Honeybee news
 

Honeybees are important pollinators of many agricultural crops. This bad news could have a serious impact.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,251365,00.html

Sounds pretty serious to me....especially the varroa mite.....where the heck did it come from?

Timm,
I don't know where the mite came from.
Heck, we've had to deal with "foul brood" and wax moths in the past, but this "mystery" looks to have a huge impact.
So many crops...apples to zuccini depend on these critters.
Sure, honey prices will go up..but so will everything else.
Bees are important in helping us have healthy food to eat.
I hope the scientists find what's up.

Timm,
Here's a little more about "colony collapse disorder". This could be very serious. Watch the futures markets, especially soybeans.
http://science.monstersