/wildlife/article2449968.ece
It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film.
But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could
cause massive food shortages, as the world's harvests fail.
They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by
mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one
of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world -
the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last
week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon - which started
in the US, then spread to continental Europe - was beginning to hit
Britain as well.
The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with
bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species
from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may
seem, there is now evidence to back this up.
Bid to halt bumblebee decline
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/tayside_and_central/6558973.stm
I suspect not only are honeybees in decline, but other species of
bees/insects as well. Here is an article on bumblebees going extinct
- at least some species.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
posted by *Sepp Hasslberger* on *Tuesday March 6* 2007
updated on *Tuesday April 17* 2007
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Synthetic honey and GMO bees?
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2003/07/02/synthetic_honey_and_gmo_bees.htm
France - 2 July 2003 In a harrowing article, Michel Dogna, health
journalist from France, sounds the alarm about what may be one of
the biggest ecological catastrophes developing right under our own
eyes - and no one seems to be watching. Image credit: Sepp 5 July
2003 As the bees are being decimated by a toxic seed coating agent,
our entire food supply is threatened. Plants need bees for... [read
more
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2003/07/02/synthetic_honey_and_gmo_bees.htm]
*July 02, 2003* - Sepp Hasslberger
Millions of bees dead - Bayer's Gaucho blamed
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2003/11/26/millions_of_bees_dead_bayers_gaucho_blamed.htm
Synthetic honey and GMO bees - Part II A French governmental report
confirms suspicions of a mass poisoning of bees involving hundreds
of thousands of colonies of honey bees. According to the report of
the French Scientific and Technical Committee, Bayer's seed
treatment GAUCHO pesticide is to blame - at least in part. Earlier
this year, I published an article by French journalist Michel Dogna,
who had investigated the ecological... [read more
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2003/11/26/millions_of_bees_dead_bayers_gaucho_blamed.htm]
*November 26, 2003* - Sepp Hasslberger
The Cell Phone Experiment: Is Mobile Communication Worth The Risk?
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2005/12/14/the_cell_phone_experiment_is_mobile_communication_worth_the_risk.htm
Undoubtedly mobile phones and wireless broadband are immensely
useful, but there is a persistent question: what are the risks of
using these technologies? Many of us asking the "risk" question are
- alas - not necessarily informed or even willing to consider the
benefits of networking, and those planning the digital and mobile
revolution have hardly heard about the risks. Providers are
reluctant to discuss the health implications of the... [read more
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2005/12/14/the_cell_phone_experiment_is_mobile_communication_worth_the_risk.htm]
*December 14, 2005* - Sepp Hasslberger
Mobile And Wireless - Largest Biological Experiment
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2006/04/20/mobile_and_wireless_largest_biological_experiment.htm
Mobile phone repeater antenna on a remote island in the mid Atlantic
Photo credit: Sepp It is getting quite difficult to imagine a world
without mobile communications. Wireless internet access is set to
blanket the planet, just like cell phone networks already do. There
has been an explosive development - practically all during the last
three decades - that brought mobile to the farthest corners of the
earth. But... [read more
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2006/04/20/mobile_and_wireless_largest_biological_experiment.htm]
*April 20, 2006* - Sepp Hasslberger
Agriculture: Chemicals GMO Failing - Try Organic, Sustainable
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2004/10/09/agriculture_chemicals_gmo_failing_try_organic_sustainable.htm
A recent discovery presages production of hydrogen - not by
electrolysis but by the effects of catalytic action and sunlight on
water. In the ensuing discussion on this post, the question turns to
what would be needed to afford economically decent conditions to the
billions of people in developing countries. It appears that both
water and energy will be important, but even more decisive than
these factors will be low-input... [read more
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2004/10/09/agriculture_chemicals_gmo_failing_try_organic_sustainable.htm]
*October 09, 2004* - Sepp Hasslberger
Terminator Corporations' Suicide Seeds
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/chris/2006/02/27/terminator_corporations_suicide_seeds.htm
..."corporations and their lackeys in the Canadian bureaucracy crave
complete control of the seed and thus food and feed production."...
Translation: A goal for very high prices for food that is unfit to
eat to boot*.... "There was a resounding negative response. For the
time being corporations publicly moved back from the project. But
behind the scenes academic, corporate and government laboratories
connived to produce terminators with new and more... [read more
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/chris/2006/02/27/terminator_corporations_suicide_seeds.htm]
*February 27, 2006* - Chris Gupta
Readers' Comments
The electromagnetic radiation theory for the disappearing bees
sounds reasonable except for a couple of things. Unless I have
misunderstood, this loss of bees is a fairly new phenomenon where as
the radiation has been going on for quite a while. Also, the EMF
problem exists in many countries but the bees are only disappearing
in the US. Perhaps the bee loss is caused by several factors working
synergistically.
Posted by: Bonita Poulin
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2007/03/06/www.mcs-global.org
on March 7, 2007 11:43 AM
Bonita, it is true we know very little at this point. I feel that
electromagnetic phenomena may be a good area to look into because of
the inherent secrecy surrounding them and the chance that a new type
of modulation could be added without anyone public knowledge. Other
factors that have been cited, such as pesticides, seed treatment
chemicals, and genetically modified crops lack the feature of a
possible recent change affecting all of the US, and only the US,
without similarly affecting other countries. I hope more people
looking into this will bring out more clues.
Posted by: Sepp on March 8, 2007 03:47 AM
My little Bee/GWEN post at Alien Earth continues to evolve - first
at STA and now courtesy of Sepp Hasslberger. While the GWEN system
has been in place for some time, it is only recently that it has
turned to transmitting frequencies that disorient the bee
population. The PTB inches this thing forward in small steps to
allow for the forgetfulness of the population. The objective of
course is the wholesale elimination of the honeybee, permitting the
introduction of new GM seeds that require no pollination to
reproduce since they simply do not reproduce. This places the seed
source to feed millions in the hands of a small number of very
troubled people. The seed that they dispense will not only feed us
[and our meat sources] but also destroy our health along the way.
Sound like some movie scenario? We only have to wait and see. In the
meantime, you can kiss good-bye almonds, walnuts, avocado and any
number of other ‘seed’ fruits. For those not willing to wait, the
answer is to continue to bring this issue into the Internet light in
the hopes of waking up the sleeping masses to the threats that lay
before them. Sepp and others are doing just that. Harbinger
Posted by: Harbinger on March 8, 2007 05:36 AM
No possible explanation can be dismissed. A man-made one is likely,
although natural causes may also be found. People mislead their own
lives. Parents mislead families. Company leaders mislead companies.
Government leaders mislead their people. It is not inconceivable
that the madmen tinkering with electronics have blinders on to the
side-effects of some technology, some experiment, or would
deliberately do something stupid. There have always been stupid
people who mislead us into situations we do not wish to be in. In
fact, that's the definition of misleadership. So, we'll continue
monitoring the phenomenon, searching for the cause, seeking the
solution. Judging from what we know to be true about man's
misleadership and blundering, no possibility is too bizare to be the
truth.
Posted by: Gary E. Andrews on March 8, 2007 02:36 PM
Bonita
The bee die off has been going on for many years, but the recent
acceleration appears to follow the massive universalisation of
mobile communications in general.
Also, this is not a US problem: throughout Europe the same thing is
happening.
See our page at
http://www.hese-project.org/hese-uk/en/issues/emr.php?id=bees
There are several very interesting aspects relating EM fields to
bees that suggests this playing a part. Watch our page, it is still
developing.
Posted by: Andy Davidson
http://www.hese-project.org/hese-uk/en/issues/emr.php?id=bees on
March 15, 2007 09:45 AM
Jerry Bromenshenk at the University of Montana has been modifying
bee behaviour to detect certain chemicals...like explosives, for
example. DARPA, SNL and LANL have sponsored research to use bees for
sniffing out bombs or landmines. If the bees are conditioned to find
such chemicals, why then would they seek the nectar of blossums or
want to return to the hive. The bees are missing, not dead in big
numbers around the hives. If they were being infected by mites,
molds, fungus, or pesticides we would see their dead little bodies
all over. No, these bees are addicted like cocaine addicts and fly
around seeking out those chemicals until they die of starvation. It
is high time we stop messing with nature.
Posted by: Dale
http://maic.jmu.edu/journal/7.3/focus/bromenshenk/bromenshenk.htm
on March 15, 2007 11:54 AM
Hi
Your piece on bees was interesting. Millions of Bees Die - Are
Electromagnetic Signals To Blame?
However the problem of bee loss is worldwide and not just confined
to the USA
German researchers think it is the radiation emitted from the mobile
phone and WIMAX masts which are virtually now saturating our
environments. Dr Warnke in Germany has done much work on it. There
may be several mechanisms but it seems the low frequency 'pulse'
carried along the high frequency wave is disrupting the bees cell
communication systems.
Also there is a dipole effect from the alternating magnetic field
component and perhaps the flux density disturbance (from
interference of several sources of EMF's) of the earth's magnetic
field.
See our site below:
http://www.hese-project.org/hese-uk/en/issues/nature.php
This is of extreme concern since Einstein said that if the bees
vanish then all life on Earth has 4 years left to live!
Yours
Sarah
Posted by: Sepp for Sarah on March 15, 2007 05:43 PM
Dear Sarah,
thank you for your comment, and I think you are making a good point
with which I tend to agree.
I see that the situation is not restricted to the US, although
perhaps it is more pronounced there - at least in this time period.
Or do we perhaps hear more about the US situation because of a lazy
press that reports on what is casually put before it, rather than on
what the reporters themselves research and uncover?
The low frequency pulse of mobile communications, which is in the
200 - 220 cycles-per-second range, the frequency with which
"packets" are sent by the digital communication equipment, is also
the frequency which the bees themselves produce:
http://jeb.biologists.org/cgi/reprint/199/12/2585.pdf
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=7539367
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=7539367
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/1999/MichelleFinnegan.shtml
According to Randolph Post, an average worker bee in flight produces
a sound near middle B (250Hz). That would seem very close indeed to
the tact frequency of packages in mobile phone transmissions and may
well produce some interference.
Of course there may be other mechanisms, but this would be appear a
good candidate for some urgent research.
Posted by: Sepp on March 15, 2007 05:58 PM
thank u for the news!
Posted by: here http://dudivie.blogspot.com/ on March 16, 2007
12:29 AM
Hi
Here's some info on Italian and British bees disappearance. i think
the USA does not report on other country's bee problems!! But then
neither does the UK.
You should find out when the phone masts started going up in the USA
and see if that correlates with the problem? ...here the 2G masts
started in 1992. In 2002 we started to get 3G and last year WIMAX
(the more powerful wifi transmitters) were rolled out into the
countryside.
Best Regards
Sarah
*MILLIONS OF BEES DYING, SIGNALLING WOE FOR ENVIRONMENT*
Rome, August 6 - Italian bees are been killed off by the millions
and environmentalists and honey producers warned today this was a
sign of a worrisome turn for the environment.
http://www.mieliditalia.it/herald.htm
*Queens - Poor Mating and Laying - An update July 2006*
By Roger Patterson
http://www.bbka.org.uk/news/news/queenspoor-mating-and-lay.shtml
February 16, 2007
*Putin Orders Russian ‘Queens’ Home, Decimates US Bee Industry*
By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers
Now, it is very important to understand that these bees are not
dead, or dying, they are simply ‘disappearing’, and which led me to
remember my studies under Russian biophysicist and molecular
biologist Pjotr Garjajev in the 1980’s, and where a great deal of
Soviet effort was then being put into the saving of the American
domestic bee industry due to devastating losses caused by varroa mites.
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index984.htm
Posted by: Sarah on March 23, 2007 12:30 PM
There is one new aspect of the radio frequency theory that I have
not seen discussed as yet. High Def radio has only recently been
introduced for wide spread use, this is a whole new spectrum of RF
that could cause havoc with the bees navigation. Any and all
theories should be investigated, this is a problem of of possible
biblical proportions.
Posted by: Bill on March 25, 2007 08:15 AM
Bill, (or anyone else out there who might know) - how is High Def
Radio, or for that matter, HDTV, different from the traditional
analog signals. Are they modulated in "packets" like mobile
telephones, and if so, what is the tact frequency of those packets ?
Posted by: Sepp on March 25, 2007 10:30 AM
This is disturbing. To think that a pesticide could be doing it. To
think that our new wave of communication technology could be doing
it. To this that perhaps its a plot or conspiracy by GM, to control
the seeds of teh food chain.. All of it adds up to a rather chilling
sci-fi like scenario that reminds me eerily of a movie..
Posted by: alix http://alixandramullins.com/ on March 29, 2007
05:57 PM
I'm in PA and have read the local reports by the researchers at PSU.
Your theory is very interesting but unfortunately there is a major
component to which you appear to not be aware. That is that the bees
themselves have suffered intestinal damage. Upon forensic
examination of the bees they are finding their digestive tracts
ruined on about 90 of the bees along with cellular damage elsewhere.
Draw your conclusions. Personally I prefer blaming it on what
appears to be radiological damage. Not sure where the radiation
would have come from though.
Posted by: michael on March 30, 2007 10:35 AM
Well, intestinal damage of the bees (along with cellular damage
elsewhere) could come from a number of causes.
What is your view as to the significance of that finding?
I could imagine that anything weakening the bees' immune system
could then lead to symptoms such as intestinal and cellular damage.
Electromagnetic radiation certainly is a candidate and it's getting
stronger and more widespread every year. Cell phone towers are just
about ubiquitous and they are all irradiating the landscape. The
tact frequency of digital cell phone radiation is around 200
cycles/sec, very close to a frequency that seems important for the
bees as it's their own humming rhythm.
Posted by: Sepp on March 30, 2007 12:40 PM
This maybe worth to look:
"
And, can you comment this? Does (man-made)electromagnetic cause bees
dying?
[link to www.newmediaexplorer.org]
**Most Certainly ... "Man Made" Electromagnetic Pollution ...
Inadvertantly & Purposeful ... Along With Chemical Pollutions &
Genetic Engineeering Of
Crops ... Have Contributed To Many Creatures/Beings Deaths !!
**In The Case Of The Honeybee ... However ... It Is Most Curious !!
**As The Honeybees Are Not Returning To Their "Man Made" Hives ...
And Leaving The Queen Behind !!
**It Is "Assumed" ... That The Bees Are Flying
Off To Die !! ... As "Supposedly" They Cannot Exist As A Colony ...
Without A Queen !!
**To "Terrestrial Knowledge" This May Be True !! ... However ...
This Is Based On ... What They Know !!
... But What Of ... What They Do Not Know ???
**The Facts Known So Far ... Is That Bees Are Not Returning To Their
"Man Made" Hives !! ... The Queen Bee Is Being Left Behind !!
Questions Become ...
Why Are They Not Returning ??
Where Are They Going ... Disappearing To ?? ... Because They Fly
Away ... Does Not Necessarily Mean They Are Going Off To Die !!
What Is Actually Going On ???
**Are The Bees Being Effected By "Non-Artificial" Magnetic Field
Changes On Terra/Earth ??
**Terrestrial Reports Have Been Made ... Of "Attitude Changes" In
Previously Calm Animal Forms ... Where They Are Attacking Their
"Owners & Handlers" !!
**Are The Animals "Striking Back" At Humanity/Humankind ... And
Abandoning Them
... To Go Elsewhere ?? ... Literally Letting Them Kill Themselves
Off ... In Their Desire To Control Every Facet Of Life ?? ...
**An Example Being ... With The World's Food Supply ... In The
"Supposed Need" ... To Create Heartier Breeds Of Food Crops ...
Scientists Have Tampered With The Very Essense Of Life ... Through
Genetic Engineering ... And Have Created "Frankenfoods" ... Of Which
Have Been Released "Into The Wild" ... Into Animal & Food Supplies
(Pet Foods (Recently) & Salomenella Outbreaks ... In Foods Where
"Fecal Contamination" Would Be Unheard Of !!
**Are The "Magnetic Changes" (Both Artificial (To Bolster
Terra/Earth's Magnetic Field) & "Naturally Induced"
(From Outside Terra/Earth) ... Causing A Biological Imbalance ?? ...
Where Certain Creatures & Beings ... Are Going Mad ?? ... Or Seeking
Escape From Human/Mankind At All Costs ?? ... For Their Own Survival !!
**The Honeybees Are Linked To The Magnetic Fields Of This Planet ...
For Navigation ... Like Birds, Aquatic
Species ... And Other Living Species/Creatures ... Since There Is A
"Magnetic Imbalance" ... Of Which They Are Sensitive To ... Along
With ... Man Made Pollutions ... Of Various Types ... This Would Be
An Indication ... A Symptom ... Of What Is Happening To Your World
... Of Which Sensitivities ... Have Been "Dulled Down" ...
Purposefully !!
**One Example Of The Purposeful Pollution/Death Of Beings Of Your
Planet ... Is By Sonic/Sound Means ... In Suppposedly The Need To
Maintain Underwater Communications With Military Vehicles !! ...
There Have Been
Examinations Of Whales & Other Species That Have Beached Themselves
Upon The Shore ... To Die ... To Sufficate !! ... Their Autopsies
Finding ... That Their Hearing Apparatuses ... Have Been Shattered
... The "Need" For "Secret Communications" ... Being Greater Then
The Need Of Underwater Living Beings To Exist !! ... Of Those
Responsible ... They Deny Any & All Wrongdoing ... And Prevent Any
Investigation ... Per This Is
Governmental/States Secrets & Could Compromise Security !!
**Many Many Questions !! ... And Of This ... The Answer(s) ... We
Would Say This Is A ... "All Of The Above" Respons !! ... As All Of
These Things Are Occuring ... Are Happening !!
"
see as posted on Godlike Productions
http://godlikeproductions.com/bbs/message.php?page=299&messageid=118311&showdate=3/30/07&mpage=1
Posted by: Nickey on April 1, 2007 02:16 AM
The Bees have Antennas on their heads and "magnetic material in the
bodies of the bee that could be disturbed by bee cloning causing a
problem in the ability of the bees mechanism in orientation."
Wake Up Call, Colony Collapse Disorder
http://www.backyardhive.com/Articles_on_Beekeeping/Featured_article/Wake_Up_Call%2C_Colony_Collapse_Disorder/
Many animals have been found dead in the past ten years, Dogs, Cows,
Birds in various countries. Some deformed. Some with what was
believed to be a new desease, but it is really just exposure to cell
phone and wifi microwave radiation.
Posted by: emf
http://members.aol.com/gotemf/emf/animals.htm#wipeout on April 3,
2007 04:51 PM
Unfortunately, according to Wikipedia, GWEN is no longer functional.
The military now uses MILSTAR...
Even if GWEN is somehow still secretly operational, it first came
online in 1980. Why do the bees suddenly have trouble today? While I
won't rule out electromagnetic, I can't see how GWEN has anything to
do with it.
Posted by: David T http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GWEN on April 14,
2007 09:59 PM
You may well be right, David.
It seems that GWEN, while officially dead, is still being operated.
But I can't say that the problem comes from that particular program.
It might be a contributing factor.
There is now a lot of news that the same or similar disasters are
happening in other countries.
So perhaps a more likely candidate for the trouble is the ever
increasing penetration of cell phone radiation with relay towers
just about ubiquitous everywhere.
The phone radiation is pulsed at 220 cycles (packets) per second
which brings it into close proximity of the native frequency of the
bees. The hum of their wings is in the frequency range of 190 to 250
cycles per second.
The news is filtering out into the mainstream. See this latest article:
Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/wildlife/article2449968.ece
It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film.
But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could
cause massive food shortages, as the world's harvests fail.
They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by
mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one
of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world -
the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last
week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon - which started
in the US, then spread to continental Europe - was beginning to hit
Britain as well.
The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with
bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species
from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may
seem, there is now evidence to back this up.
Posted by: Sepp on April 15, 2007 05:13 AM
HAARP's final level of installation went online I believe in May of
last year. Could that be the new factor that explains why now for
the bee's disappearance?
Posted by: Shawn on April 16, 2007 10:08 AM
Wow... I am realizing more and more just what trouble we are in with
electromagnetism. I have been researching electronic weather
modification protocol all over the world and have LOTS of
information on my site, as well as on a DVD information pack I have
assembled (loaded with history, scientific application, aerosol
chemtrail facts, electro-conductive troposhere chemical dispersal
facts, electromagnetic weaponry industry, funding, affiliation,
etc)... it's quite massive. If anyone wants that DVD after viewing
my web site, please feel free to email me and let me know. I'll mail
it post-haste.
Meantime: I discovered something today. This is eerie. Talk about
"global problem of possible biblical proportions"... There were
studies conducted, and still are conducted, that concern the length
of insect antennae to being almost 1/4 the length of the wavelength
that can cause them to go nuts. The human spinal cord is, likewise,
such a biochemical/ electromagnetic flux antenna. It sends out
signals and receive signals to all of our nervous system and our
brain. In men, it is typically 45cm long. In women, 43. The
frequency that could damage or control HUMANS, at any binaurally
pulsed rate of energy (perhaps in the 0-30Hz brainwave range), would
referentially be approximated at 666Mhz x 4. Anywhere from 2200Mhz
to 2600Mhz are prime signals to "jack us all in," so to speak... or
jack us all up, anyhow. And guess what? Our cell phones, GPSr's,
home cordless phones, Wi-Fi routers and modems, bluetooth junk, and
more... all operate at these signals. For the most part. On top of
that, we must consider the "microwave acoustic effect" (wiki has a
good article), whereby the human ear will respond to these
frequencies and send neural signals throughout our brains and
convert whatever sine waves are pulsed within that frequency... to
thoughts or perceived sensory input. There is communication used
this way via DARPA. YIKES. Makes me wish I never got that "silver"
filling years ago.
Lux Et Veritas,
Brendan Bombaci
www.kairologic.com
http://web.mac.com/kairologic/iWeb/h%26e/welcome.html or
www.alexandriaburning.com
http://web.mac.com/kairologic/iWeb/h&e/U%20of%20A.html
"may the rose bloom on the cross"
Posted by: Brendan Bombaci http://www.kairologic.com on April 16,
2007 03:15 PM
HAARP's final installation was actually in 2005... just before it
was used to squelch out Hurricane Rita (which otherwise had more
destructive power coming than Katrina just one month before it).
HAARP Magnetometer charts for the dates of Rita's "breakdown," upon
landfall, will astound you. Those things don't happen to our
geomagnetic shield during ANY natural circumstances. Idiot demonic
fools at DARPA, BAE Systems, Raytheon...
I know the number of the beast. If you request and receive my DVD
information pack, you will too. We can fight this madness with the
info I've accumulated.
Lux Et Veritas,
Brendan Bombaci
www.kairologic.com
http://web.mac.com/kairologic/iWeb/h%26e/welcome.html
"may the rose bloom on the cross"
Posted by: Brendan Bombaci http://www.kairologic.com on April 16,
2007 04:44 PM
Is this another sign we are at the end? I am so tired to be scared
every day by a new catastrophe. Humans seem to be unable or
unwilling to understand we are running on the fast lane towards our
self destruction. We have always been a very self destructive
species (our world wars should be an example), but normally there
was a place for people only seeking for peace. Now there is no place
where to hide, nor hopes left. Maybe we should just make it faster,
cleaner and estinguish before destroying the whole world.
Posted by: Marco R. Capelli http://www.progettobabele.it/ on April
17, 2007 04:17 AM
Most bee hives sustain their bees through the winter using corn syrup. This year would be the first winter where "most" of the corn is GMO.
Sorcha Faal's article above suggests that Russia placed their em sensitive queens in the American market because the U.S. would not negotiate a peace treaty back in the 70's. Anybody here read Alternative 3?
Posted by: eric swan http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2007/03/06/www.cygnid.com on April 17, 2007 06:34 AM
---
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2007/03/06/millions_of_bees_die_are_electromagnetic_signals_to_blame.htm
Mark writes:
From DemocracyNow this morning:
Scientists: Cell Phones Could Be Cause of Missing Bees
In science news, more theories are emerging on what is causing the disappearances of bees across the country and in Europe. As much as 70 percent of the commercial bee population on the East Coast have gone missing. The Independent newspaper of London reports that some scientists believe that cell phones might be causing the problem. The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees" navigation systems, preventing the famously home-loving species from finding their way back to their hives. A limited study at Landau University has found that bees refuse to return to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby. The disappearance of the bees could cause massive food shortages because most of the world's crops depend on pollination by bees....
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/18/1548251
Mark writes:
This one is on the pesticide angle, and it fits right in with governmental corruption. Quoting:
"Theobald and his brother, Tom, a Niwot beekeeper for more than three decades, believe that colony collapse disorder is the result of long-ignored environmental regulations. When growers violate pesticide restrictions, the chemical residue poisons bees.
...
When Colorado's apiary program lost its funding in the early 1980s [sic, i.e., intentionally had its funding cut by the supply-side only growers lobby to the endangerment of consumers and bees], government bee inspections ceased, leaving no one but the beekeepers to monitor the mite infestation or pesticide abuse."
Sickening, literally: that the whole state is just turning a blind eye to illegal pesticide uses on crops. Sickening.
Other species pollinate of course, besides the honeybee. After all, there were plants living well here before the honeybee was imported into the Americas, let's remember? :-)
What may be at going the way of the dodo is the durability scale of larger monocrop farms in North America--because sourcing would come instead from more tropical climates for the same crops, when possible.
If the death of introduced honeybees (from Europe with original European colonization) is continued, then different smaller sizes of agricultural plots will become optimal in North America, that's all.
Lots of things pollinate besides bees. Honeybees were the preference mostly because it is a species for wax production (candles, light, etc.) and for honey (sugary sweeteners).
Another interesting article with some more stats and observations on the "bee disappearance":
Hives Holding a Secret
By Claire Martin
The Denver Post
Sunday 04 March 2007
Colorado beekeepers stung by mysteriously vanishing colonies.
Like other Colorado beekeepers, Jeff Theobald knows that between 2 percent and 10 percent of his bees typically won't survive winter, but this year, the loss rate is 40 percent and rising as entire colonies vanish without a trace.
"It's just bizarre," said Theobald, who runs Grand Mesa Honey Farm in Delta. "I've had hives that had dead bees in them - 4,000 to 5,000 dead bees - and hives that were completely empty. The bees were just gone."
Regional disasters have afflicted beekeepers in the past, but baffled entomologists and agricultural experts call this the first national crisis, with potentially grave consequences. Approximately $14.6 billion worth of U.S. nut, fruit and vegetable crops depend on bee pollination.
Throughout the U.S., honeybee colonies, including approximately 30,000 colonies in Colorado, are affected by what researchers are calling colony collapse disorder. To date, the disorder has been identified in 24 states.
"The map changes almost daily," said Jerry Bromenshenk, president of Bee Alert Technology, a research company affiliated with the University of Montana. "Almost every time the phone rings, we say, 'Is that another state calling in with a problem?"'
The accounts are eerily identical: A bee colony that appeared perfectly strong and healthy during a late 2006 inspection abruptly disappears when beekeepers make their first bee-yard rounds in 2007. One commercial beekeeper with hives in Oklahoma and Texas lost 80 percent of his 13,000 colonies.
"One day, you look at the bees and they're good," Bromenshenk said. "The next time you look in the box, you take a second look, pull the cover off, and you might have a queen and three young bees trying to keep things going. If it was a pesticide or a virus, you'd expect to find piles of dead bees in the box, and in the bee yard. But this looks like someone swept the bottom board clean."
"We Wish We Knew"
Where are the missing bees? Nobody knows. What's causing them to leave the hive? Nobody knows that, either. How many bees are missing?
"We wish we knew, and we wish we had a means of collecting statistics," Bromenshenk said. "The problem is (that) the beekeepers we hear from are the ones who have a problem. And another problem is that we're not hearing from the beekeepers who aren't owning up, because they don't want growers to know."
Still, there are few secrets in the relatively small, close-knit beekeeping community, one of the last agricultural domains still dominated by family dynasties.
"Dad knows so many beekeepers, and a bunch of his friends have already had big losses," said Jeff Johnston, whose Colorado Honey Company processes honey from Colorado colonies kept by relatives and friends with operations from the Eastern Plains to the Western Slope. His father, Lyle, is currently in California, where almond growers pay $125 to $165 per hive.
Lyle Johnston's business is based in Rocky Ford. He normally stays close to home to serve the farmers and ranchers who hire his bees, but the California almond crop is too lucrative to ignore.
The Johnstons are among a handful of this state's commercial beekeepers whose colonies pollinate Eastern Plains alfalfa crops, Western Slope peaches, Rocky Ford cantaloupe and other crops that depend on honeybees.
Hundreds of other hobbyist beekeepers maintain an average of a few dozen hives each throughout Colorado.
As bees die, the price of replacement bees - which has already quadrupled in the past decade because so many bees succumb to [varroa] mite infestations - is escalating.
"If we don't have bees, then all (that) those folks in California have got is fancy shade trees," Theobald said. "I'm afraid attention won't be paid, and we'll be going to South America for fruits and vegetables."
Long-Ignored Regulations?
Theobald and his brother, Tom, a Niwot beekeeper for more than three decades, believe that colony collapse disorder is the result of long-ignored environmental regulations. When growers violate pesticide restrictions, the chemical residue poisons bees.
Until the disorder was identified, pesticides and parasitic mites were the chief causes of colony die-offs.
When Colorado's apiary program lost its funding in the early 1980s, government bee inspections ceased, leaving no one but the beekeepers to monitor the mite infestation or pesticide abuse. [sickening, literally that the whole state is just turning a blind eye to illegal pesticide uses on crops. sickening.]
"Until then, I did routine disease inspections, and since the program went under, there've been all kinds of problems," said state entomologist Jerry Cochran. [thus more externalities caused by supply side ideologies of pesticide uses more and more, and their power to defund the budget of the pseudo-consumer watchdog of the state from finding out they were poisoning us all, bees inclusive.]
Tom Theobald agrees. He refers to the existing system as "the (Hurricane) Katrina model of management."
"We've known this problem was coming for a long time," he said, "and the people in charge have not discussed the problems openly."
"It's not colony collapse disorder. It's industry collapse disorder, and it's very serious."
$14.6 Billion: Annual value of bee pollination to the agricultural industry.
80 Percent: Amount of insect crop pollination estimated to be done by honeybees.
Source: National Honey Board.
-------
found at http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/032307EA.shtml
The Birds and the (Native) Bees
Alternative Pollinators: Native Bees
By Lane Greer
NCAT Agriculture Specialist
Published 1999
ATTRA Publication #IP126
The printable PDF version of the entire document is available at:
http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/PDF/nativebee.pdf
14 pages — 541K
Abstract
This publication discusses using solitary or native bees as pollinators. Some of the larger groups of bees are discussed, including alkali bees, leafcutter bees, alfalfa leafcutter bees, bumblebees, sweat bees, squash bees, digger bees, orchard mason bees, shaggy fuzzyfoot bees, and hornfaced bees. Information is also presented on how to attract and conserve populations of wild bees for pollination purposes. There is also a list of suppliers of native bees and bee equipment.
http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/nativebee.html
Another summary article:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/4/23/42210/9088
Brazil mentioned as another location where bees are suddenly flying away and unable to find their way back to the hive and/or are so sick they are unable to, assumedly dying away from the hive.
It's Official: The HoneyBees are Gone [Congressional Testimony]
by jhritz
Mon Apr 23, 2007 at 03:09:39 AM PDT
Experts are gathering outside Washington, D.C. today for a two-day meeting to collectively scratch their heads about the Colony Collapse Disorder, aka 'Where have all the honeybees gone.'
The phenomenon was first noticed late last year in the United States, where honeybees are used to pollinate $15 billion worth of fruits, nuts and other crops annually. Disappearing bees have also been reported in Europe and Brazil.
Commercial beekeepers would set their bees near a crop field as usual and come back in two or three weeks to find the hives bereft of foraging worker bees, with only the queen and the immature insects remaining. Whatever worker bees survived were often too weak to perform their tasks.
http://www.cnn.com/...
There's been a lot of speculation about this lately. Others have diaried extensively on their ideas as to the cause. I don't know the cause, so I thought I'd write a diary that addresses what we do know, what questions are being asked, what is being done, and what has been reported, so far, in Congressional testimony.
More below the fold...
* jhritz's diary :: ::
*
The scientists and researchers meeting in Washington today have formed working groups from several universities, government agencies and research facilities. Here's an interesting quote from one of the team members, Rick Pettis of the U.S. Agricultural Research Service, about what they're saying is NOT causing the disorder:
If the bees were dying of pesticide poisoning or freezing, their bodies would be expected to lie around the hive. [WRONG. The corporate spin enters center stage to protect the degradative pesticide industry: ignores that the hives themselves are noted to be 'off limits' to their typical scavengers in this 'empty hive' context, like they are staying away from the empty treasure of the hive like the plague; ignores the research above about the interaction between Bt, general immune system collapse, and multiple other typical bee diseases found simultaneously in some hives, like a "Bee A.I.D.S." ]
And if they were absconding because of some threat -- which they have been known to do -- they wouldn't leave without the queen.
But they are leaving without the queen, which is incredible, given their societal structure [WRONG, the more sound implication is that they are unable to navigate back as one of the symptoms since they certainly would want to, and that would fit with the bee AIDS sort of immune collapse of the hive that may be sparked by Bt GMOs] (God save the queen could be their motto):
Colonies are established not by solitary queens, as in most bees, but by groups known as "swarms" which consist of a mated queen and a large contingent of workers. This group moves en masse to a nest site that has been scouted by workers beforehand, and once they arrive they immediately construct a new comb and begin to raise a new worker brood
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
They're not swarming anymore, according to Rick Pettis, who says that one-third of the U.S. diet depends on the honeybee:
"They're the heavy lifters of [SUPPLY-SIDE CONSOLIDATED versions of] agriculture," Pettis said of honeybees. [NOTE that there are many other wild bees that do pollenize: what is so special about honeybees is that they to it at a larger scale than other species, after all before the European honeybees were brought to North America by the British colonizers, there were still plants here, folks; bees were for 'sweetness and light' as Swift said (honey and candle wax, less poetically), more than pollination] "And the reason they are is they're so mobile and we can rear them in large [supply-side scaled] numbers and move them to a crop when it's blooming."
[I'd like to know more about the implications of the origins and scale of moving these poor bees around like migrant workers. When did that Koyaaniquatsi-esque practice start?]
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.
Wait a minute. I like cherries. I get my anti-oxidants from blueberries. An apple a day keeps my doctor away. Asparagus is my favorite vegetable and Almond milk is my substitute for that cow stuff.
So, what's being done about it?
On March 26, 2007, the Congressional Research Service compiled a report for Congress entitled:
Recent Honey Bee Colony Declines
Honey bee colony losses are not uncommon. However, current losses seem to differ from past situations in that
* colony losses are occurring mostly because bees are failing to return to the hive (which is largely uncharacteristic of bee behavior), [it's sad they felt they had to spell that out for their not so sharp Congressmen, if they didn't know that...; what do they mean "largely uncharacteristic"? It's completely uncharacteristic.]
* bee colony losses have been rapid,
* colony losses are occurring in large numbers, and
* the reason why these losses are occurring remains still largely unknown.
To date, the potential causes of CCD, as reported by the scientists who are researching this phenomenon, include but may not be limited to
* parasites, mites, and disease loads in the bees and brood;
* known/unknown pathogens;
* poor nutrition among adult bees;
* level of stress in adult bees (e.g., transportation and confinement of bees, or other environmental or biological stressors);
* chemical residue/contamination in the wax, food stores and/or bees;
* lack of genetic diversity and lineage of bees; and
* a combination of several factors
[WOW. Totally taboo in the USA I guess, unlike the known research above to mention that GMO crops may be causing it, or microwave radiation from cell phone industry might be causing it, or HAARP might be causing it, the "full (electromagnetic) spectrum dominance" of the military corporate economy of the United States's latest little fascist toy to take over the world. Hubris comes before a fall though. Strange how GM-crops, microwaves, and HAARP are left out at least of the "public consumption" information.]
On March 29th, Diana Cox-Foster, Professor Department of Entomology, Pennsylvania State University, testified before the House Subcommittee on Horticulture and Organic Agriculture:
Honey bees are essential for the pollination of over 90 fruit and vegetable crops worldwide. The economic worth of the honey bee is valued at more than $14.6 billion in the U.S. In Pennsylvania alone, honey bees and pollination are worth $65 million annually through fruit crops, forage, and bee products (most notably honey).
In addition to agricultural crops, honey bees also pollinate many native plants in the ecosystem.
[snip]
In colonies experiencing CCD [Colony Collapse Disorder], we have found [the effects of complete immune system breakdown, and one of the known bee diseases does have a navigational hampering effect...] that individual bees are infected with an extremely high number of different disease organisms [and that scavengers strangely avoid the hive.] However, we have found little evidence of parasitization by varroa [which decimated them right before this happened] or tracheal mites.
Many of these known bee diseases are commonly associated with stress in bees. Of particular note, we have found all adult bees in CCD colonies are infected with fungal infections. These findings may indicate that the bees are being immunosuppressed, but none of the organisms found in these bees can be attributed as the primary culprits in CCD.
Here are three research questions Cox's working team is investigating:
* Are there new or reemerging pathogens responsible for CCD?
* Are environmental chemicals causing the immunosuppression of bees and triggering CCD?
* Is a combination of stressors (e.g., varroa mites, diseases, nutritional stress [microwave radiation frequencies that should be banned and switched to different non-biologically affecting frequencies for communications, GM-crops that should be all banned completely, and HAARP that should be dismantled) interacting to weaken bee colonies and allowing stress-related pathogens such as fungi to cause final collapse?
Another working team scientist, May Berenbaum of the University of Illinois, is exploring behavioral reasons for the disappearance:
"The main hypotheses are based on the interpretation that the disappearances represent disruptions in orientation behavior and navigation," said May Berenbaum, an insect ecologist at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Orientation behavior and navigation...
Or, as one of the team members said: "The HoneyBees are Gone and we don't know where."
There are multiple working teams gathering in Washington this week.
As a testament to how seriously this is being taken, they say they intend to pool their resources [though leave three major novel global systemic introductions in the past several years--GMOs, microwave radiation saturation of countrysides, and globally, HAARP, out of the investigation??!] to determine the cause of Colony Collapse Disorder. They'd better do it soon, because it turns out that the honeybees might just be the proverbial canary in the coal mine:
Honeybees are not the only pollinators whose numbers are dropping. Other animals that do this essential job -- non-honeybees, wasps, flies, beetles, birds and bats -- have decreasing populations as well. [because humans have a self-destructive development model instead of bioregionally preservative developmental model.]
Cherries, blueberries, apples, almonds, asparagus and macadamia nuts, approximately 84 other crops, and honey, beeswax and royal jelly and, of course, William Butler Yeats:
"I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade."
Subcommittee on Horticulture and Organic Agriculture
Dennis A. Cardoza, (D-CA) Chairman
Jurisdiction: fruits and vegetables; honey and bees; marketing and promotion orders; plant pesticides, quarantine, adulteration of seeds, and insect pests; and organic agriculture. [interesting that they tagged that on there, yes, if it does have something to do with GMOs and pesticide saturation interacting with other factors in a large melange of effects that only have started appearing recently out of previously unavailable synergy, organic crops might be expanded--faster than they already are by consumers terrified of bioaccumulative body burdens of pesticide agriculture and GMO's unknown effects on the human system.]
Majority
* Dennis A. Cardoza, CA
* Bob Etheridge, NC
* Lincoln Davis, TN
* Tim Mahoney, FL
* John Barrow, GA
* Kirsten E. Gillibrand, NY
Minority
* Randy Neugebauer, TX
* John R. "Randy" Kuhl, NY
* Virginia Foxx, NC
* Kevin McCarthy, CA
* K. Michael Conaway, TX
Congressional Hearing on Colony Collapse Disorder:
THURSDAY, MARCH 29, 2007
Witness List (w/links to opening statements):
Panel I
* Associate Administrator Caird E. Rexroad, PhD, Agricultural Research Service, USDA, Washington, D.C.
* Dr. Diana Cox-Foster, PhD, Professor, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania
* Dr. May R. Berenbaum, Professor and Head, Department of Entomology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois
Panel II
* Mr. Paul Wenger, First Vice President, California Farm Bureau Federation, Modesto, California
* Mr. David Ellingson, Commercial Bee Keeper, Ortonville, MN
* Mr. Gene Brandi, Legislative Chairman, California State Beekeepers Association, Los Banos, California
* Mr. Jim Doan, Commercial Bee Keeper, Hamlin, New York
* Mr. Richard Adee, Legislative Committee Chairman, American Honey Producers Association, Bruce, South Dakota
The next congressional hearing is set for June 24-30 during National Pollinator Week (really).
Live Audio link: http://agriculture.house.gov/...
Let's hope there are some pollinators left to attend.
Link to dairies on this subject by tag=honey bees.
Link to diaries on this subject by tag=colony collapse disorder
Link to the Congressional Research Service's March 26, 2007 Report
Lint to the CNN/Reuter's article cited above.
Tags: Environment, Agriculture, Bees, Honey Bees, Colony Collapse Disorder, Agricultural Research Service, House Subcommittee on Horticulture and Organic Agriculture, Recommended (all tags)
View Comments | 817 comments [a record?]
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/4/23/42210/9088
Good to see this much attention being paid to a truly catastrophic situation. Here is another article that does a great job of explaining the implications:
http://tinyurl.com/2go5xt
Sariade
I posted this originally somewhere else, though reposted it here. (I messed up the numbering at the above link as well as I edited and wrote it on the fly. This is a bit clearer.)
TOP 14 POINTS TO AVOID THE CULTURE OF FEAR THAT HAS ALREADY GROWN UP ABOUT THIS TOPIC
main point of all the above: "the native pollinators quickly reclaim the niche...."
1. This is presumably impacting so far only commercial, industrial beekeeping, i.e,. the European imported honeybee stock, which has two human uses: industrial honeymaking and industrial pollination, WHICH ARE SEPARATE PURSUITS specified to different bee colonies by the beekeepers.
2. Industrial honeymaking and industrial pollination ARE SEPARATE PURSUITS specified to different bee colonies by the beekeepers.
3. To be fair of course no one keeps records of the numbers of wild native colonies of bees to compare whether they are still alive either or this CCD is affecting them--keep in mind.
4. Beware the culture of fear that has grown up around this topic already, Quoting from the above information: "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.
5. On the "Without the honeybee....' argument: However, that may as well hardly be true either, as other pollinators will move in to take their place. At issue is industrial scales of agriculture, which are hardly sustainable either.
quote from the above link:
"Honey bees are not native to the Americas, therefore their necessity as pollinators in the US is limited to strictly agricultural uses.
They are responsible for [industrial shipped around] pollination of approximately one third of the United States' crop species, including such species as: almonds, peaches, soybeans, apples, pears, cherries, raspberries, blackberries, cranberries, and strawberries; ***many but not all of these plants can be (and often are) pollinated by other insects, including other kinds of bees, in the U.S., but typically not on a commercial scale.***
While some farmers of a few kinds of native crops do bring in honey bees to help pollinate, ***none specifically need them, and when honey bees are absent from a region, the native pollinators quickly reclaim the niche,*** typically being better adapted to serve those plants (assuming that the plants normally occur in that specific area). On the 30% of crop types where honey bees are used -- ****even though many other creatures are actually more efficient at pollinating, on a per-individual basis***-- most native pollinators cannot be mass-utilized as easily or as effectively as honey bees, if they will visit the plants at all.
6. Thus the whole issue of bees as a supply-side solution for pollination, when many more local pollinators would do in the niche and many would do better!
7. Besides, there are many other pollinators in domestic bees that are in many cases far more suitable to particular crops that the honeybee doesn't seem to touch much.
8. What we are seeing might be additionally a foredrawn effect of the huge consolidation effects of the 'honeybee-based pollination industry', which is inherently unstable, and in many ways, not fitted to many crops they are meant to pollinate. Why are they used? Well, honeybees can be humanly scaled more than other bees, That's really all there is to it, so humans use them even though they are suboptimal pollinators! Moreover given the massive verroa mite infestation beforehand to CCD, such a strategy is self-destructive.
quote:
This author here http://www.vegetus.org/honey/ecology.htm
is speaking for demoting both honeymaking as well as commercial/industrial pollination, though I think that the former (honeymaking) is pragmatically unlikely to be stopped, though the latter might be better to be stopped, given his information and arguments:
"Additionally, it is not as though foregoing honey will bring about an end to commercial pollination, so it is not clear what exactly the beekeepers' point is. Commercial honey production and commercial pollination are not the same--the bees that produce honey are not the ones doing commercial pollination. "Beekeepers may brag [to legitimate themselves] about the importance of honeybees in the necessary transfer of pollen, but many are not involved in the practical aspects of the service," according to Justin Schmidt and Stephen Buchmann, Research Entomologists at the USDA Carl Hayden Bee Research Center (Schmidt & Buchmann 739). [Because pollination occurs by different 'industrialized specialized bees' than the 'honey production bees'.]
"Schmidt and Buchmann continue, "Bees cannot be expected to feed themselves, much less produce any surplus honey while engaged in commercial pollination" (Schmidt & Buchmann 740).
9. "Furthermore, the beekeepers have overstated their importance in crop production. Honeybees pollinate a small percentage of crops. Beekeepers may quote a figure, courtesy of the USDA, that honeybees pollinate 80% of the US crops that require pollination. First, this means that 20% of these crops are in danger because the animals that pollinate them are understudied and are likely unprotected from human pressures. Second, the 80% figure is likely wrong. Independent surveys suggest that honeybees are the dominant pollinators for only 15% of the world's crops. (Buchmann & Nabham 194); (O'Toole 170). This can be explained by the fact that the USDA is focused almost exclusively on promoting honeybees [consolidation, which is unsustainable] as pollinators and are unlikely to recognize the value of native pollinators. Also, not all crops require insect pollination.
Honeybees Shouldn't Pollinate
Even though honeybees are currently used as [industrial, highly despatialized, and shipped around] pollinators, it is problematic for a number of reasons and should be stopped. The whole enterprise is risky as new diseases can be imported and rapidly diminish the honeybee population. This has already occurred--feral (wild) honeybee populations are virtually nonexistent (Watanabe 1170), most recently due to the illegal importation of South American queens infected with two types of mites (tracheal and Varroa) (Nickens 22; Watanabe 1170). Even if these problems can be controlled in managed colonies, it may be only temporary. "[Varroa] mites in four states have developed resistance to the one pesticide approved for use against them, notes Thomas E. Rinderer of the U.S. Department of Agriculture honeybee laboratory in Baton Rouge, La." (Raloff). Honeybees will become increasingly dependent on the beekeeper as new threats appear. Beekeepers can take steps to reduce the spread of diseases but do not or cannot. For example, the Varroa mite "will continue to spread because of the commercial transport of bees and queens; the migratory activities of beekeepers; swarms that may fly long distances, or be carried by ships or aircraft; and drifting bees" (Shimanuki 1120). [In other words, as argued at the main link above, different local watershed based strategies of pollenation would be more sustainable, tailoring local bees that exist to particular crops.]
While ultimately it seems desirable to have few to no honeybee [industrial] colonies [this author is speaking for both honeymaking as well as for commercial pollination, though I think that the former is pragmatically unlikely to be stopped, though the latter might be better to be stopped], in the short term, the irresponsible behavior of beekeepers is actually increasing their monopoly on pollination. ***Farmers who used to rely on feral honeybees for pollination must now rent managed colonies.*** The pollination situation reached a crisis point and honeybeekeepers emerged as the savior when, in fact, they are at the root of the problem. Additionally, the spread of Africanized honeybees will displace European honeybees and threaten the ability to manage colonies easily. Farmers have become dependent on honeybees, but someday soon, beekeepers in some areas may simply be unable to provide colonies for pollination. And, yes, the Africanized honeybee is completely man's fault--it was accidentally released from an experiment in South America and continues to spread northward.
10. ****"Honeybees are not even the best choice of pollinator for many crops.*** Honeybees do not trip alfalfa flowers (as the Alfalfa leafcutter bees and the Alkali bees do).
11. ****"Honeybees cannot use the buzz pollination*** (the vigorous vibration used by bumblebees) necessary to efficiently pollinate tomatoes, eggplants, potatoes, peppers, blueberries, watermelon, and cranberries.
12. ***"Honeybees cannot fly at low temperatures (like the orchard mason bee)*** to efficiently pollinate early-spring blooms like blueberries, the first apple bloom and almonds. This is not to imply that honeybees are not used to pollinate these crops, ***just that other insects could do a much better job.***
http://www.vegetus.org/honey/ecology.htm
So, the honeybee is hardly "it" for the bees in general. It might even be beneficial to see demotion of the honeybee industrial agricultural operations for the localization of agriculture and localization of pollination that will be expanded in its niche place. Remember it's not the staples, and even in some fruits, the honeybee is suboptimal a pollinator.
13. Then why use the honeybee in the first place, you might ask? Good question. It really has to do with the fact that HUMANS can scale these bees more than other environmental options, so HUMANS chose them for the purpose. Moreover, honeybees (as their name implies, look at that word) are really promoted by humans because they make more honey than other species. Historically, that was their purpose, according to Johnathan Swift: "sweetness and light". Sweetness meaning the sugar condiment from the honey; light meaning candle wax. Since we don't always use honey for sugar and don't always use candles for light, or bees for wax production, the whole industrial operation is really an heirloom industry of sorts for these products.
14. For more on the beautiful variety of life among the bee species, see this link (it's additionally a posted comment at the above link).
The Birds and the (Native) Bees
Alternative Pollinators: Native Bees
By Lane Greer
NCAT Agriculture Specialist
Published 1999
ATTRA Publication #IP126
The printable PDF version of the entire document is available at:
http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/PDF/nativebee.pdf
14 pages — 541K
Abstract
This publication discusses [intentionally the preference in] using solitary or native bees as pollinators [instead of industrial honeybee colonies being shipped around]. Some of the larger groups of bees are discussed, including alkali bees, leafcutter bees, alfalfa leafcutter bees, bumblebees, sweat bees, squash bees, digger bees, orchard mason bees, shaggy fuzzyfoot bees, and hornfaced bees. Information is also presented on how to attract and conserve populations of wild bees for pollination purposes. There is also a list of suppliers of native bees and bee equipment.
http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/nativebee.html
Interesting article reposted, arguing against scaled honey production and scaled pollination:
http://www.vegetus.org/honey/ecology.htm
Honeybee Ecology
[The False Argument of ] "Without Honeybees You'd Starve"
Beekeepers always like to point out that honeybees pollinate the agricultural crops we eat. Without beekeepers, they claim, we would not be able to eat a long list of fruits and vegetables. Even if crops do currently require honeybee pollination, that is no reason to further exploit bees by consuming honey, beeswax, bee pollen, etc. The fact that everything in our society is based on animal exploitation shouldn't surprise us since Western civilization literally began with the "domestication" (i.e. enslavement) of animals. Dead animals are used to build roads, but this doesn't justify eating animals. Furthermore, it is unreasonable (not to mention idiotic) not to use roads because they contain dead animals. (Similarly, it is illogical not to eat certain foods because bees were used to pollinate them.) People make these sorts of arguments about meat to avoid discussing the real issue at hand. The beekeepers' argument is no different. The whole question of pollination is nothing more than an attempt to divert attention away from the fact that they are exploiting animals and that honey is the product of animal exploitation.
Additionally, it is not as though foregoing honey will bring about an end to commercial pollination, so it is not clear what exactly the beekeepers' point is. Commercial honey production and commercial pollination are not the same--the bees that produce honey are not the ones doing commercial pollination. "Beekeepers may brag about the importance of honeybees in the necessary transfer of pollen, but many are not involved in the practical aspects of the service," according to Justin Schmidt and Stephen Buchmann, Research Entomologists at the USDA Carl Hayden Bee Research Center (Schmidt & Buchmann 739). Schmidt and Buchmann continue, "Bees cannot be expected to feed themselves, much less produce any surplus honey while engaged in commercial pollination" (Schmidt & Buchmann 740). Furthermore, the beekeepers have overstated their importance in crop production. Honeybees pollinate a small percentage of crops. Beekeepers may quote a figure, courtesy of the USDA, that honeybees pollinate 80% of the US crops that require pollination. First, this means that 20% of these crops are in danger because the animals that pollinate them are understudied and are likely unprotected from human pressures. Second, the 80% figure is likely wrong. Independent surveys suggest that honeybees are the dominant pollinators for only 15% of the world's crops. (Buchmann & Nabham 194); (O'Toole 170). This can be explained by the fact that the USDA is focused almost exclusively on promoting honeybees as pollinators and are unlikely to recognize the value of native pollinators. Also, not all crops require insect pollination.
Honeybees Shouldn't Pollinate
Even though honeybees are currently used as pollinators, it is problematic for a number of reasons and should be stopped. The whole enterprise is risky as new diseases can be imported and rapidly diminish the honeybee population. This has already occurred--feral (wild) honeybee populations are virtually nonexistent (Watanabe 1170), most recently due to the illegal importation of South American queens infected with two types of mites (tracheal and Varroa) (Nickens 22; Watanabe 1170). Even if these problems can be controlled in managed colonies, it may be only temporary. "[Varroa] mites in four states have developed resistance to the one pesticide approved for use against them, notes Thomas E. Rinderer of the U.S. Department of Agriculture honeybee laboratory in Baton Rouge, La." (Raloff). Honeybees will become increasingly dependent on the beekeeper as new threats appear. Beekeepers can take steps to reduce the spread of diseases but do not or cannot. For example, the Varroa mite "will continue to spread because of the commercial transport of bees and queens; the migratory activities of beekeepers; swarms that may fly long distances, or be carried by ships or aircraft; and drifting bees" (Shimanuki 1120).
While ultimately it seems desirable to have few to no honeybee colonies, in the short term, the irresponsible behavior of beekeepers is actually increasing their monopoly on pollination. Farmers who used to rely on feral honeybees for pollination must now rent managed colonies. The pollination situation reached a crisis point and honeybeekeepers emerged as the savior when, in fact, they are at the root of the problem. Additionally, the spread of Africanized honeybees will displace European honeybees and threaten the ability to manage colonies easily. Farmers have become dependent on honeybees, but someday soon, beekeepers in some areas may simply be unable to provide colonies for pollination. And, yes, the Africanized honeybee is completely man's fault--it was accidentally released from an experiment in South America and continues to spread northward.
Honeybees are not even the best choice of pollinator for many crops. Honeybees do not trip alfalfa flowers (as the Alfalfa leafcutter bees and the Alkali bees do). Honeybees cannot use the buzz pollination (the vigorous vibration used by bumblebees) necessary to efficiently pollinate tomatoes, eggplants, potatoes, peppers, blueberries, watermelon, and cranberries. Honeybees cannot fly at low temperatures (like the orchard mason bee) to efficiently pollinate early-spring blooms like blueberries, the first apple bloom and almonds. This is not to imply that honeybees are not used to pollinate these crops, just that other insects could do a much better job.
Honeybee pollination is also subject to the honey market. The altruistic claim that "honeybees pollinate" isn't so selfless after all; if honey prices are high, beekeepers would rather focus on that entirely rather than pollination. If honey prices are low then the number of beekeepers declines (and the number of readily available bees along with them).
Finally, focusing on honeybees as pollinators ignores the value of native pollinators and the fact that the presence of the honeybee harms them, as we shall see.
Honeybees Hurt the Environment
Initially the consequences of the loss of the honeybee are negative. Insects are necessary to pollinate about 15% of our food crops and honeybees currently fill a lot of that role (Adee 21). Humans are not the only ones affected. "John T. Ambrose, an entomologist at North Carolina State University, estimates that 15 to 20 percent of a black bear's diet comes from honey, bees, and bee-pollinated fruits, nuts, and berries. A 20 percent decline in that food source could force the bears to range farther for forage" (Nickens 23). "'The basic protein and carbohydrate base in the ecosystem is going down,' says Rinderer [director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Honeybee Breeding and Genetics Laboratory in Baton Rouge, Louisiana], 'and everything else will go down from there.' A 50 percent reduction in insect-pollinated food supplies, he says, is 'entirely reasonable'" (Nickens 23). Of course, these impacts would have already occurred to a large extent because there are virtually no feral honeybee colonies left, since honeybees now require human intervention to survive in North America.
Ultimately, however, the reduction of honeybee populations would be positive because they crowd out native bee species. Honeybees are not native to North America. It is believed that they were imported from Europe in 1638 (NHB). Native Americans called them "white man's flies." Feral honeybees developed through the natural process of swarming.
When beekeepers tell you they are helping the honeybees out by transporting them to nectar flows, they are indeed. They are facilitating the honey hoarding instinct of the honeybees--much to the detriment of other pollinators (Buchmann 129). "The potential ecological effects of honeybees are likely minor compared to major changes such as deforestation, but they may be important because honeybees are nearly cosmopolitan and they may compete with pollinators, potential 'keystone' species (Paine, 1966; Thorp & Gordon, 1992; Thorp et al., 1994)" (Sugden 156). As the name implies, keystone species are ones that the ecosystem probably cannot do without. Studies led by William Schaffer, a University of Arizona ecologist, clearly showed a significant negative impact on local pollinators when honeybee colonies were introduced (Buchmann & Nabham 173). There is ample evidence for the fact that honeybees crowd out not only other bee pollinators, but also birds, honey possums and other insects (Buchmann & Nabham 174-182; Buchmann 129; Sugden 154; Kato et al.). The interspecies competition is difficult to conclusively prove for a variety of reasons. However, of 24 major competition studies only two discounted competitive effects and even these authors did not dismiss the possibility of its existence (Buchmann 129).
Honeybees steal pollen and nectar from other pollinators, but honeybees are not necessarily the best pollinators in natural ecosystems. Bees wet the pollen with saliva making it less likely to be transferred to a plant. They also travel to many different types of plants so the pollen doesn't necessarily get to the right plant (Buchmann & Nabham 62).
Loss of the native pollinators would be bad because honeybees only pollinate 16-22% of all wild plants needing pollination (Roubik 169). In addition to the threat from the honeybees, native pollinators are in decline due to habitat destruction and fragmentation, chemical farming, monocropping and insecticides, all of which only exacerbate the competition with honeybees (Sugden 156).
Buchmann & Nabham conclude, "the honeybee has perhaps had as much impact as cattle on the structure of certain plant communities. It may be apocalyptic to claim that someday beekeeping with either European or Africanized honeybees will be discussed in the United States or Mexico with as much emotion as cowboying is today, but that is indeed our prophecy. [It is already true in Australia.] Honeybees are, after all, lilliputian livestock--fuzzy herbivores with wings--that are just as capable of taming a landscape as any cow, sheep, or goat infestation. Their 'grazing' on pollen and nectar simply goes unnoticed. They may buzz softly, but they pack a big ecological wallop when it comes to altering, perhaps forever, the potential mix of forages out there on the range, in the bush, in the outback or boonies (Buchmann & Nabham 182-3).
Mindset Matters
Unfortunately, the use of alternative pollinators does not automatically result in a shift away from current mindsets. Huge (10 acre) greenhouses popular in the Netherlands have come to the United States and Steve Buchmann visited one in Arizona where they use bumblebees to pollinate tomatoes (bombiculture). "Yes, the industry had invented a new means of beekeeping, as Eurasians or North Africans had done with honeybees in the Old World, and Mayans or Aztecs had done with stingless bees in the New World. Yet each of those older forms of beekeeping was rooted in a respect for the magic of bees, and imbued with rituals to keep their human stewards humble and grateful that their relationships worked. In short, both ancient apiculture and living Mayan meliponiculture has cultural manifestations that guided them pragmatically, ethically, and spiritually. Bombiculture, however had replaced battery-powered vibrators--surrogate mechanical bees--but were nevertheless treated as just another high technology, albeit a biotechnology" (Buchmann & Nabham 166).
For Further Information
* I highly recommend reading The Forgotten Pollinators.
http://www.islandpress.com/books/Detail.tpl?&SKU=1-55963-353-0
* Learn how to create a bee garden in your backyard to help increase the population of native pollinators.
http://gears.tucson.ars.ag.gov/na/bgardn.html
* The High Cost of Our Disappearing Bees (Essay By Gary Paul Nabhan, Director of Science, The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum)
http://gears.tucson.ars.ag.gov/dept/oped.html
* Forgotten Pollinators Overview (project to recognize the importance of native pollinators)
http://www.desert.net/museum/fp/index.html
* Alternative Pollinators (collection of info that is part of The Pollination Scene)
http://users.aol.com/pollinator/polpage4.htm
http://users.aol.com/pollinator/polpage1.html
* Solitary Bees: An Alternative to Honey Bees (articles and links)
http://www.uidaho.edu/pses/Strickler/SolitaryBees/solitary.htm
Environmental Impact of Sweeteners
A separate but related issue is that of the environmental impact of the sweeteners we use. Some beekeepers claim that honey is the least damaging sweetener. The beekeeper's argument is likely pure speculation--they are not referring to a scientific study. Few vegans use great quantities of cane sugar (due to the bone char processing) so the appropriate comparison would be to Organic Sucanat, Florida's Crystals or any of the liquid sweeteners which (when purchased in natural foods stores) are generally organic. Indeed, this is the only valid comparison because if someone is vegan for environmental reasons, they will undoubtedly seek out the least damaging sweetener.
Beekeepers claim that more insects die in raising sweetener crops. This is hard to quantify but keep in mind that honeybees live only 15-38 days in the summer, 30-60 days in the fall and 140 days over winter (Winston 55). Bees work themselves to death producing honey. Organic farmers use biological pest control to selectively hold down the populations of pests. Beekeepers also kill off mites that infect their colonies.
As for other issues, bees are trucked all over the country to follow the nectar flows. This surely more than equals the energy inputs of an organic farm. Beekeepers also use inputs like sugar, corn syrup, pollen substitutes, and grease patties that are almost certainly not organic. This is wasteful in the same way as feeding grains to cattle. Organic farms don't use pesticides or fertilizers but the beekeeper may be subsidizing destructive agricultural practices by letting his bees pollinate non-organically grown crops. Beekeepers also directly use insecticides to kill mites. So what's left? Soil erosion? Organic farmers use techniques to protect their most valuable resource. Habitat loss? As we've seen above, honeybees are a major contributor to habitat loss for many species. Organic farmers are less likely to eliminate naturalized areas around their fields and thus maintain habitats for many species.
Finally, most countries import honey and waste resources through transportation. Approximately 42% of honey in the US has been imported. It comes predominantly from Argentina followed by China, Mexico, Canada and India (FAS) and 85% of honey in the UK is imported from Vietnam, China, Mexico, Australia and Argentina (Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, 13). Germany, the world's largest honey importer, gets its honey mainly from Argentina, China and Mexico (FAS).
However, there are far more important issues than body counts or fossil fuel use. Buying honey endorses the beekeeping mindset--that animals are here for human use, that "it's OK to take things from the bees since I've put a lot of time and money into keeping them alive," and that encouraging excess production is desirable--precisely the values that are currently causing so much environmental damage.
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Only the 'proletarian honeybees' are dying: place-based organic honeybees are doing fine throughout this CCD, at least so far.
So since organic bees are fine, it's something exclusive to do with the human social organization of the commercial beekeeing industry as a concept--since in the below article: industrial scaled, fatted up, placeless, polluted, antibiotic laden honeybees seem (at least right now) to be the only honeybee colonies that are dying out. This clenches the 'supply versus demand' model of the politics of commodities once more, as noted in previous posts.
Even though this article ignores GMOs issues, microwave radiation research on confusing the honeybees homing capacities, and HAARP issues (perhaps), though it comes down on the same blame--a conceptual model of forcing bees to be supply-side only, to be industrial pesticide placeless honeybees, which may have become its own worst enemy and without solutions, since "organic honeybees" are fine.
First the clencher quote, then the full article:
Another perspective
Sharon Labchuk is a longtime environmental activist and part-time organic beekeeper from Prince Edward Island. She has twice run for a seat in Ottawa’s House of Commons, making strong showings around 5% for Canada’s fledgling Green Party. She is also leader of the provincial wing of her party. In a widely circulated email, she wrote:
I’m on an organic beekeeping list of about 1,000 people, mostly Americans, and no one in the organic beekeeping world, including commercial beekeepers, is reporting colony collapse on this list. The problem with the big commercial guys is that they put pesticides in their hives to fumigate for varroa mites, and they feed antibiotics to the bees. They also haul the hives by truck all over the place to make more money with pollination services, which stresses the colonies. (13)
Her email recommends a visit to the Bush Bees Web site at bushfarms.com. Here, Michael Bush felt compelled to put a message to the beekeeping world right on the top page:
Most of us beekeepers are fighting with the Varroa mites. I’m happy to say my biggest problems are things like trying to get nucs through the winter and coming up with hives that won’t hurt my back from lifting or better ways to feed the bees.
This change from fighting the mites is mostly because I’ve gone to natural sized cells. In case you weren’t aware, and I wasn’t for a long time, the foundation in common usage results in much larger bees than what you would find in a natural hive. I’ve measured sections of natural worker brood comb that are 4.6mm in diameter. …What most people use for worker brood is foundation that is 5.4mm in diameter. If you translate that into three dimensions instead of one, it produces a bee that is about half as large again as is natural. By letting the bees build natural sized cells, I have virtually eliminated my Varroa and Tracheal mite problems. One cause of this is shorter capping times by one day, and shorter post-capping times by one day. This means less Varroa get into the cells, and less Varroa reproduce in the cells. (14)
Who should be surprised that the major media reports forget to tell us that the dying bees are actually hyper-bred varieties that we coax into a larger than normal body size? It sounds just like the beef industry.
And, have we here a solution to the vanishing bee problem? Is it one that the CCD Working Group, or indeed, the [supply side industrial biased] scientific world at large, will support? Will media coverage affect government action in dealing with this issue?
These are important questions to ask. It is not an uncommonly held opinion that, although this new pattern of bee colony collapse seems to have struck from out of the blue (which suggests a triggering agent), it is likely that some biological limit in the bees has been crossed. There is no shortage of evidence that we have been fast approaching this limit for some time.
“We’ve been pushing them too hard,” Dr. Peter Kevan, an associate professor of environmental biology at the University of Guelph in Ontario, told the CBC. “And we’re starving them out by feeding them artificially and moving them great distances.” Given the stress commercial bees are under, Kevan suggests CCD might be caused by parasitic mites, or long cold winters, or long wet springs, or pesticides, or genetically modified crops. Maybe it’s all of the above. (24)
full article:
Please Lord, not the bees
Asset A03063 Posted By Beagle17
http://www.gnn.tv/threads/25101/Please_Lord_not_the_bees
It sounds like the start of a Kurt Vonnegut novel:
Nobody worried all that much about the loss of a few animal species here and there until one day the bees came to their senses and decided to quit producing an unnaturally large surplus of honey for our benefit. One by one, they went on strike and flew off to parts unknown.
Among the various mythologies of the apocalypse, fear of insect plagues has always loomed larger than fear of species loss. But this may change, as a strange new plague is wiping out our honey bees one hive at a time. It has been named Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD, by the apiculturalists and apiarists who are scrambling to understand and hopefully stop it.
First reported last autumn in the U.S., the list of afflicted countries has now expanded to include several in Europe, as well as Brazil, Taiwan, and possibly Canada. (1)(24)(29)
Apparently unknown before this year, CCD is said to follow a unique pattern with several strange characteristics. Bees seem to desert their hive or forget to return home from their foraging runs. The hive population dwindles and then collapses once there are too few bees to maintain it. Typically, no dead bee carcasses lie in or around the afflicted hive, although the queen and a few attendants may remain.
The defect, whatever it is, afflicts the adult bee. Larvae continue to develop normally, even as a hive is in the midst of collapse.
Stricken colonies may appear normal, as seen from the outside, but when beekeepers look inside the hive box, they find a small number of mature bees caring for a large number of younger and developing bees that remain. Normally, only the oldest bees go out foraging for nectar and pollen, while younger workers act as nurse bees caring for the larvae and cleaning the comb. A healthy hive in mid-summer has between 40,000 and 80,000 bees.
Perhaps the most ominous thing about CCD, and one of its most distinguishing characteristics, is that bees and other animals living nearby refrain from raiding the honey and pollen stored away in the dead hive. In previously observed cases of hive collapse (and it is certainly not a rare occurrence) these energy stores are quickly stolen. But with CCD the invasion of hive pests such as the wax moth and small hive beetle is noticeably delayed. (2)
Among the possible culprits behind CCD are: a fungus, a virus, a bacterium, a pesticide (or combination of pesticides), GMO crops bearing pesticide genes, erratic weather, or even cell phone radiation. “The odds are some neurotoxin is what’s causing it,” said David VanderDussen, a Canadian beekeeper who recently won an award for developing an environmentally friendly mite repellent. Then again, according to Dennis vanEngelsdorp, the top bee specialist with the Pennsylvania State Department of Agriculture, “We are pretty sure, but not certain, that it is a contagious disease.” Their comments notwithstanding, most scientists are unwilling to say they understand the problem beyond describing its outward appearance. Perhaps a government or UN task force would be a good idea right about now. (3)(25)
According to an FAQ published on March 9, 2007 by the Colony Collapse Disorder Working Group based primarily at Penn State University, the first report of CCD was made in mid-November 2006 by Dave Hackenberg, a Pennsylvania beekeeper overwintering his 2900 hives in Florida. Only 1000 survived. Soon other migratory beekeepers reported similar heavy losses. Subsequent reports from beekeepers painted a picture of a marked increase in die-offs, which led to the present concern among bee experts. (2)
The name CCD was invented by vanEngelsdorp and his colleagues at Penn State. It reflects their somewhat medical view of the situation. The BBC suggested in a sub-headline to a story on CCD that the problem would be more aptly named the “vanishing bee syndrome.” This proposal may have merit, considering how mass opinion polls influence policy these days. (4)
News of the CCD problem hit all of the major media networks in February 2006. A widely run Associated Press story said reports of unusual colony deaths have come in from at least 22 states, and that some commercial beekeepers reported losing more than half of their bees. The same story informed that autopsies of CCD bees showed higher than normal levels of fungi, bacteria and other pathogens, as well as weakened immune systems. It appears as if the bees have got the equivalent of AIDS. (5)
An April 15, 2007 story in The Independent reported that the west coast of the U.S. may have lost 60% of its commercial bee population, with an even greater 70% loss on the east coast. The same story said that one of London’s biggest bee-keepers recently reported 23 of his 40 hives empty. But, the U.K. Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs was quoted as saying, “There is absolutely no evidence of CCD in the UK.” (6)
One must wonder where the truth lies considering the level of sensationalism prevalent in the British press. Case in point, this same story (among several others, to be fair) attributes a juicy but dubious quote to Einstein: “If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would only have four years of life left.” (6)(7)
Einstein, in all likelihood, never said that, but if he did, it is a justifiable exaggeration. Bees certainly are important, and it will get ugly if we lose them. “It’s not the staples,” said Jeff Pettis of the U.S. Agricultural Research Service. “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. (8)
The beekeeping industry underpins the American agricultural industry to the tune of $US 15 billion or more. The picture is similar in many countries, especially in the West. Honey bees are used commercially to pollinate about one third of crop species in the U.S. This includes almonds, broccoli, peaches, soybeans, apples, pears, cherries, raspberries, blackberries, cranberries, and strawberries. Other insects, including other kinds of bees, may be used to pollinate some of these crops, but only bees are reliable on a commercial scale. If the bees go, we will see a change for the worse at our local supermarkets. (1)
Of course everyone is hoping for a quick solution to appear, and tantalizing reports have emerged. Recent military research at Edgewood Chemical Biological Center claims to have narrowed the likely cause of CCD to a virus, a micro-parasite or both. This work used a new technology called the Integrated Virus Detection System (IVDS), which can rapidly screen samples for pathogens.
These virus laden samples were sent to UC San Francisco, where a suspicious fungus was also discovered in them, suggesting the possibility that the fungus is either an immunosuppressive factor or the fatal pathogen that kills the bees. These “highly preliminary” findings were announced in an April 25, 2007 Los Angeles Times story with the headline, “Experts may have found what’s bugging the bees.” The story called it “the first solid evidence pointing to a potential cause,” and even noted that “there is reason to believe this fungus can be controlled by the antibiotic fumagillin.” (10) (25)
One wonders why the trade name of a pesticide made it into such a story, but the presence of pathogens in bees should come as no surprise to anyone who has been keeping up to date on bee health. Nearly all beekeepers use a variety of chemical and pesticide treatments on their hive boxes out of sheer necessity. A pantheon of mites, fungi and microbes prey on bees. These pests are predictably developing resistance to the chemical treatments we use to fight them. If the new IVDS results are conclusive and lead to a silver bullet solution, that will be wonderful, but such a simple model of CCD is unlikely to be the real key to saving our prime pollinators. (9)
It is worth noting that, while CCD has been presented to the media as a sudden new problem, these same theories about causative infections have already been presented to explain previous bee die-offs, especially those in the spring of 2005, which were attributed to the now infamous varroa mite, a.k.a. “vampire mite,” which began infecting American honey bees in 1987. (31)
About the size of a pinhead, and with eight legs, it feeds on the blood of adult bees like a tick, and even worse, it also eats the bee larvae. Varroa is the bane of beekeepers everywhere except China, where it originated, and the honey bees have local resistance. In a case of sadly ironic timing, Hawaii just reported its first case of varroa a few weeks ago. (26)
LiveScience senior writer, Robert Roy Britt wrote in a May, 2005 story about the mite: “Up to 60 percent of hives in some regions have been wiped out. Entire colonies can collapse within two weeks of being infested. North Carolina fears it is on the verge of an agricultural crisis. No state is immune.” (11)
A Science Daily story dated May 18, 2005, and sourced to Penn State, purported to explain why varroa was so bad. Entitled, “Bee Mites Suppress Bee Immunity, Open Door for Viruses and Bacteria,” it explained research into levels of ‘deformed wing virus,’ a mutagenic pathogen that is believed to persist in bee populations because it makes guard bees more aggressive. Bees of a given hive normally carry low levels of this virus, but the Penn State researchers found that virus levels shot sky high during secondary infections if, and only if, the bees also had varroa mites. It should be clear why the varroa mite is on everyone’s list of things to examine in the fight against CCD. (12)
Another perspective
Sharon Labchuk is a longtime environmental activist and part-time organic beekeeper from Prince Edward Island. She has twice run for a seat in Ottawa’s House of Commons, making strong showings around 5% for Canada’s fledgling Green Party. She is also leader of the provincial wing of her party. In a widely circulated email, she wrote:
I’m on an organic beekeeping list of about 1,000 people, mostly Americans, and no one in the organic beekeeping world, including commercial beekeepers, is reporting colony collapse on this list. The problem with the big commercial guys is that they put pesticides in their hives to fumigate for varroa mites, and they feed antibiotics to the bees. They also haul the hives by truck all over the place to make more money with pollination services, which stresses the colonies. (13)
Her email recommends a visit to the Bush Bees Web site at bushfarms.com. Here, Michael Bush felt compelled to put a message to the beekeeping world right on the top page:
Most of us beekeepers are fighting with the Varroa mites. I’m happy to say my biggest problems are things like trying to get nucs through the winter and coming up with hives that won’t hurt my back from lifting or better ways to feed the bees.
This change from fighting the mites is mostly because I’ve gone to natural sized cells. In case you weren’t aware, and I wasn’t for a long time, the foundation in common usage results in much larger bees than what you would find in a natural hive. I’ve measured sections of natural worker brood comb that are 4.6mm in diameter. …What most people use for worker brood is foundation that is 5.4mm in diameter. If you translate that into three dimensions instead of one, it produces a bee that is about half as large again as is natural. By letting the bees build natural sized cells, I have virtually eliminated my Varroa and Tracheal mite problems. One cause of this is shorter capping times by one day, and shorter post-capping times by one day. This means less Varroa get into the cells, and less Varroa reproduce in the cells. (14)
Who should be surprised that the major media reports forget to tell us that the dying bees are actually hyper-bred varieties that we coax into a larger than normal body size? It sounds just like the beef industry. And, have we here a solution to the vanishing bee problem? Is it one that the CCD Working Group, or indeed, the scientific world at large, will support? Will media coverage affect government action in dealing with this issue?
These are important questions to ask. It is not an uncommonly held opinion that, although this new pattern of bee colony collapse seems to have struck from out of the blue (which suggests a triggering agent), it is likely that some biological limit in the bees has been crossed. There is no shortage of evidence that we have been fast approaching this limit for some time.
“We’ve been pushing them too hard,” Dr. Peter Kevan, an associate professor of environmental biology at the University of Guelph in Ontario, told the CBC. “And we’re starving them out by feeding them artificially and moving them great distances.” Given the stress commercial bees are under, Kevan suggests CCD might be caused by parasitic mites, or long cold winters, or long wet springs, or pesticides, or genetically modified crops. Maybe it’s all of the above. (24)
This conclusion is not surprising, considering how the practice of beekeeping has been made ultra-efficient in a competitive world run by free market forces. Unlike many crops, honey is not given subsidy protection in the United States despite the huge importance of the bee industry to food production. The FDA has hardly moved at all to protect American producers from “honey pretenders” – products containing little or no honey that are imported and sold with misleading packaging. Rare is the beekeeper that does not need pesticide treatments and other techniques falling under the rubric of ‘factory farming.’ (15)
You might be justifiably stunned to know how little money is being thrown at this problem. A January 29, 2007 Penn State press release (just before CCD hit the big networks) stated: “The beekeeping industry has been quick to respond to the crisis. The National Honey Board has pledged $13,000 of emergency funding to the CCD working group. Other organizations, such as the Florida State Beekeepers Association, are working with their membership to commit additional funds.” A quick look at CostofWar.com will tell you that that $13,000 buys about 4 seconds of war at the going rate. Remember, these same scientists had presented the world with a similar threat level two years ago. Apparently they were ignored. (16)
Anyway, breathe easy; Congress has begun talking up the concept of getting involved. On April 26, the Senate Agriculture Committee, perhaps not trusting CNN, heard from representatives of the beekeeping industry just how important a matter this is. Committee Chairman, Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) said the bee decline should be part of the current discussion of a new farm bill. “The U.S. honey industry is facing one of the most serious threats ever from colony collapse disorder,” he stated. “The bee losses associated with this disorder are staggering and portend equally grave consequences for the producers of crops that rely on honeybees for pollination. These crops include many specialty crops and alfalfa, so viable honey bee colonies are critically important across our entire food and agriculture sector.” (17)
Alfalfa? We should be worried because CCD threatens alfalfa and other specialty crops? He means apples and stuff we can assume, because Mark Brady, president of the American Honey Producers Association, had informed the committee that “honey bees pollinate more than 90 food, fiber and seed crops. In particular, the fruits, vegetables and nuts that are cornerstones of a balanced and healthy diet are especially dependent on continued access to honey bee pollination.” Science is always a hard sell. (17)
Even before that committee meeting, on April 16, Senator Clinton wrote a letter to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Mike Johanns, asking “that you provide us (a bipartisan group of senators) with an expedited report on the immediate steps that the Department is and will be taking to determine the causes of CCD, and to develop appropriate countermeasures for this serious disorder. In particular, we ask for a specific explanation of how the Department plans to utilize its existing resources and capabilities, including its four Agricultural Research Service honeybee research labs, and to work with other public and private sector enterprises in combating CCD.” These are fine questions indeed. (28)
Hype or understatement?
Bees are finely tuned machines, much more robot-like than your average species. They operate pretty much like the Borg of Star Trek fame. A honey bee cannot exist as an individual, and this is why some biologists speak of them as super-organisms. They are sensitive barometers of environmental pollution, quite useful for monitoring pesticide, radionuclide, and heavy metal contamination. They respond to a vide variety of pollutants by dying or markedly changing their behavior. Honeybees’ stores of pollen and honey are ideal for measuring contamination levels. Some pesticides are exceptionally harmful to honey bees, killing individuals before they can return to the hive. (18)
Not surprisingly, the use of one or more new pesticides was, and likely remains, on the short list of likely causes of CCD. But more than pesticides could potentially be harming bees. Some scientists suspect global warming. Temperature plays an integral part in determining mass behavior of bees. To mention just one temperature response, each bee acts as a drone thermostat, helping cool or warm the hive whenever it isn’t engaged in some other routine.
As you might expect, rising temperatures in springtime cause bees to become active. Erratic weather patterns caused by global warming could play havoc with bees’ sensitive cycles. A lot of northeastern U.S. beekeepers say a late cold snap is what did the damage to them this year. Bill Draper, a Michigan beekeeper, lost more than half of his 240 hives this spring, but it wasn’t his worst year for bee losses, and he doesn’t think CCD caused it. He thinks CCD might stem from a mix of factors from climate change to breeding practices that put more emphasis on some qualities, like resistance to mites, at the expense of other qualities, like hardiness. (32)
According to Kenneth Tignor, the state apiarist of Virginia, another possibility with CCD is that the missing bees left their hives to look for new quarters because the old hives became undesirable, perhaps from contamination of the honey. This phenomenon, known as absconding, normally occurs only in the spring or summer, when there is an adequate food supply. But if they abscond in the autumn or winter, as they did last fall in the U.S., Tignor says the bees are unlikely to survive. (19)
A bee colony is a fine-tuned system, and a lot could conceivably go wrong. This is presumably why some scientists suspect cell phone radiation is the culprit behind CCD. This theory holds that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bee navigation systems, preventing them from finding their way home. German research has shown that bees behave differently near power lines. Now, a preliminary study has found that bees refuse to return to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby. The head researcher said the result might provide a “hint” of a possible cause. Maybe they should check to see if beekeepers suddenly started using BlackBerrys in 2004.
It should be noted that the CCD Working Group at Penn State believes cell phones are very unlikely to be causing the problem. Nor are they interested in the possibility that GMO crops are responsible. Although GMO crops can contain genes to produce pesticides, some of which may harm bees, the distribution of CCD cases does not appear to correlate with GMO crop plantings. (20)
Honey bees are not native to North America or Europe. They are thought to come from Southeast Asia, although some recent research based on genomic studies indicates that their origin is actually in Africa. (21) Regardless, they represent only seven of the approximately 20,000 known species of bees. Apis mellifera, the most commonly domesticated species of honey bee, was only the third insect to have its genome mapped. These useful, and very prevalent, bees are commonly referred to as either Western honey bees or European honey bees. Although it is a non-native species, the honey bee has fit in well in America. It is the designated state insect of fifteen states, which surely reflects its usefulness.
Apis mellifera comes in a wide variety of sub-species adapted to different climates and geographies. Behavior, color and anatomy can be quite different from one sub-species to another, the infamous killer bees being a case in point. The Native Americans called the honey bee “the white man’s fly.” It was introduced to North America by European settlers in the early 1600s, and soon escaped into the wild, spreading as far west as the Rocky Mountains. Thus, there are significant numbers of feral hives in North America, though most of the honey bees you will see are working bees.
But you may not have even seen one for a while. These days, many gardeners are discovering that they must hand pollinate garden vegetables, thanks to widespread pollinator decline. It is more than fair to say that the extreme importance of honey bees as pollinators today stems from the fact that native pollinators are in decline almost everywhere.
The pollination of the American almond crop, which occurs in February and March, is the largest managed pollination event in the world, requiring more than one third of all the managed honey bees in the United States. Massive numbers of hives are transported for this and other key pollinations, including apples and blueberries. Honey bees are not particularly efficient pollinators of blueberries, but they are used anyway. We depend on managed honey bees because we are addicted to a monoculture-based managed agricultural sector.
There has been criticism that media coverage of the CCD story, perhaps in its quest to achieve the requisite ‘balance,’ has been too rosy. Some stories note that other pollinators are more significant than honey bees for many crops. But these stories seldom go on to tell how other pollinators are facing problems too. The BBC recently reported on the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, which is currently enlisting the public’s help to catalogue bumblebee populations. The story noted that several of the U.K.’s 25 species are endangered, and three have gone extinct in recent years. (22)
Another recent story in The Register stated that several U.K. bumblebee species are “heading inexorably for extinction.” According to scientists, the process is caused by “pesticides and agricultural intensification” which could have a “devastating knock-on effect on agriculture.” The disappearance of wildflower species has also been implicated in the British bumblebee decline. (23)(20)
Bumblebees are, however, doing well in one region, Neath Port Talbot, which was declared the bumblebee capital of Wales in 2004 after experts found 15 different species thriving there. This is almost certainly because the local council allows roadside verges to become overgrown with “weeds” and wildflowers. (20)
Surprise — it’s an ecosystem thing. As with honeybees and CCD, the root of the bumblebee problem lies in our modern rationalist drive toward endlessly ordering the world around us. The long-term solution is a return to a more natural ecological order. This interpretation needs to be conveyed when mainstream media tell the CCD story.
Of course, with all the parasites, pathogens, pesticides and transit to stress out our hardworking honey bees, they are in peril. Even if some silver bullet saves us from CCD, it is more than obvious that we need to pay more respect to bees, and to nature. This truth may be generalized to most facets of our agricultural existence; the bees are just a warning. Wherever you look, pests are getting stronger as the life forms we depend on get weaker. Adding more chemicals isn’t going to help for much longer.
Beekeepers are a busy and underpaid lot, and we should pay more heed to their services. Even now, with the vanishing bee story headlining on major networks, government players appear to have their eyes elsewhere. “There used to be a lot more regulation than there is today,” says Arizona beekeeper Victor Kaur. “People import bees and bring new diseases into the country. One might be colony collapse disorder.” (30)
“The bees are dying, and I think people are to blame,” is how Kaur puts it simply. “Bee keeping is much more labor intensive now than it was 15 years ago. It’s a dying profession,” he eulogizes. “The average age of a beekeeper is 62, and there are only a couple of thousand of us left. There are only about 2.5 million hives left. …It’s too much work.” (30)
If CCD proves to be more than a one-time seasonal fluke, the job of beekeeping just got a lot harder. Pollination can’t be outsourced, although it isn’t too difficult to imagine fields full of exploited underclass laborers pollinating crops by Q-tip. Let’s hope we never have to go there.
Perhaps a sensible reaction to the information summarized in this short article would be to write a letter to your government leaders. Insist that they immediately allocate significant funding to combat CCD using a variety of approaches. This must include ecological approaches such as wildflower renewal. Furthermore, insist that our few remaining beekeepers be given the support they deserve and desperately need at this important juncture. Humanity cannot afford to ignore this battle. It’s not science; it’s common sense.
References
1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_Collapse_Disorder
Wikipedia
2 http://maarec.cas.psu.edu/FAQ/FAQCCD.pdf
FAQ’s Colony Collapse Disorder (PDF), Mid-Atlantic Apiculture Research and Extension Consortium, CCD Working Group
See also: http://www.ento.psu.edu/MAAREC/index.html
3 http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Alarm_sounded_over_US_honey_bee_die-off
Alarm sounded over US honey bee die-off
Wikinews, February 10, 2007
4 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6438373.stm
Vanishing bees threaten US crops
By Matt Wells, March 11, 2007
5 http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/ap_070211_bee_disease.html
Mystery Ailment Strikes Honeybees
By Genaro C. Armas, Associated Press, February 11, 2007
6 http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/wildlife/article2449968.ece
Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?
By Geoffrey Lean and Harriet Shawcross, April 15, 2007
7 http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?p=137300
Thread on dubious Einstein quote.
8 http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/americas/04/22/vanishing.bees.reut/index.html
Vanishing honeybees mystify scientists
Reuters, April 22, 2007
9 http://www.bushfarms.com/beespests.htm
Enemies of Bees
by Michael Bush
10 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070426100117.htm
Scientists Identify Pathogens That May Be Causing Global Honey-Bee Deaths
Source: Edgewood Chemical Biological Center, April 26, 2007
11 http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/050517_bee_mite.html
Bees Wiped Out by Cascade of Deadly Events
By Robert Roy Britt, May 17, 2005
12 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/05/050517110843.htm
Bee Mites Suppress Bee Immunity, Open Door For Viruses And Bacteria
Source: Penn State, May 18, 2005
13 http://eepicheep.gnn.tv/B21650
Labchuk’s email is reproduced in comments section; authorship was confirmed by this writer
14 http://www.bushfarms.com/bees.htm
Bush Bees Website
15 http://agriculture.senate.gov/Hearings/
Regional Farm Bill field hearing: Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, July 21, 2006
16 http://www.aginfo.psu.edu/News/07Jan/HoneyBees.htm
Honey bee die-off alarms beekeepers, crop growers and researchers
Penn State press release Jan 29, 2007
17 http://www.journaltimes.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=12512
Colony collapse disorder is reducing U.S. bee population
By Zena McFadden, Medill News Service, April 26, 2007
18 http://www.apimondia.org/apiacta/articles/2003/porrini.pdf
Honey Bees and Bee Products as Monitors of the Environmental Contamination (PDF)
Porrini et al., University of Bologna,
In Apiacta, the journal of the International Federation of Beekeepers’ Associations
( http://www.beekeeping.com/apimondia/apiacta_us.htm )
19 http://www.voanews.com/english/2007-04-27-voa3.cfm
Taiwan Is Latest Country Stung by Vanishing Honey Bees
By Jessica Berman, VOA News, April 27, 2007
20 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/south_west/3747337.stm
Secret of bumblebee capital
BBC, 25 May, 2004
21 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/12/061211220927.htm
Research Upsetting Some Notions About Honey Bees
Source: Texas A&M University – Agricultural Communications, December 29, 2006
22 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/tayside_and_central/6558973.stm
Bid to halt bumblebee decline
BBC, April 16, 2007
23 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/17/bumblebee_crisis/
UK’s bumblebees face extinction
By Lester Haines
24 http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/insects/
In Depth Insects: The plight of the honeybee
CBC News Online, Updated April 12, 2007
25 http://www.thestar.com/article/203818
Why are Niagara’s bees dying?
By Dana Flavelle, Toronto Star, April 17, 2007
26 http://tinyurl.com/2wnyjv
Bee mite found on Oahu
Apr 12, 2007 by Katherine Fisher, Hawaii Health Guide.com
27 http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/
Experts may have found what’s bugging the bees
By Jia-Rui Chong and Thomas H. Maugh II, LA Times, April 26, 2007
28 http://tinyurl.com/246o9v
Senator Clinton Calls on USDA to Respond
All American Patriots, April 20, 2007
29 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/26/taiwan_bee_mystery/
Taiwan mislays millions of honeybees
By Lester Haines, The Register, April 26, 2007
30 http://tinyurl.com/39a2wk
Collapsing colonies
By Joanne C. Twaddell, The Daily Courier, April 23, 2007
31 http://tinyurl.com/343f8b
A Comparison of Russian and Italian Honey Bees (PDF)
By David R. Tarpy, NC State University, and Jeffrey Lee, Beekeeper, Mebane NC
32 http://tinyurl.com/37ax5j
Tiers bees avoid deadly disease
By Salle E. Richards, Elmira Star-Gazette, April 3, 2007
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http://www.gnn.tv/threads/25101/Please_Lord_not_the_bees
We might be seeing a major 'keystone' species revision in many ecologies, perhaps for the good perhaps for worse, depending on how different areas work out.
With honeybee colonies, I would argue they might be considered a keystone species in many ecologies.
"A keystone species is a species that has a disproportionate effect on its environment relative to its abundance. Such an organism plays a role in its ecosystem that is analogous to the role of a keystone in an arch. While the keystone feels the least pressure of any of the stones in an arch, the arch still collapses without it. Similarly, an ecosystem may experience a dramatic shift if a keystone species is removed, even though that species was a small part of the ecosystem by measures of biomass or productivity. It has become a very popular concept in conservation biology."
Honeybee dieoff as well as general bee weakness noted could cause huge quick alterations--like hornets killing them off even more rapidly, etc., like this:
(not for the faint of heart:)
30 hornets vs. 30,000 bees (4:18)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDSf3Kshq1M
You might even see the move to introduce Japanese honeybees everywhere because of this: Japanese honeybees can defend themselves better from hornets though hardly I'm sure from the same ecological pollution, if that is what is going on:
More Bee Payback: Japanese Bees Learn to "Roast" Their Hornet Enemies (2:41)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwYysvPGWjk&mode=related&search=
This one has the clearer comparison, as well as more detail on the predator/prey balance between honeybees and hornets that is probably about to go serious awry all over North America because of this European/American honeybee dieoff:
Japanese Honeybees Swarm Tactic vs. US-European Honeybee "Queue Up and Die" Tactic (5:53)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtFVQe4JRmA&NR=1
Or since the bee larvae of CCD colony remains seem to be considered toxic by other predatory insect species, perhaps we will see hornets start dying out as well since they rely on feeding on honeybees/bees and seem unlikely to raid even emptied hives for the honeybee larvae, since they are
poisoned in some manner.
Industrial Honeybee-dieoff may save the Oceans: A lesson in Synergy
Another point is that the bees that are dying off are very supply side morphed things, a situation created by humans with little regard to ecological ramifications.
Many other pollinators exist, just hardly as robust as mere industrial monocroppers like.
Likely ecological relations off robust honeybees could shrink the economic profit viability of industrial agriculture to smaller real estate levels and scales, which would be better for all around actually. (Do you know how many dead zones have appeared in the world's oceans off the "First World" areas in the past 20 years alone, mostly linked to the expanding pesticide/herbicide and fertilizer heroin that is injected into the ground, and then washed out to sea mostly?) And let's keep in mind Monsanto's partner in crime, Syngenta:
Atrazine in the Water
How pesticide regulation fails to protect our rivers and oceans
Jonathan Stein
March/April 2006 Issue
Throughout 2002 and 2003, officials from the Environmental Protection Agency were conducting regular meetings and email correspondence with representatives of Syngenta, the primary manufacturer of a pesticide called atrazine, at a time when the EPA was supposed to be evaluating atrazine, according to documents obtained by the Natural Resources Defense Council.
The 40-plus meetings were all in violation of EPA policy, as was the private deal that the agency struck with Syngenta before releasing its official findings on atrazine.
Under the terms of the deal, the EPA identified the 1,172 sites at highest risk from atrazine contamination and Syngenta agreed to monitor 40 of them.
Apparently satisfied, the EPA went on to decline to impose any further regulations, saying only that if atrazine levels at these sites were high two years in a row, they would allow Syngenta to propose voluntary mitigation.
Between 60 and 70 million pounds of atrazine are applied annually to crops (mainly corn), golf courses and lawns.
The EPA sets the limit for atrazine in drinking water at 3 parts per billion (ppb), but a 2002 study from the University of California, Berkeley showed that even amounts as low as 0.1 ppb can induce hermaphroditism in frogs.
Says Tyrone Hayes, the lead professor on the study, "Some [frogs] had three ovaries and three testes, some had ovaries on one side and testes on the other, one animal even had six testes."
Salmon are also affected.
Studies on Atlantic salmon presented at recent scientific conferences showed that nine percent of fish exposed to atrazine in concentrations of 100 ppb died, and others experienced significant weight loss.
Larval metabolism and growth were impacted and smolts commonly grew kidney lesions.
According to the Berkeley study, atrazine can be found in concentrations as high as 21 ppb in ground water, 102 ppb in river basins in agricultural areas, 224 ppb in some streams and up to 2,300 ppb in tailwater pits in Midwestern agricultural areas.
These levels are high enough that scientists fear the pesticide could cause cancer and affect reproductive systems in humans.
In Europe, governments are already on board: The European Union banned atrazine for evidence of persistent water contamination back in 2003.
The pesticide can’t even be used in Switzerland, Syngenta’s home country. In the United States, meanwhile, the pesticide has already been detected in the drinking water of more than 1 million Americans at levels higher than EPA's standard.
The fact that such a dangerous chemical can go unregulated in America has a lot to do with the way pesticide battles are fought in Washington. Political Action Committees set up by the fertilizer and pesticide industries have donated over a million dollars to lawmakers in recent years.
In the 2004 election cycle alone CropLife America, a pesticide group, donated money to more than 70 candidates in 34 states.
Environmental groups like the Natural Resources Defence Council, by contrast, are limited to registering their concerns in public dockets during the EPA's evaluation process and filing the occasional lawsuit. (They have filed several in regard to atrazine.)
The results of the EPA's evaluations, though, sometimes make little difference.
The evaluation process can take years and the products being examined are still allowed to be used all the while. Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist at the NRDC says, "The review process has come to screeching halt. Pesticides on the market are considered innocent until proven guilty, so they simply stay on the market. They are [even] being used while [before] the EPA considers them."
The heavy use of atrazine along the Chesapeake Bay and up and down the Mississippi River will continue while environmental groups struggle to convince the EPA to reconsider their decision on the pesticide.
Since the Mississippi drains 41 percent of the continental United States, a large amount of atrazine used across the country ends up being dumped into the Gulf of Mexico. [HUGE DEAD ZONES IN THE GULF.] It's one of the reasons that that once-gorgeous body of water is now home to America's largest dead zone—an area of water the size of New Jersey where no fish, mammal or amphibian can grow or live.
http://www.motherjones.com/cgi-bin/print_article.pl?url=http://www.motherjones.com/news/featurex/2006/03/atrazine.html
I can't find the link at Mother Jones where there was a flash animation about the dead zones of the world in the oceans. I think it might have been at the L.A. Times come to think of it though.
I saved some images from it here , just search for the phrase:
When "Far Away" No Longer Exists
and there's two little images from that flash animation there--showing the global map of dead zones and their expansion particularly fast since the 1980s.
Back to bees, for a moment.
Bee dieoff as an economic incentives to stop monocrop agriculture isn't the end of the world, it might be the beginning of the other world--other more local pollinators and toward viability of perennial agriculture, and more localized agriculture, etc.
I agree that the whole idea of bees on tractor trailer trucks is sort of repulsive. I read about it many years ago and had to put the article down for a moment in shock.
There's so many better ideas for agriculture than monocropping, particularly monocropping linked to refugee nomadic bees. Better for us, and better for ecological relations.
(EZ)-1-(6-chloro-3-pyridylmethyl)-N-nitroimidazolidin-2-ylideneamine) is an insecticide manufactured by Bayer Cropscience (part of the drug and chemical conglomerate Bayer AG).
It is sold under a variety of trade names including Admire, Advantage, Gaucho, Confidor, Hachikusan, Premise, Prothor, and Winner.
Imidacloprid was first patented in the United States in U.S. Pat. No. 4,742,060, on May 3, 1988, by Nihon Tokushu Noyaku Seizo K.K. of Tokyo, Japan.
In France [and elsewhere], its use (as Gaucho) has become controversial in terms of a possible link to derangement of behavior in domesticated honeybees. See Imidacloprid effects on bee population.
....
Imidacloprid effects on bee population
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Imidacloprid is a systemic insecticide produced by the chemical firm Bayer AG. In France it was sold under the name Gaucho and its use is highly controversial as it is believed to be responsible for high losses in bees. According to the National Union of French Beekeepers, the number of hives in France has plummeted to one million in 2003, from 1.45 million in 1996. Between 1995 and 2001, the average production of honey went from 75 kg/hive down to 30 kg/hive. The AFFSA (Association de Coordination Technique Agricole et Centre National d'Etudes Vétérinaires et Alimentaires) indicate the national production went down from 40,000 tons to 25,000 tons per year.
French beekeepers claim that Imidacloprid, as a seed treatment for sunflowers, has killed many bees and caused a significant drop in honey production. Some requested that systemic insecticides uses be withdrawn from crops where bees might be affected, while others called for a complete ban on its use.
Contents
[hide]
* 1 Initial observations of bees decline
* 2 1998 : estimation of Imidacloprid toxicity
o 2.1 Imidacloprid banned as a sunflower seed treatment in 1999
* 3 Second set of studies in 1999 and 2000
o 3.1 Current situation of bees' decline
* 4 Notes
* 5 See also
* 6 External links
[edit] Initial observations of bees decline
In France, Imidacloprid started being used in 1994 as a seed-coating for sunflowers. The following years, some beekeepers mentioned the possibility of a relationship between the pesticide and some behavioral troubles in bees. Bayer CropScience made some studies on the topic, which concluded Gaucho was non-toxic to bees. At this point, most discussions were kept rather private between Bayer and beekeeper associations.
However, during summer 1997, heavy losses of bees were observed in several regions of France and the controversy became public.
[edit] 1998 : estimation of Imidacloprid toxicity
In 1998 a French official study was conducted with the goal to determine whether Imidacloprid was responsible for the bee population decrease, as well as the reduction in honey production during the flowering season of sunflowers.
Ecotoxicology studies had to define the living being in danger (the bees), to define the chemical concerned (imidacloprid), to evaluate the quantity necessary to kill the living being with the chemical, and to define the concentrations at which there is no detrimental effects on the living being.
In the case of the accusations against Imidacloprid, the issue is not the direct death of the bees, but behavioral changes such as disorientation, feeding problems, and communication disturbance. Initial studies were aimed at determining the minimal amount for which bees showed these behavioral changes.
The study, led by AFSSA, in four different areas showed no differences in terms of bees behavior, mortality, evolution of the beehives, and honey harvest with or without Imidacloprid.
A study led by Wilhelm Drescher in 1998 from the University of Bonn on the activity of bees in sunflower fields in western France concluded that no results could prove Imidacloprid, used on sunflower seeds, had a detrimental effect on bees. It also mentioned that other possibilities, such as viral diseases vectored by Varroa mites (the populations of such being on the rise since 1996 due to appearance of resistance to acaricides). It essentially concluded that the French bee loss was not linked to imidacloprid but to a viral disease or a spiroplasma in bees which produces similar symptoms.
In parallel several studies have been conducted by Bayer CropScience to evaluate the risk for bees related to the use of Imidacloprid on sunflowers.
Bayer claimed that several studies had been made in open air as well as in greenhouses in Argentina, Canada, Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, Sweden, South Africa, Hungary, and the United States, and that all those studies confirmed Imidacloprid was not dangerous to bees.
Bayer also claimed that other arguments may be provided to explain the loss of bees. They indicated that in a study led in 1975 (Wilson, Menapace), bee decline had been obverved in 27 American states. Most disappearances were seen in wet and fresh spring. Inspectors mentioned a disease, famines, unusually wet and fresh weather, diarrhea, lack of pollen, dead queens, genetic defaults, and stress.
Another study by Kulincevic et al. in 1983 mentioned that the primary reason for malnutrition in bees is an insufficient pollen offer. It was mentioned that modern techniques could help by offering food substitutes to bees, but that poor substitutes (such as soy) could provoke bees' decline.
[edit] Imidacloprid banned as a sunflower seed treatment in 1999
Finally, Jean Glavany, Minister of Agriculture in the French government, used the precautionary principle and decided to withdraw the use of imidacloprid as a sunflower seed treatment in 1999. Bayer scientists denied again that the product was responsible for the colonies' death in a meeting in 2000.
Jean Glavany renewed the ban in 2001 for two additional years and asked a panel of experts to make a complete epidemiological study to try to figure out all the factors that might explain bees' decline, still observed during these years.
[edit] Second set of studies in 1999 and 2000
At the end of 1998, studies indicated there were no effects, but doses were very small and unmeasurable in the laboratory. A second set of studies was lauched in 1999, to quantify:
* toxicity of the product (imidacloprid) on bees
* remanence of the product in soil
* quantities in plants
Bayer CropScience results show that the maximal dose for which no effect was observed was 20 ppb, while the amount of residue in parts of the plant available to the insect (aerial parts) was below 1.5 ppb. They concluded bees could not be in contact with high enough concentrations to be able to be affected by the pesticides, and that the sunflower seed treatment was risk-free for bees.
The "Commission des Toxiques" brought these conclusions in 2001:
* imidacloprid answers European legislation in terms of soil remanence, and does not accumulate in soils
* residues may be found in plants cultivated after a sunflower whose seeds where treated by Imidacloprid. Residues were found only in parts to which bees are not exposed (such as leaves). No residue was found in the pollen of untreated sunflowers.
The commission concluded that it had no serious indicators suggesting Imidacloprid might be dangerous to bees. However, the commission suggested a risk could exist with seed-treated corn pollen.
Gerard Eyries, marketing manager for Bayer's agricultural division in France, was cited saying studies confirmed that Imidacloprid left a small residue in nectar and pollen, but there was no evidence of a link with the drop in France's bee population, adding, "It is impossible to have zero residue. What is important is to know whether the very tiny quantities which have been found have a negative effect on bees." He also added that the product was sold in 70 countries with no reported side effects.
Other studies[citation needed] indicated that concentrations were especially high when the plant is young. These would often be of
* 10 to 20 ppb in upper leaves
* 100 to 200 ppb in other leaves
* less than 1.5 ppb in nectar
* 2 to 3 ppb in pollen
Bayer then agreed that the insecticide may cause disorientation of bees at levels above 20 parts per billion of the active ingredient. Recent studies[citation needed] by researchers at the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA) suggest that bee behaviour is affected at levels between 3-16 ppb or possibly even 0.5 ppb.
[edit] Current situation of bees' decline
In 2001, Bayer also brought a judicial case against Maurice Mary, one of the leaders of the French association of beekeepers for disparagement of the chemical Imidacloprid. The action was dismissed by the judge in May 2003.
In 2003, agricultural Minister Jean Glavany again extended the suspension of the use of Imidacloprid on sunflower seeds.
In spite of a 4 year ban already on sunflower seeds treatment, a significant drop in bee individuals is still observed. Beekeepers were cited as saying the measure was insufficient, as studies found that Imidacloprid left a residue which meant that even after two years, plants sowed on the same spot as the crop originally treated contained traces of the product.
Some also suggest that the bee colony losses could also be due to the use of imidacloprid on corn as well, or by the replacement of it by another systemic insecticide called Fipronil. Indeed in May 2003, the DGAL (Direction Générale de l'Alimentation du ministère de l'Agriculture ) indicated death of bees observed in the south of the country had been caused by acute toxicity by Fipronil (as the active chemical in the systemic insecticide called Regent), while it was recognised Imidacloprid had no responsibility in the bees death. Some national field studies are currently under way (2003) to assert the responsibility of Imidacloprid.
A similar battle is occurring in Nova Scotia, where beekeepers are accusing Imidacloprid used on potatoes for massive losses of bees needed for blueberry pollination.[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imidacloprid_effects_on_bee_population
Considering the huge variety of possibly causes: virus, pesticides, pathogens, em radiation etc, as well as the wide geographic spread, perhaps a place to look for a contributing cause of Colony Collapse Disorder, would be the epigenome of the honey bee (as per the recent NOVA show Ghost in Your Machine) Epigenes effect the expression of genes and may be changed due to environmental factors. They are trans-generational. This means that adverse environmental stresses can pile up through generations, finally giving rise to a generation of honey bees particularly susceptible to additional stress. It's worth a look, especially since epigenetic profiles can be mapped similiar to genetic profiles.
David M Gibson
SLC
No, I think information carrying radio-waves and microwave inundation is a major factor that threw the bees, birds, and insects over the edge. We know it is throwing us over the edge, certainly it is throwing other life forms over the edge with the same exact symptoms of mental problems, lack of navigation/balance capacities, etc., See Dr. George Carlo's videos at the Commodity Ecology link here.
http://commodityecology.blogspot.com/2007/06/19-communicationtransmission-technology.html
An article on EMF and bees from him:
http://www.buergerwelle.de/pdf/radiation_is_killing_the_bees.htm
Dear Dr. Carlo:
I have read recently in Salon.com that the theory that bees are disappearing because of exposure to EMR is not supported by any science. You were on Good Morning America supporting that theory. Who is correct?
Carol H
Amherst, MA
Dear Carol:
Unfortunately, the situation with the bees is a page out of the playbook that we deal with all the time with the mobile phone industry. When the bee story first broke, it was based on a German study that showed information carrying radio waves disrupted the ability of bees to make it back to their hives. That work was made public about two months ago. There were other data to support it as well. You can see some of that on our SWI website -- note especially an exceptionally insightful article by Milt Bowling posted there.
The news media ran with the story, bolstered a great deal by a quote attributed to Albert Einstein something along these lines: 'watch the bees. when they disappear, man will disappear within four years'......The mobile phone industry was caught off-guard by the widespread media attention the story garnered.
After the first news cycle, the mobile phone industry 'hit squad' went into action. First, they planted stories that cast doubt on the Einstein quote. Never before have I seen such a desperate attempt to distance a quote from a figure as revered as Albert Einstein. In the process, his name was besmerched. Very sad. Next, they conscripted scientists from a number of universities to begin going public with other explanations...viruses, bacteria, pesticides etc., etc., etc.. These alternatives have been making the rounds over the past month. The mobile phone industry is putting quite a bit of money into the pockets of these scientists by supporting their work regarding viruses and alternative explanations. The industry is dealing with it as a politics and public relations problem....thus, manipulation of the public perception is the appropriate remedy for them. Sadly, this is business as usual for the mobile phone industry.
Most people in the public don't know the back story, so they do not see the manipulation coming or have the necessary bases for skepticism to see through it. But here is the bottom line:
* The colony collapse disorder has occurred concurrently on four continents within a very short time frame. If the reason was biological or chemical, there would be a pattern of epidemic spread....we would be able to trace the spread of bee disappearance or Colony Collapse Disorder from a source similar to the spread of SARS a few years ago. That is not the case. The condition has hit each continent at roughly the same time. That would mean the cause has to have hit the continents at the same time as well. Mobile phones meet that criterion.
* None of the biological or chemical hypotheses actually have a mechanistic explanation that is plausible. The science for the biological and chemical alternatives is far thinner than the science supporting the EMR connection. A case of the pot calling the kettle black.
* The disruption of intercellular communication hypothesis that we now know effects cell membranes in most species is biologically plausible...and no other theory has that support.
* The basis for a biological mechanism, coupled with the saturation in information carrying radio waves we have globally in the past 14 months, provides the underpinning. In 2004, we had the first billion cell phone users globally, the accumulation over 20 years; by mid 2006, we had the second billion; today we have surpassed three billion. That suggests we are near a saturation point of these waves in the ambient environment. The bees are likely the harbinger or the proverbial 'canaries in the coal mine'.
* Taken together, EMR is the only explanation that makes sense regarding the disappearing bees: the timing is correct -- the problem has occurred primarily within the past two years....when we have nearly tripled the background level of information carrying radio waves; the pattern is global so that suggests a cause that is globally present; there is at least one peer-reviewed study that supports it, and there is a mechanism documented that lends biological plausibility.
In our view, this is a serious 'red flag' of risk that should be heeded. This is yet another example of mobile phone industry orchestration aimed at distracting the public from data that can save lives.
___________________
Dr. George L. Carlo
Science and Public Policy Institute
1101 Pennsylvania Ave. NW -- 7th Floor
Washington, D.C. 20004
www.sppionline.org
202-756-7744
Mass death of bees in Germany: Pesticide approvals suspended
author: CBG
The cause of mass bee deaths has been established [at least they Construct it as this alone...]: pesticide products from chemical companies Bayer and Syngenta. They have been removed from sale in Germany.
We should now pressure Bayer and regulators to remove them from sale elsewhere...
Press Release, May 21, 2008
Coalition against BAYER Dangers (Germany)
{Posted on the UKIMC)
Mass death of bees in Germany: Pesticide approvals suspended
"Bayer must withdraw Gaucho and Poncho from the market worldwide"
The German Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BVL) has ordered the immediate suspension of the approval for eight seed treatment products due to the mass death of bees in Germany's Baden-Wuerttemberg state.
The suspended products are:
Antarc (ingredient: imidacloprid; produced by Bayer),
Chinook (imidacloprid; Bayer),
Cruiser (thiamethoxam; Syngenta),
Elado (clothianidin; Bayer),
Faibel (imidacloprid; Bayer),
Mesurol (methiocarb; Bayer) and
Poncho (clothianidin; Bayer).
According to the German Research Centre for Cultivated Plants 29 out of 30 dead bees it had examined had been killed by contact with clothianidin. Also wild bees and other insects are suffering from a significant loss of population.
"We have been pointing on the risks of neonicotinoids such as imidacloprid and clothianidin for almost ten years now. With an annual turn-over of nearly 800 million Euro (1.25 billion US dollar) imidacloprid and clothianidin are among Bayer´s most important products. This is the reason why Bayer, despite serious environmental damage, is fighting against any application prohibitions", says Philipp Mimkes, speaker of the Coalition against BAYER-dangers.
The Coalition demands that Bayer withdraw all neonicotinoids from the market worldwide.
Bayer is the world market leader for pesticides.
With sales of 556 million Euro in 2007, imidacloprid is Bayer´s best selling pesticide product.
In Germany imidacloprid is used under the brand names Gaucho, Antarc and Chinook, primarily during the cultivation of rape, sugar-beet and corn.
"It's a real bee emergency", said Manfred Hederer, president of the German Professional Beekeeper's Association. "Fifty to 60 percent of the bees have died on average, and some beekeepers have lost all their hives." Beekeepers and agricultural officials in Italy, France and Holland all noticed similar phenomena in their fields when planting began a few weeks ago.
In France most applications of imidacloprid were already banned in 1999.
In 2003 the Comité Scientifique et Technique, convened by the French government, declared that the treatment of seeds with imidacloprid produces a significant risk for bees.
Only a few months ago Bayer´s application for clothianidin was rejected by French authorities.
Clothianidin is a non-selective poison. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's fact sheet 'clothianidin is highly toxic to honey bees.'
Seeds are treated with clothianidin in advance or sprayed with it while in the field, and the insecticide can also be blown onto other crops.
The chemical is often sprayed on corn fields during the spring planting to create a protective film on cornfields.
See also:
* Press Release of the Research Centre for Cultivated Plants (German):
www.jki.bund.de/cln_044/nn_813794/DE/pressestelle/Presseinfos/2008/1605__BienensterbenClothianidin.html__nnn=true
* Protection of Bees: Open Letter to EU Commissioner of Health
http://www.cbgnetwork.de/1736.html
* Bee-keepers and environmental groups demand prohibition of
pesticide "Gaucho"
http://www.cbgnetwork.de/306.html
* French Institutes Finds Imidaproclid Turning Up in Wide Range of Crops
2003 report from the "Comité Scientifique et Technique de l'Etude Multifactorielle des Troubles des Abeilles"
http://agriculture.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/rapportfin.pdf
Coalition against BAYER Dangers
www.CBGnetwork.org
CBGnetwork@aol.com
Tel: (+49) 211-333 911 Fax: (+49) 211-333 940
please send an e-mail for receiving the English newsletter Keycode BAYER
free of charge
Advisory Board
Prof. Juergen Junginger, designer, Krefeld,
Prof. Dr. Juergen Rochlitz, chemist, former member of the Bundestag,
Burgwald
Wolfram Esche, attorney, Cologne
Dr. Sigrid Müller, pharmacologist, Bremen
Eva Bulling-Schroeter, member of the Bundestag, Berlin
Prof. Dr. Anton Schneider, biologist, Neubeuern
Dorothee Sölle, theologian, Hamburg (died 2003)
Dr. Janis Schmelzer, historian, Berlin
Dr. Erika Abczynski, pediatrician, Dormagen
CBG
- e-mail: CBGnetwork@aol.com
- Homepage: http://www.cbgnetwork.org
---
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2008/05/375980.shtml
Colony Collapse Disorder Debunked: Pesticides Cause Bee Deaths
by Heidi Stevenson (see all articles by this author)
(NaturalNews) The great mystery of bee deaths has been solved. Colony Collapse Disorder is poisoning with a known insect neurotoxin. Clothianidin, a pesticide manufactured by Bayer, has been clearly linked to die offs in Germany and France.
Although the bee die offs that have occurred recently are more severe, there have been many in the past from the same and similar products. In North Dakota, a lawsuit is pending against Bayer for the loss of their bees in 1995, the result of spraying rapeseed with Imidacloprid. In 1999, the same product was banned in France for use as a seed dressing for sunflowers when they lost one-third of their hives after widespread spraying. In 2004, it was banned for use on corn. Recently, France refused to approve Bayer's request to sell Clothianidin.
Clothianidin and Imidacloprid are both members of a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids. They are well known as insect neurotoxins, especially with regard to bees. The spokesperson for the Coalition Against Bayer Dangers, based in Germany, stated, "We have been pointing out the risks of neonicotinoids for almost 10 years now. This proves without a doubt that the chemicals can come into contact with bees and kill them. These pesticides shouldn't be on the market."
Not a Surprise
That neonicotinoids are potent neurotoxins, especially in insects, is unsurprising. They were developed for precisely that purpose. Bayer says that their use is safe for bees, when used according to instructions. This involves using a glue that keeps the pesticides stuck to the seeds on which they're used.
There are many problems with this. Agribusiness corporations are known to evade anything that costs them money. The glue costs money. The equipment and personnel required to apply it costs money. More careful pesticide application to try to keep it from becoming airborne costs money. Obviously, both unscrupulous agribusiness farmers and unknowing small farmers -- not to mention home gardeners -- will, at least occasionally, not use the glue.
Even then, it's impossible to believe that a fair amount of these pesticides won't become airborne. Further, their residue will poison the soil. It will be passed on into foods, which means that insects will come into contact with it there.
Pharmaceutical Connection
Isn't it interesting that a major pharmaceutical manufacturer, Bayer, also makes a product that is a poison by design? Bayer is not an exception. Many, if not most, do business in both arenas. That alone should give pause for thought.
Here's a list of corporations -- not expected to be complete -- that profit in both pharmaceuticals and pesticides:
* American Home Products
* AMVAC
* Astra Zeneca
* Aventis
* BASF
* Bayer
* Dow Chemical
* Dupont Chemical
* Merck
* Monsanto
* Novartis
* Pharmacia
Is it an accident that most of Big Pharma also manufactures pesticides? Is there a connection between the two types of products? Do the pharmaceutical arms of these corporations profit on the illness caused by the pesticide arms? These questions are rhetorical. We'll let the reader decide.
Mythical Disease
Mike Adams has humorously shown with his Disease-Mongering Engine ((http://www.naturalnews.com/disease-mong...), which creates new diseases at the push of a mouse button, how easily phony diseases can be created to sell pharmaceuticals and fatten the pocketbooks of the medical world. The same technique has been used to cloak massive bee die-offs with an air of mystery.
Colony Collapse Disorder is a false name that serves to mislead the public into believing that there's a new, mystery disorder, probably something very complex, that needs tons of money to be thrown at it so that every possible angle can be studied. The reason is simple. By misdirecting the public, and apparently many professionals too, the real reason for bee die-offs is obscured.
This is very much like the misleading pseudoscience that supposedly debunks global climate change by giving a false impression that there is no consensus among scientists. By stirring pesticides into a mix of other supposedly possible causes, such as bacterial infections, fungal infections, and environmental stress, a false controversy is created. That results in precious time being wasted, while we really do move into a world without bees. At the same time, money is being thrown at scientists, who should know better, but being just as human as the rest of us, they're tempted.
Eventually, the real cause starts to become obvious, as is happening now in bee die-offs. However, the guilty party, the one making obscene profits by selling neurotoxic poisons that destroy the earth, launches a campaign of disingenuous lies, misdirection, and lawsuits to continue to sell their contaminants as long as possible.
Meanwhile, we're being told that we must prepare to live in a world without bees, as if it's inevitable. All because of Colony Collapse Disorder, a cleverly marketed nonexistent disease. We live in fear of the implications of no bees, when the real threat is poisons manufactured for the sole benefit of obscene profits.
How to Avoid These Pesticides
Neonicotinoids are used in agribusiness and home gardens. To help the reader avoid these products, we are providing their generic names, along with as many brand names as could be found.
The neonicotinoids include: acetamiprid, dinotefuran, clothianidin, imidacloprid, thiamethoxam.
Acetamiprid and dinotefuran are manufactured by many companies. Thiamethoxam is made by Syngenta. Only Bayer makes clothianidin and imidacloprid.
Brand names for imidacloprid include: Kohinor, Admire, Advantage, Gaucho, Merit, Confidor, Hachikusan, Premise, Prothor, and Winner.
Brand names for clothianidin include: Gaucho, Titan, Clutch, Belay, Arena.
Brand names for acetamiprid include: Assail, Intruder, Adjust.
Brand names for thiacloprid include: Calypso.
Brand names for thiamethoxam include: Actara, Cruiser, Helix, Platinum, Centric.
References
Guardian, "Pesticides: Germany bans chemicals linked to honeybee devastation", by Alison Benjamin, ((http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2...)
Wikipedia, "Imidacloprid", (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imidacloprid)
University of Florida, "Insect Management on Landscape Plants", (http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/IG013)
Crop Protection Monthly, 31 January 2002, Issue 146, ((http://www.crop-protection-monthly.co.u...)
"Poison for Profit -- What A Business Plan!", by Ashley Simmons Hotz
Institute of Science in Society, "Requiem for the Honeybee", by Professor Joe Cummins
About the author
* Heidi Stevenson, BSc, DIHom, FBIH
* Fellow, British Institute of Homeopathy
* Gaia Therapy (http://www.gaia-therapy.com)
*
* The author is a homeopath who became concerned with medically-induced harm as a result of her own experiences and those of family members. She says that allopathic medicine is the arena that best describes the motto, "Buyer beware."
*
* Iatrogenic disease is illness, disability, and death caused by medical practice. It is common, resulting in huge costs to society and individuals. It's possible - even common - to suffer an iatrogenic illness without realizing its source.
*
* Heidi Stevenson provides information about medically-induced disease and disability, along with incisive well-researched articles on major issues in the modern world, so members of the public can protect themselves.
---
http://www.naturalnews.com/z023679.html
Germany, France Ban Pesticides Linked To Bee Deaths
June 23rd, 2008
By Shermakaye Bass
In light of recent European bans of a pesticide linked to Bee Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), at least one key bee expert is calling for a ban of the same pesticide in the United States.
“In the United States, drastic action is needed,” says Canadian geneticist Joe Cummins, explaining that U.S. farmers and beekeepers shouldn’t have to wait for more evidence or for an air-tight explanation for the complex syndrome, which threatens one in every third bite of food in the United States. [actually, no, commercial pollination is mostly for the luxury crops instead of the staples--see above, what is the issue is that commercial beekeepers should take care of their bees more; what is at issue is keeping native bees in circulation more in the local ecologies instead of creating a mobile-beekeeping industry form of dependence as a model.]
Now most apiarists and scientists realize that pesticides are a factor in CCD, he says.
Cummins’ remarks, in an interview with GreenRightNow, come less than a month after Germany’s ban of clothianidin, a pesticide commonly used to keep insects off of corn crops.
Germany banned the pesticide after heaps of dead bees were found near fields of corn coated in the pesticide, and in response to scientists who report that the insecticide severely impairs, and often kills, the honeybees that corn and other crops depend on for pollination.
The German government took the extraordinary action to protect bees and other essential pollinators, stating that there is now enough compelling evidence connecting the chemical to Bee Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) in that country.
The ban also will likely fuel the European debate over genetically modified food, which involves treating crop seeds to resist harm from pesticide treatments. Critics of such modified foods say they are harming the environment, and have unknown human consequences, for little or no crop gain. Some scientists in Europe have called for their ban.
Bee Colony Collapse has been threatening bees and the crops they serve around the world for the past several years.
In other parts of Europe, including France, studies of other pesticides have shown they are negatively impacting bee behavior – and contributing to the collapse of entire bee colonies. France has outlawed the use of the pesticide imidacloprid — which like clothianidin is classed as a “neonicotinoid.”
Imidacloprid has been linked to disoriented behavior in honeybees – and may help explain why many CCD cases result in abandoned hives.
“I think the Environmental Protection Agency would be well advised to put an immediate emergency ban on the neonicotinoid seed-treatment pesticides. I would say on all pesticides,” says Cummins.
The ban in Germany and Cummins’ call for a U.S. ban should be no surprise to the EPA.
The agency’s own fact sheet on clothianidin shows that it has known of the dangers to bees since it conditionally approved the chemical in 2003.
“Clothianidin is highly toxic to bees on an acute contact basis…It has the potential for toxic chronic exposure to honey bees, as well as other non-target pollinators, through the translocation [transfer] of clothianidin residues in nectar and pollen,” states the EPA report. “In honey bees, the effects of this toxic chronic exposure may include lethal and/or sub-lethal effects in the larvae and reproductive effects in the queen.”
But a U.S. EPA spokesman says the ban of clothianidin in Germany was the result of an unusual confluence of events. First, the corn being planted did not have a seed coating known as a “sticker” that ensures the pesticide adheres to the seed; second, its application using air-driven equipment blew the clothianidin into a nearby canola field which was in early bloom (and attracting bees) due to unusually heavy rains.
This all conspired to create “unusual circumstances” that resulted in the suspension of clothianidin, said spokesman Dale Kemery. The suspension is in force while Germany reviews how best to limit pesticide “drift” and harmful effects on bees, he said.
“EPA is reasonably confident that a bee kill incident similar to what occurred in Germany will not happen in the United States because the application of neonicotinoid seed treatment products here is restricted to commercial treaters who already use sticker coatings as a standard practice,” Kemery said.
Still, with sticker coatings recommended but not required in the United States, the EPA will be reviewing its policies on seed treatment labels and “developing a policy that will require polymers or other sticker coatings to be applied to seeds with the pesticide,” Kemery said.
The EPA and U.S. Department of Agriculture are engaged in ongoing [I'm sure highly polticized and corporate slanted] research into Colony Collapse Disorder; government authorities suspect that the bees are dying because of multiple stressors, including a virus that affects bees, drought and enforced migration as they are shuttled around the country to service a variety of crops. [i.e., in other words the preconception is to protect pesticide industries instead of bees in the USA.]
Bayer CropScience, the maker of the clothianidin seed coating, also said the Germany incident resulting in the bee deaths was an aberration, resulting in part from unusually “high quantities of dust” during the sowing of seeds that had not been treated correctly.
“We are saddened by the loss of the bees and the situation which as resulted for beekkeepers in Baden-Wurttemberg,” said Bayer ecologist Dr. Richard Schmuck in a news release. The company is working with authorities to “further improve application technology,” the release stated, so the corn pesticide “can be made available to farmers again as quickly as possible.”
The international seed and pest-control company, headquartered in Monheim, Germany, reported that it also is working with manufacturers of pneumatic corn-sowing equipment to find ways to avoid “drift of product particles” during sowing. [What a psychopathic solution. Just ban it. It's harmful. Period.]
Cummins, professor emeritus of genetics at the University of Western Ontario, recently published a paper for the London-based Institute for Science in Society called “Saving the Honeybee Through Organic Farming.” In it, he urges a concerted move toward organic farming in general, and the creation of “bee refuges,” or large farms that offer bees a safe haven from insecticide-treated pollens and genetically modified crops. He points to the latest data on CCD, which increased from a 25 percent loss in U.S. commercial hives last year to a 34-35 percent loss this past winter.
Pesticides compromise bee health is by lowering their resistance to parasites and disease, according to the French, German and other studies. In particular, neonicotinoids harm bees’ ability to fight parasites, especially fungal parasites, which are now being linked with mass bee die-offs.
“This is fairly predictable, based on what was found of the bee’s genetic makeup when the genome was decoded,” Cummins says, speaking by phone from Ontario, “and it became apparent the bee is a very exquisite animal but one which is not geared to exposure to pesticides. The immune system, as well, is not really highly geared toward defense against invaders, and so, what happens with pesticides is it clearly makes the animal more susceptible to attack by parasites, such as, in particular, the fungal parasites. Fungal parasites are really the bee’s main predator in nature.”
Cummins says that in addition to a ban – which the EPA could “easily do” – farmers (or states or federal governments) should create bee refuges in the form of organic farms. Long-term, he believes the majority of food production should go organic, though he realizes that’s not quite so easily done.
“I think the best thing to do now would be to set up organic farms, refuges for the bees, that basically would provide a last stand for the bees, a place where they could survive. Given the current losses this year, in addition to last year, the [industrial] bee is certainly not sustainable.”
Pesticides are only one element contributing to CCD, Cummins admits, but it’s now become more widely accepted within the scientific community that they do certainly play a role.
“In fact, there are multiple of causes, and instead of wringing our hands and waiting for the final answers – which may not be forthcoming – we should act.” (Until recently, the link between insecticides, fungal parasites and CCD haven’t been broadly recognized.)
The good news is that seems to be changing – slowly.
In Germany, Cummins says, the government decided to take action when studies consistently showed highly toxic levels of clothianidin in corn pollen. “That was the reason they banned it. They couldn’t not ban it.”
In the U.S., pesticide levels have not yet reached a “toxic” level, the geneticist says, but he thinks it’s foolish to wait until the evidence is staring us in the face or fields lay fallow.
“I think the message [bees are] giving us is very clear. They really can’t defend themselves against pesticides.”
---
http://www.greenrightnow.com/2008/06/23/germany-and-france-ban-pesticides-linked-to-bee-deaths-geneticist-urges-us-ban-would-save-the-bees/4/
[The even more psychopathic 'solution' would be for Monsanto to start to attempt to genetically engineer bees to take more poisons... RoundUp Ready BeesTM! Sarcasm.]
Surprise! Organic Beekeepers Reporting [Near] Zero Losses
12 Comments
By Michael d'Estries in Green Living, Pollution | May 11, 2007
With all the frightening news over bee losses throughout the world, it appears that one tiny minor piece of information was overlooked: the losses are occurring in colonies besieged with chemicals and artificial additives. Organic bees are fairing quite nicely, thank you. From the article,
“‘I’m on an organic beekeeping list of about 1,000 people, mostly Americans, and no one in the organic beekeeping world, including commercial beekeepers, is reporting colony collapse on this list,’ said Sharon Labchuck. ‘The problem with the big commercial guys is that they put pesticides in their hives to fumigate for varroa mites, and they feed antibiotics to the bees. They also haul the hives by truck all over the place to make more money with pollination services, which stresses the colonies.’”
In our efforts to make larger bees that are resistant to more predators or diseases — have we crossed the line in how far we could go? As the article states, “Who should be surprised that the major media reports forget to tell us that the dying bees are actually hyper-bred varieties that we coax into a larger than normal body size? It sounds just like the beef industry. And, have we here a solution to the vanishing bee problem? Is it one that the CCD Working Group, or indeed, the scientific world at large, will support? Will media coverage affect government action in dealing with this issue?”
Or, even better: Would this current administration dare trample on the industry that has risen to supply the pesticides and inorganic alternatives to these bee keepers? Can they afford not to?
Check out the article for more information — but if we’ve already pushed bees too far, imagine what we’re doing to other aspects of the environment….
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12 Comments
1.
Politics in the Zeros_archi »Blog Archive » Organic beekeepers report zero losses said,
May 13, 2007 at 3:46 pm
[...] “I’m on an organic beekeeping list of about 1,000 people, mostly Americans, and no one in the organic beekeeping world, including commercial beekeepers, is reporting colony collapse on this list,” said Sharon Labchuck. “The problem with the big commercial guys is that they put pesticides in their hives to fumigate for varroa mites, and they feed antibiotics to the bees. They also haul the hives by truck all over the place to make more money with pollination services, which stresses the colonies.” [...]
2.
Low Mileage Food » Late Night Ramblings said,
May 13, 2007 at 4:16 pm
[...] It occurred to me that this pollution angle doesn’t just apply to climate change. Groovy Green reports that organic bee colonies are not being affected by Colony Collapse Disorder. Chemicals = pollution as far as I’m concerned. Examples of organic practices being better than ‘normal’ practices abound. As with climate change, the problem is pollution. [...]
3.
deliberately said,
May 14, 2007 at 6:52 am
Great post. This CCD thing has now gotten to the mainstream media, having started on the web some time ago. Foodies and environmentalists were the first to raise concern outside of the beekeeper population and theories abounded as to what was causing it.
How interesting that only now I hear that the organic cultivators have experienced nothing of the kind. Thanks for the tidbit!
4.
Organic Beekeepers report zero losses... « Homeless on the High Desert said,
May 14, 2007 at 10:41 am
[...] Monday, May 14th, 2007 in Physics �[O]n an organic beekeeping list of about 1,000 people, mostly Americans, and no one in the organic beekeeping world, including commercial beekeepers, is reporting colony collapse on this list,� said Sharon Labchuck. �The problem with the big commercial guys is that they put pesticides in their hives to fumigate for varroa mites, and they feed antibiotics to the bees. They also haul the hives by truck all over the place to make more money with pollination services, which stresses the colonies.� Blogroll [...]
5.
Neil Smith said,
May 15, 2007 at 8:19 pm
Did you hear Richard Hoglands explanation of the bee losses? & why the organic bees were not affected?
Sounds right to me.
Check it out on past shows of Coast to coast.
http://www.coasttocoastam.com/
6.
Multi Medium » Clean Bees Are Happy Bees said,
May 20, 2007 at 9:12 pm
[...] (Chain of hat tips: The Sideshow -> Emphyrio -> GroovyGreen) [...]
7.
Live Wholesome! » Organic Bees! said,
May 27, 2007 at 9:28 pm
[...] What with the Internet Interuptis, this got lost in the fray. I had meant to pass it along as the discussion on �Bee Colony Collapse Disorder� continues unabated. [...]
8.
Boris Romanov said,
October 4, 2007 at 1:41 pm
I am also organic beekeeper.
Click here to read more:
http://www.beebehavior.com/weak_state_bee_colonies.php
Boris Romanov
9.
Terry Loz said,
November 8, 2008 at 2:04 pm
Not true. Organic beekeepers have been affected by Colony Collapse Disorder.
http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/blogs/bees/colony-collapse-disorder-55050802
10.
rich said,
November 15, 2008 at 2:22 pm
my friends are beekeepers and have about 25 hives so far. they haven’t lost any either !!!!
i’ll send them this article ….
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=goldieshome&view=videos
goldieshouse.piczo.com
11.
Peter Thompson said,
November 15, 2008 at 3:51 pm
When Bees eat GM BT (Baccilus Thurengenises) Crops, the Bt in that pollen gives the Bees an immune response. When Bees have an immune response they use all available protein in that immune response. Bees also use protein in memory formation, thus after an immune response, the Bees then have no protein left to construct a memory with. Thus bees loose their memory and cant find the bee hive due to a GM Bt pollen induced protein deficencey, which causes a memory loss. In winter very little Pollen Pollen protein is available, and thats why collony colapse diosorder is seen mainly during and after in winter. No One will publish my findings which that have 24 published references to support them.
GM crops make animals and people sterile too.
12.
Brad said,
November 15, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Possible other cause of CCD is GM (genetically modified) plant pollen poisoning the bees…most of the CCD is clustered in areas that have large acreages planted in GM crops.
---
http://www.groovygreen.com/groove/?p=1388
WHAT IS KILLING THE BEES?
By Dr. James Howenstine, MD.
November 24, 2008
NewsWithViews.com
For several years I have been curious and concerned about reports from many parts of the world that bee colonies were vanishing or dying. Because of their ability to pollinate fruit and vegetables bees are of enormous importance to mankind [well, some are important though it's hardly the staple crops, it's the more exotic fruit based ones--anyway there are always native bees]. . Finally a breakthrough in understanding this problem has appeared on the scene.
Whether this solves the whole bee problem or is simply one part of a more complex issue remains to be seen.
An article in Natural News by David Gutierrez on September 30, 2008 has linked the bee die-off in the Baden-Wurttemburg state of Germany to direct contact with the insecticide clothianidin found on corn seeds(German Research Center for Cultivated Plants).
This pesticide had been applied to rapeseed and sweet cornseeds in the Rhine River Valley.
Piles of dead bees were discovered at the entrance of hives in early May 2008. Clothianidin was found in the tissues of 99% of the dead bees. This is the time when corn seeding takes place according to Walter Haefeker, president of the European Professional Beekeeping Association. The Julius Huehn Institute(federal agricultural research agency) stated “it can be unequivocally be concluded that a poisoning of the bees is due to a rub-off of the pesticide ingredient clothianidin from cornseeds.” This chemical is estimated to have killed two-thirds of the bees in this state.
Clothianidin is widely used insecticide marketed in Europe under the brand name Poncho. This insecticide is a derivative of nicotine which acts systemically as a neurotoxin which poisons the nervous system of insects.
After application to the seeds of plants clothianidin spreads throughout all plant tissues.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has classified clothianidin as “highly toxic” to honeybees. This chemical was approved for U.S. use in 2003 and German use in 2004.
A subsidiary of the chemical giant Bayer, Bayer Crop Science which manufactures clothianidin, blamed the honeybee deaths on incorrect application of the insecticide. They claimed that application of a fixative prior to spraying with clothianidin would have prevented the poison from spreading to the environment. They related that the fixative was not applied so the poison spread into the air.
Beekeepers and pesticide critics rejected this explanation and called for Germany to join France in banning this chemical and other nicotine based insecticides.
Philipp Mimkes, spokesman for the Coalition Against Bayer Dangers, stated “We have been pointing out the risk of neonicotinoids for almost 10 years now. This proves without a doubt that that the chemicals can come into contact with bees and kill them. These pesticides shouldn’t be on the market.”
The German Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety placed a provisional ban on the seven neonicotinoid pesticides (Poncho, Elado, Antarc, Chinook, Faibell, Mesurol, Cruiser). until the manufactures had sufficient data to convince the government regulators they were safe. Six of these substances are made by Bayer while Mesurol is made by Syngenta.
The same charges that nicotinoids from Bayer were killing bees were raised in France in 1999. In that nation Bayer’s best selling pesticide imidaclopid was banned from use in sunflower seeds after being blamed for killing one third of the country’s honeybees.
In 2004 France extended the ban to sweet corn seeds. A new application for clothianidin was banned in France a few months ago.
In North Dakota beekeepers sued Bayer, alleging that imaclopid caused the Colony Collapse Disorder CCD in that state in 1995. Within 12 months of use one third of that state’s honeybees were dead.
Around the world honeybee stocks are declining. Obviously this could have an enormous impact on global food supplies. Approximately 80 % of world food crops are pollinated by honeybees. In the USA alone this accounts for 130 crops and $15 billion of food each year.
Two million honeybee colonies have been lost in the USA in recent years.
Massive dieoffs of bees have been reported from Europe.
Taiwan discovered the disappearance of 10,000,000 bees in a two week period.
U.K. Farming Minister Lord Rooker has advised that British honeybee population could disappear within the next 10 years.
Beekeepers have become quite alarmed by Colony Collapse Disorder CCD where bees simply disappear leaving empty hives.
The neonicotinoid pesticides have been implicated as the possible cause for CCD. Because the pesticide spreads through all plant tissues bees could be getting exposed through the pollen of treated plants. One study actually concluded that neonicotinoids are likely to become concentrated in bee hives in high levels by the mechanism of transported pollen.
In low dosage research studies have shown that neonictinoids produce symptoms that could explain CCD. Termites exposed to these doses of imidaclopid experience disorientation and immune system failure, while bees exposed to low doses of this chemical develop impairment of communication, homing, foraging, flight, olfactory discrimination, and learning.
Food Scarcity Appears Inevitable
It appears that famine will become a prominent feature of these end times. Multiple factors are now operating that will contribute to famine:
• Adverse Weather Conditions Currently there is a scarcity of sun spots which contributes to lower temperatures. This summer was the coldest Alaska has experienced in 100 years with the summer temperatures about three degrees below normal. Last winter was unusually cold in the USA and Northern Europe. North Carolina had unprecedented heavy snow storms. The northern USA had very low temperatures with heavy snowstorms. The same cold weather pattern with bad storms was widespread in Europe last winter. We appear to be changing over from a warm weather cycle to a cold weather cycle which has been observed for thousands of years. The prime influence in causing this change appears to be the changing activity of the sun and has nothing to due with man made production of heat. Of great importance 200 years of glacial shrinkage [1] has come to an end. The winter of 2007-2008 has brought unusually large amounts of winter snow. This has combined with unusually cold temperatures in June ,July and August 2008 to start reversing 200 years of glacial shrinkage. Growing seasons will become shorter and crop yields will become smaller.
• Supermarkets have only a three day supply of products on their shelves. High transportation costs have made these stores more vulnerable to shortages of food. Very high fuel costs came near to driving truckers out of business in the summer of 2008. It is not hard to envision food riots in major cities when supermarkets have nothing to sell.
• Ethanol Production is not economic and has removed large amounts of corn from the marketplace. This has increased the cost of producing cattle, hogs, and chicken.
• Fallout of depleted uranium from bombs and shells is carried by wind to oceans where it enters oceans during rainstorms. The radioactivity from this fallout kills the algae[2] that are the start of the fish food chain that leads to our ocean fish. This will lead to fewer mature fish that will become more expensive.
• Inflation is driving the price of food to higher levels making many foods not affordable to much of the populace.
• Genetically Modified Foods are causing food allergies, health problems, chromosomal disorders and cancer. Renowned geneticist Dr. Mae-Wan Ho states[3]“Genetic engineering bypasses conventional breeding by using artificially constructed, parasitic, genetic elements, including viruses, as vectors to carry and smuggle genes into cells. Once inside cells, these vectors slot themselves into the host genome. The insertion of foreign genes into the host genome has long been known to have many harmful and fatal effects including cancer of the organism.”
The U.S. government does not require labeling of genetically modified foods. Thus American citizens are unable to avoid eating dangerous GMO food. GMO foods have fewer calories than normal food. Farmers have learned they can feed GMO food to animals if they want to thin them.
• As discussed in this article lack of bees is causing decreased production of fruits and vegetables. This contributes to decreased quantity of produce marketed and increased costs for the produce available to be sold. Whether the nations of the world will take a powerful stand against the pesticides made by powerful companies like Bayer and Syngenta remains to be seen.
© 2008 Dr. James Howenstine - All Rights Reserved
Footnotes:
1.Battros, Mitch Earth Changes Media Newsletter November 7. 2008
2. Cowden. Lee personal communication
3. Ciola, Greg MD Beware of the Coming Food Apocalypse GMOs (genetically modified organisms) pg 9 Axion Publishers 731 Kirkman Road, Orlando, Florida 32811Phone 1-407-472-0120
---
http://www.newswithviews.com/Howenstine/james171.htm
I found the article "Bt transgenic maize pollen and the silent poisoning of the hive" Journal of Apicultural Research 46: 57-58.
Sabugosa-Madeira B.; Abreu I.; Ribeiro H. and Cunha M. (2007).
It seams to me that they are going to find the GMO as guilty!
This is a very Orwellian worded article, dancing around the other factors in "Colony Collapse Disorder" that the U.S. government is too weak to touch to protect bees or ourselves:
This article from behind the media curtain in the U.S. where you are disallowed from challenging corporate degradative power:
Scientists Untangle Multiple Causes of Bee Colony Disorder [though pretend that GMOs or microwaves have nothing to do with it, because U.S. government completely captive to degradative corporations and their power over the materials we consume and are polluted with, ed. Suggestions of reducing pesticides are entirely missing in the article--even though they argue that is one of their causes!]
PULLMAN, Washington, July 29, 2009 (ENS) — A microscopic pathogen and pesticides embedded in old honeycombs are two major contributors to the bee disease known as colony collapse disorder, which has wiped out thousands of beehives throughout the United States and Europe over the past three years, new research at Washington State University has confirmed. [So is the article about reducing pesticides--no! It's entirely about ignoring the issue of the pesticide lobby.]
Working on the project funded in part by regional beekeepers and WSU's Agricultural Research Center, entomology professor Steve Sheppard and his team have [politically] narrowed the list of potential causes for colony collapse disorder. [while leaving out others because they would loose funding perhaps if they told the full truth.]
"One of the first things we looked at was the pesticide levels in the wax of older honeycombs," Sheppard said. Using combs contributed by U.S. Department of Agriculture, Sheppard found "fairly high levels of pesticide residue."
Bees raised in those hives "had significantly reduced longevity," he said.
One easy solution is...
[to ban pesticides? No, they say! It's now the beekeepers' responsibility to change combs--leaving pesticide makers polluting everyone!]
...for beekeepers to change honeycombs more often.
[That's like saying, in case of spousal abuse, 'the solution to spousal abuse is for the female to buy more makeup to hide the bruises.' That non-solution is recommended in this article, and this doesn't solve the issue at all and only encourages more pesticides applications.]
In Europe, for example, apiarists change combs every three years.
[however, Europeans came down with CCD as well, which sort of obviates that this is a solution. It seems a false recommendation designed to protect the pesticide industry and GMO industry from blame.]
"In the U.S., we haven't emphasized this practice and there's no real consensus about how often beekeepers should make the change," said Sheppard. "Now we know that it needs to be more often."
[Wait a minute: if Europeans change combs more often and STILL have CCD, then someone is lying to to Americans about 'solutions' involving "changing combs more often."]
Honeycomb may contain pesticides applied years ago. (Photo by Hi Paul)
Many researchers are investigating colony collapse disorder because domestic honeybees are essential for a variety of agricultural crops in the United States.
Beekeepers truck their hives cross country to pollinate almond groves in California, field crops and forages in the Midwest, apples and blueberries in the Northeast and citrus in Florida.
Unlike other diseases that have plagued bees in the past, colony collapse disorder does not kill bees within the hive. It leaves a hive with a few newly hatched adults, a queen and plenty of food.
Another aspect of Sheppard's work, which is being conducted by graduate student Matthew Smart, focuses on the impact of a microsporidian pathogen known as Nosema ceranae, which attacks bees' ability to process food.
[Some pesticide-industry funded[?]] Beekeepers have considered it to be "the smoking gun" behind colony collapse disorder.
"Nosema ceranae was only recently described in the U.S., the first time in 2007," Sheppard said. "But while no one really noticed, it has spread throughout the country."
But [that's a lie as well because] in a 2007 study, Jeffery Pettis, who heads the U.S. Agriculture Department's Bee Research Laboratory, and colleagues reported that Nosema ceranae had been in the United States for at least 10 years.
Smart surveyed numerous bee colonies in both the Pacific Northwest and in California, and found Nosema ceranae to be very widespread.
Sheppard's earlier research found Nosema ceranae to be a tough bug to battle. Of 24 hives checked in early 2008, Nosema build-up was high in a majority of the bees sampled. [This article and its 'scientific' funding ignores all the other GMO and microwave based damages to bees.]
Beekeeper Eric Olson of Yakima, Washington said he treated a hive with a mega-dose of the antibiotic fumagillin. "That should have cause the Nosema to either disappear or at least go down," he said, "but the levels went up."
"What it basically does is it causes bees to get immune-deficiency disorder. So it's actually causing the bees to almost get a version of HIV," said Mark Pitcher, president of Babe's Honey and the biggest beekeeper in Saanich on Canada's Vancouver Island.
Pitcher told the "Saanich News" that once the bees' immune systems are compromised, they become susceptible to dying from a wide range of causes, including chemicals once used to protect the bees from parasites such as varroa mites.
Last summer, researchers at Pennsylvania State University found unprecedented levels of fluvalinate and coumaphos - pesticides used in the hives to combat varroa mites - in all honeycomb and foundation wax samples.
They also found lower [i.e., some] levels of 70 other pesticides and metabolites of those pesticides in pollen and bees.
The Penn State researchers worked with the National Science Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Agricultural Marketing Service that already tests commodities such as milk and fruits and vegetables.
"When we began doing this work, honey was not regularly analyzed, and bee pollen was not a commodity and so was not analyzed," says Mullin. "We decided to go with the types of screening the lab does for milk and apples which look at over 170 pesticides. Now, honey is included in the commodities to be analyzed."
All of the bees tested showed at least one pesticide and pollen averaged six pesticides with as many as 31 in a sample.
"We do not know that these chemicals have anything to do with colony collapse disorder, but they are definitely stressors in the home and in the food sources," says Penn State's Dr. Maryann Frazier. "Pesticides alone have not shown they are the cause of CCD. We believe that it is a combination of a variety of factors, possibly including mites, viruses and pesticides."
While beekeepers will have a difficult time controlling pesticide exposure outside the hive [without laws that are more strict on pesticide applications], the Penn State researchers tested a method for reducing the chemical load in beeswax.
[Drum roll: something more toxic for the bees sold as a 'solution!' They have been trying to sell irradiation technology, and it seems that this CCD is just being used as a way to sell even more dangerous radiolytic compounds in our honey and in our bees!]
Using gamma radiation from a cobalt 60 source housed at Penn State's Breazeale Reactor, they irradiated the sheets of beeswax that beekeepers use as the structural foundation for the bees to build their combs. [Gee, I'm sure the bees will thank you for 'solving' their stressor load with a dose of irradiated wax.--the irradiation technology sellers funded this 'scientific' study, I guess?]
They used radiation levels at the high end of that used to irradiate foods and found that in the wax, radiation broke down about 50 percent of the acaricides, pesticides that kill mites.
[Only 50%! Though hey, you're stupid if you buy radiation that as a (merely 50%) 'solution' to anything. It's not a solution. It's just making radiation-prone mites stronger and putting another stressor on the bees. I would love to know why this study focused only on mites and pesticides (leaving out GMOs and microwaves), and I would love to know why they dreamed up radiation is something to solve a stressor issue, instead of seeing it as yet another stressor issue heaped on top of CCD.]
[The real solution is to ban GMOs and pesticide treatments. There are other ways to organize agriculture far more sustainably and more healthfully for all.]
---
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2009/2009-07-29-094.asp
New Study Confirms Cell Towers Are Killing Bees
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/08/phone-towers-are-honey-bees-next-big-threat-study-says.php
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2009/09/393803.shtml
It is time to stop this nonsense. We need bees more than we need the indirect suicidal behavior instant gratification lunacy of cell phones and wi fi.
Two new studies have come in in as many days that confirm previous speculation that Cell towers are destroying the navigational abilities of bees so they can't find their way around.
Colonies collapsed when put next to a cell tower. Many questions remain unanswered. If they affect bees in this way, it isn't much of a leap to assume what they are doing to all life on the planet.
Are Cell Phone Towers Honey Bees' Next Big Threat? New Study Says Yes.
by Jaymi Heimbuch, San Francisco, California on 08.31.09
Science & Technology
Buzz up!
honey bee photo
Photo via autan
As if honey bees don't have enough to worry about right now, it seems that cell phone towers may be problematic for the insects.
According to a new study, a rapid drop in the bee population in Kerala, India is the result of recently installed cell phone towers, and could cause a complete collapse of bee populations within 10 years.
Reported on PhysOrg, an experiment conducted in Kerala showed that as mobile phone companies installed towers to expand their network, the bee population shrank.
Dr. Sainuddin Pattazhy conducted the study and concluded that the electromagnetic waves from the towers shorted out the navigational abilities of worker bees so that they couldn't find their way home after going out to collect pollen.
The report states, "If towers and mobile phones further increase, honey bees might be wiped out in 10 years, Pattazhy said."
It seems like a highly dramatic conclusion - and one to be skeptical about since the same issues came up a couple years ago.
We're still digging for details on the "experiment" - so far it sounds like it's one isolated finding that when a cell phone tower was put up next to a bee hive, the hive collapsed within 10 days. What all factors were involved, we aren't 100% sure yet.
But with honey bees suffering from all sorts of maladies, and with their health a vital component to food systems, it is a potential problem that shouldn't be ignored.
August 22nd was National Honey Bee Awareness Day. With this new study, it seems there's a whole lot to stay aware of when it comes to these important insects.
http://www.wirelesswatchblog.com
EMR From Cell Phones Frying Bees Navigational Ability
"There is a 60% plunge in Kerala's commercial bee population. Bees are susceptible to diseases and attacks by ants, wasps and wax moths, but vigilant keepers can check these," Sainudeen Pattazhy, reader in zoology, SN College, Punalur, said. His study warns that bees would be wiped out in a decade if mobile phone towers continue to proliferate at the current rate
http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_check-that-tongue-mobile-phones-buzz-out-honeybees_1284119
Thiruvananthapuram: Sweet nothings murmured into a mobile phone spell doom for honeybees, says a study.
The booming communication industry is not helping one sector - apiculture - at least.
Honey and bee wax are not the only things at stake, though. One-third of our crops need bees to pollinate.
"There is a 60% plunge in Kerala's commercial bee population. Bees are susceptible to diseases and attacks by ants, wasps and wax moths, but vigilant keepers can check these," Sainudeen Pattazhy, reader in zoology, SN College, Punalur, said.
His study warns that bees would be wiped out in a decade if mobile phone towers continue to proliferate at the current rate.
Pattazhy's experiments show that workers, who constitute around 90% of bees in a hive, abandon it when a mobile device is placed near it. "I placed a mobile device 10 metres off a hive for 5-10 days, after which worker bees never returned. The massive radiation from mobile phones and towers is frying navigational skills of bees," he said.
Thriving hives were suddenly left with only the queen, drones and larvae. The environmentalist believes atmospheric electromagnetic radiation is responsible for this colony collapse disorder, characterised by mass disappearance of workers who buzz about collecting honey and pollinating flowers.
In the US west coast, this apian disorder is such an ecological disaster that colonies of bees are hired to pollinate almond plantations.
Apiarists' blame theories vary from viruses and bacteria to pesticides and radiation.
"Bees and other insects have evolved complex immunity systems over millions of years. Now, why would they suddenly die out due to diseases and parasites?
Of course, we are introducing a new factor to their environment, which is disrupting their immune system," Pattazhy said. [there are many introductions, however, particular the transported bees--though the Kerala bees I don't think are the commercial nomads that USA bees are, so it's an interesting natural experiment against such a hypothesis that it is transportation stress or or against the hypothesis that it is excessive pesticides/herbicies, etc. that's the important data here in the Kerala case, compared to other cases of CCD.]
"Insects and small animals would naturally be the first to be affected by an increase in ambient radiation. Behavioural patterns of bees alter when they are in close proximity to mobile phone towers. The vanished bees were never found, thought to have died," he said.
A radiation of 900 MHz is highly bioactive, causing significant alternation in living organisms.
There are close to 1.25 apiarists in Kerala. A single hive can yield up to 5 kg of honey. Pattazhy advises beekeepers to shield their hives with aluminium, which blocks radiation to an extent.
Fifth of honeybees died in winter
Almost a fifth of the UK's honeybees died last winter, the British Beekeepers' Association has said.
Combined with an average 30% loss the year before, it means beekeepers are struggling to keep colonies going.
Honeybees are worth £200m a year to UK agriculture because of their work pollinating crops.
Bees are suffering from viruses, a parasitic mite and changes in the weather. Experts are calling for more money to be put into research.
A survey by the British Beekeepers' Association (BBKA) suggested an average of 19.2% of colonies died over winter, which is "double" the acceptable level.
The highest losses were recorded in the north of England, where 32.1% perished, and the lowest in eastern England, where 12.8% did not survive.
" These ongoing losses in the pollination army of honeybees cannot continue if we are to secure food supplies "
BBKA's president Tim Lovett
The survey showed an improvement on the previous year, which the BBKA put down to the period of really cold weather in the winter which encouraged the bees to "cluster" together, helping them to survive.
It also said the good weather in early spring enabled them to forage for nectar and pollen.
'Onslaught of threats'
But there was still a "worrying and continuing high level of colony loss", said the BBKA's president Tim Lovett.
"It underlines the need for research into the causes and remedies for disease in order to ensure that our principal economic pollinator, the honeybee, can survive the onslaught of the threats it currently faces," he said.
"These ongoing losses in the pollination army of honeybees cannot continue if we are to secure food supplies."
Nearly all the UK's 250 species of bee are in decline. In the last two years, honeybee numbers have fallen by 10-15%.
The conservation watchdog Natural England recently called on people living in urban areas to consider keeping bees.
Its chief scientist Tom Tew told the BBC: "We want urban people to engage with wildlife and get joy and pleasure from it. The more hives you have the more resilient the whole population is to the outbreak of disease."
'Really distressing'
The BBC presenter Martha Kaerney is an amateur beekeeper and has seen for herself the decline in numbers.
She told Breakfast on BBC One: "They've died out on me before and it was really distressing.
"You put the bees away for the winter and you hope they're going to be OK.
"And when you open up the colony in the spring and see lots of dead bees in there, it's unpleasant.
"Beekeeping is a fascinating hobby and I love it. But they are dying. This year is slightly better than last year though."
A report by the Parliamentary Accounts Committee last month warned the government was giving "little priority" to the health of the nation's bees despite their importance to the agricultural economy.
Experts say sustaining bee populations is essential to ensuring the survival of Britain's plants and crops.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/uk/8217401.stm
Published: 2009/08/24 08:18:37 GMT
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8217401.stm
----------------------
Hi All
The link below is to a very interesting short video about bees dying. It shows several smart people who understand that bees are dying and have various views about the causes. Unfortunately they are not quite smart enough to realise that electro magnetic radiation is harming the bees and is a major contributor to CCD.
Martin Weatherall
www.weepinitiative.org
http://www.wirelesswatchblog.com
Fears for crops as shock figures from America show scale of bee catastrophe
[article conspicuously fails to mention the stressors of microwave radiation regime and GMO crops as known stressors as well: the power(lessness) of the press incarnate]
The world may be on the brink of biological disaster after news that a third of US bee colonies did not survive the winter
Comments (124)
* Alison Benjamin
* The Observer, Sunday 2 May 2010
Disturbing evidence that honeybees are in terminal decline has emerged from the United States where, for the fourth year in a row, more than a third of colonies have failed to survive the winter.
The decline of the country's estimated 2.4 million beehives began in 2006, when a phenomenon dubbed colony collapse disorder (CCD) led to the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of colonies. Since then more than three million colonies in the US and billions of honeybees worldwide have died and scientists are no nearer to knowing what is causing the catastrophic fall in numbers.
The number of managed honeybee colonies in the US fell by 33.8% last winter, according to the annual survey by the Apiary Inspectors of America and the US government's Agricultural Research Service (ARS).
The collapse in the global honeybee population is a major threat to crops. It is estimated that a third of everything we eat depends upon honeybee pollination, which means that bees contribute some £26bn to the global economy.
Potential causes range from parasites, such as the bloodsucking varroa mite, to viral and bacterial infections, pesticides and poor nutrition stemming from intensive farming methods. The disappearance of so many colonies has also been dubbed "Mary Celeste syndrome" due to the absence of dead bees in many of the empty hives.
US scientists have found 121 different pesticides in samples of bees, wax and pollen, lending credence to the notion that pesticides are a key problem. "We believe that some subtle interactions between nutrition, pesticide exposure and other stressors are converging to kill colonies," said Jeffery Pettis, of the ARS's bee research laboratory.
A global review of honeybee deaths by the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) reported last week that there was no one single cause, but pointed the finger at the "irresponsible use" of pesticides that may damage bee health and make them more susceptible to diseases. Bernard Vallat, the OIE's director-general, warned: "Bees contribute to global food security, and their extinction would represent a terrible biological disaster."
Dave Hackenberg of Hackenberg Apiaries, the Pennsylvania-based commercial beekeeper who first raised the alarm about CCD, said that last year had been the worst yet for bee losses, with 62% of his 2,600 hives dying between May 2009 and April 2010. "It's getting worse," he said. "The AIA survey doesn't give you the full picture because it is only measuring losses through the winter. In the summer the bees are exposed to lots of pesticides. Farmers mix them together and no one has any idea what the effects might be."
Pettis agreed that losses in some commercial operations are running at 50% or greater. "Continued losses of this magnitude are not economically sustainable for commercial beekeepers," he said, adding that a solution may be years away. "Look at Aids, they have billions in research dollars and a causative agent and still no cure. Research takes time and beehives are complex organisms."
...
...
In the UK it is still too early to judge how Britain's estimated 250,000 honeybee colonies have fared during the long winter. Tim Lovett, president of the British Beekeepers' Association, said: "Anecdotally, it is hugely variable. There are reports of some beekeepers losing almost a third of their hives and others losing none." Results from a survey of the association's 15,000 members are expected this month.
John Chapple, chairman of the London Beekeepers' Association, put losses among his 150 members at between a fifth and a quarter. Eight of his 36 hives across the capital did not survive. "There are still a lot of mysterious disappearances," he said. "We are no nearer to knowing what is causing them."
Bee farmers in Scotland have reported losses on the American scale for the past three years. Andrew Scarlett, a Perthshire-based bee farmer and honey packer, lost 80% of his 1,200 hives this winter. But he attributed the massive decline to a virulent bacterial infection that quickly spread because of a lack of bee inspectors, coupled with sustained poor weather that prevented honeybees from building up sufficient pollen and nectar stores.
The government's National Bee Unit has always denied the existence of CCD in Britain, despite honeybee losses of 20% during the winter of 2008-09 and close to a third the previous year. It attributes the demise to the varroa mite – which is found in almost every UK hive – and rainy summers that stop bees foraging for food.
In a hard-hitting report last year, the National Audit Office suggested that amateur beekeepers who failed to spot diseases in bees were a threat to honeybees' survival and called for the National Bee Unit to carry out more inspections and train more beekeepers. Last summer MPs on the influential cross-party public accounts committee called on the government to fund more research into what it called the "alarming" decline of honeybees.
The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has contributed £2.5m towards a £10m fund for research on pollinators. The public accounts committee has called for a significant proportion of this funding to be "ring-fenced" for honeybees. Decisions on which research projects to back are expected this month.
WHY BEES MATTER
Flowering plants require insects for pollination. The most effective is the honeybee, which pollinates 90 commercial crops worldwide. As well as most fruits and vegetables – including apples, oranges, strawberries, onions and carrots – they pollinate nuts, sunflowers and oil-seed rape. Coffee, soya beans, clovers – like alfafa, which is used for cattle feed – and even cotton are all dependent on honeybee pollination to increase yields.
In the UK alone, honeybee pollination is valued at £200m. Mankind has been managing and transporting bees for centuries to pollinate food and produce honey, nature's natural sweetener and antiseptic. Their extinction would mean not only a colourless, meatless diet of cereals and rice, and cottonless clothes, but a landscape without orchards, allotments and meadows of wildflowers – and the collapse of the food chain that sustains wild birds and animals.
---
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/02/food-fear-mystery-beehives-collapse
Recently, Bayer Crop Science Seems to have Attempted to Distract the World with Paid Propaganda Instead of Research About Colony Collapse Disorder:
"Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), a disease which causes honeybees to become disoriented and die far from their hives, has kept scientists desperately seeking for the cause.
And no wonder, since honeybees contribute $15 billion in annual agriculture revenue to the U.S. economy alone.
One suggested culprit has been pesticides, particularly neonicotinoids, which kill insects by attacking their nervous systems. Their leading manufacturer, Bayer Crop Science, has been fending off lawsuits from angry beekeepers for years now.
But recently, a front-page New York Times article [seemed to be] pointed to another solution.
Running under the headline "Scientists and Soldiers Solve a Bee Mystery," the article reports that a new study claims the cause is actually "a fungus tag-teaming with a virus."
However, one fact that the Times article did not mention is the relationship between the study's lead author, Dr. Jerry Bromenshenk, and Bayer Crop Science.
Bromenshenk has received a significant research grant from Bayer -- and failed to disclose the conflict of interest to the Times.
Fortune reports:
"The Times reporter who authored the recent article, Kirk Johnson, responded in an e-mail that Dr. Bromenshenk 'did not volunteer his funding sources.' ... Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist with the health group at the Natural Resources Defense Council, says that while the Bromenshenk/Army study is interesting, it fails to ask the underlying question 'Why are colonies dying?'"
Sources:
New York Times October 6, 2010
CNNMoney.com Fortune Magazine October 8, 2010
PLoS One October 6, 2010; 5(10)
---
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/10/29/is-the-reason-for-bees-dying-in-colony-collapse-disorder-finally-solved.aspx
SUNDAY 15 JANUARY 2012
Scientists link mass death of British bees to farm pesticides
EXCLUSIVE by Rob Edwards Environment Editor
Nicotine-based pesticides in widespread use by farmers are implicated in the mass deaths of bees, according to a new study by US scientists.
Honeybee hives are being lost every year in the US; a million colonies a year are lost in France, Germany, Italy and the UK
The authoritative, peer-reviewed research undermines the pesticide industry's long-repeated arguments that bees are not being harmed, and piles pressure on UK and US authorities to follow other countries by introducing bans on the chemicals.
...
[continued]
Pesticide companies have been trying to protect their multi-billion pound [raw material regime] businesses by lobbying internationally against bans on neonicotinoids, a group of toxic chemicals designed to paralyse insects by attacking their nervous systems.
Agricultural crops in Scotland, England and around the world are dosed with the chemicals to prevent insects from damaging them. But evidence has been mounting that they could be to blame for the "colony collapse disorder" that has been decimating bee populations.
The US has been losing one-third of its honeybee hives every year, while beekeepers in Europe say that more than one million bee colonies have been wiped out in France, Germany, Italy and the UK since 1994.
Although neonicotinoids have faced bans or restrictions in Germany, France, Italy and Slovenia, regulators in the UK and the US have [been so far corrupted against the public and environmental interest that they have] so far accepted the industry's [untested] contention that the toxins were not poisoning bees.
...
But that view has now been seriously challenged by a new study from scientists at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. They found neonicotinoids in bees, in pollen, in soil and in dandelions, suggesting that bees could be contaminated in several different ways.
"We know that these insecticides are highly toxic to bees; we found them in each sample of dead and dying bees," said Christian Krupke, associate professor of entomology at Purdue and a co-author of the study.
Bees also suffered from tremors, unco-ordinated movement and convulsions, which are all signs of insecticide poisoning.
"This material is so concentrated that even small amounts landing on flowering plants around a field can kill foragers or be transported to the hive in contaminated pollen," Krupke said.
"It stands out as being an enormous source of potential environmental contamination, not just for honeybees, but for any insects living in or near these fields. The fact that these compounds can persist for months or years means that plants growing in these soils can take up these compounds in leaf tissue or pollen."
Krupke's study, conducted with four colleagues was reviewed for errors by fellow scientists before it was published.
The study has been seized on by beekeepers and environmental groups in Scotland campaigning for a neonicotinoid ban. "We are facing a global ecological catastrophe in which honeybees, bumblebees and butterflies are being wiped from the face of the landscape in every country where neonicotinoids have been introduced," said Graham White, a beekeeper from the Scottish Borders.
"The appalling truth is that we no longer have a credible regulatory system for pesticides in Scotland or the UK. All of the so-called regulators are so symbiotically and financially dependent on the pesticide industry that they have no independent freedom of action."
...
Buglife, which campaigns to protect insects, described neonicotinoids as "massively toxic" to wildlife. "All the evidence indicates that this [corruptly introduced and corruptly protected] pollution kills bees, moths, hoverflies and other essential pollinator species," said Craig Macadam, the group's Scottish officer. "The government must ban neonicotinoids now before further damage is done to our fragile ecosystems."
The pesticide industry, however, blamed parasites and diseases for killing bees, and maintained [without any studies?] that the levels of neonicotinoids in pollen were too low to damage their health. Restrictions in France, now withdrawn, had made no difference to bee health, it argued.
"Although poorly-targeted insecticides would certainly harm bees, farmers value bees and strict practices are prescribed and followed to ensure that exposure does not occur," said Dominic Dyer, the chief executive of the Crop Protection Association, which [is untrustworthy on public health issues because it has conflicts of interest against public health since it only] represents pesticide companies.
...
---
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/environment/scientists-link-mass-death-of-british-bees-to-farm-pesticides.1326596745
Government tyranny: Illinois Department of Agriculture secretly destroys beekeeper's bees and 15 years of research proving Monsanto's Roundup kills bees
Sunday, May 20, 2012 by: Jonathan Benson, staff writer
(NaturalNews) An Illinois beekeeper with more than a decade's worth of expertise about how to successfully raise organic, chemical-free bees is the latest victim of flagrant government tyranny. According to the Prairie Advocate, Terrence "Terry" Ingram of Apple River, Ill., owner of Apple Creek Apiaries, recently had his bees and beehives stolen from him by the Illinois Department of Agriculture (IDofA), as well as more than 15 years' worth of research proving Monsanto's Roundup to be the cause of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) destroyed.
It began last summer when Ingram, who teaches children about natural beekeeping, gave a sample of his honeycomb to IDofA inspector Susan Kivikko (http://www.agr.state.il.us/programs/bees/inspectors.html) at a beekeeper's picnic. Ingram explained that his bees would not touch the comb, and asked Kivikko if it could be tested for chemical contamination.
Kivikko told him that IDofA does not test for chemicals, presumably because its policy is to actively promote them, and instead took the comb and had it tested for "foulbrood," a disease that Ingram says is greatly overblown. When the test allegedly came back positive, Kivikko proceeded to get the ball rolling on a witch hunt that would eventually lead to the illegal seizure and destruction of Ingram's personal property.
Not only did Kivikko, as well as her colleague Eleanor Balson and superior Steven D. Chard, break the law by trespassing Ingram's property on numerous occasions without a warrant, but they also committed numerous crimes by stealing his hives and equipment and destroying pertinent evidence before a hearing, which Ingram believes may have ultimately been rooted in a deliberate conspiracy by the state to hide the truth about Roundup, and subsequently steal his most vibrant bees.
IDofA appears to have targeted Ingram for his research linking Roundup to CCD
Of particular interest was Ingram's extensive research on Monsanto's Roundup herbicide, which began several years ago when hundreds of Ingram's hives had died. He later determined that Roundup sprayings near his property were to blame, which prompted him to actively research the subject and closely monitor his hives in conjunction with this research from that point onward.
What he gathered, and subsequently taught to others, was concrete evidence that Roundup kills bees.
He also used this information and his many years of experience to develop and refine ways of growing strong, chemical-free bees in spite of Roundup sprayings, a move that apparently upset IDofA, which operates primarily to serve the interests of chemical companies rather than the interests of the people.
"Is Illinois becoming a police state, where citizens do not have rights?" asked Ingram, who has been deliberately denied his rights, to the Prairie Advocate.
"Knowing that Monsanto and the Department of Agriculture are in bed together, one has to wonder if Monsanto was behind the theft to ruin my research that may prove Roundup was, and is, killing honeybees."
Be sure to read the full Prairie Advocate story about Terry Ingram, which includes a video interview, here:
http://www.pacc-news.com/5-2-12/heart_ingram5_2_12.html
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/035920_beekeeper_Illinois_raid.html#ixzz1vnvcBo00
Poland becomes "first nation to formally acknowledge that Monsanto's GM corn [genetically modified corn] is definitively linked to [bee collapse]"
[Instead of only Monsanto's RoundUp Ready chemicals involved in bee collapse (as argued by the Illinois researcher (who had his data destroyed by the Illinois Government to protect Monsanto), the Polish government supports the interpretation that it is Monsanto's GMO Bt-crops themselves that are part of the bee collapse as well.]
Poland beekeepers kick Monsanto out of the hive, successfully ban bee-killing GM corn
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer
(NaturalNews) A significant health freedom victory has taken place in the European nation of Poland, where all plantings of Monsanto's MON810, a genetically-modified (GM) variety of maize (corn) that produces its own built-in Bt insecticide in every kernel, have been officially banned.
The decision comes after thousands of protesters recently took to the streets in demonstration of the undeniable fact that both MON810 and the chemicals applied to it are at least partially responsible for causing Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), the worldwide phenomenon in which entire swarms of honey bees disappear or turn up dead.
"The decree is in the works. It introduces a complete ban on the MON810 strain of maize in Poland," said Polish Agriculture Minister Marek Sawicki, who also explained to the press that pollen from MON810 appears to be responsible for further devastating the already dwindling bee population throughout the country and elsewhere.
According to reports, Poland's decision to ban MON810 makes it the first nation to formally acknowledge that Monsanto's GM corn is definitively linked to CCD.
It also affirms the findings of several earlier studies that have identified a link between Bt GM crops and bee deaths, including independent research conducted by Pennsylvania beekeeper John McDonald.
McDonald's research found that bees foraging near Bt crops did not gain the proper amount of weight, and failed to produce honey in their honey supers (honey storage bins) when they should have.
Their non-Bt crop counterparts, on the other hand, produced more than double the amount of honey they needed to survive the winter (http://www.naturalnews.com/025287.html).
Back in early March, nine European countries -- Belgium, Great Britain, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Ireland, and Slovakia -- successfully blocked an effort by the Danish EU presidency to allow expanded cultivation of GM crops in Europe.
And around that same time, France imposed its own ban on MON810.
Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to forge ahead in the unmitigated, and largely unregulated, cultivation and use of GM crops.
Despite countless grassroots efforts to put at least some restraint on GM agriculture, including a number of state initiatives that would require GMO labeling on food, Monsanto's products continue to dominate much of the American agricultural landscape. [despite their known human health dangers--read Smith's Seeds of Deception:
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Seeds-Deception-Government-Genetically-Engineered/dp/0972966587/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1338470473&sr=8-1>Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government Lies About the Safety of the Genetically Engineered Foods You're Eating</a> by Jeffrey M. Smith (Paperback - Sep 1, 2003)
To learn more about how you can support the preservation of honeybees in your local community, be sure to visit:
http://www.honeybeehaven.org/content/take-pledge
Sources for this article include:
http://www.polishnews.com
http://capwiz.com/grassrootsnetroots/issues/alert/?alertid=22033501
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/036010_Poland_Monsanto_GM_corn.html#ixzz1wS7l8umY
---
http://www.naturalnews.com/036010_Poland_Monsanto_GM_corn.html#ixzz1wOxvKOiG
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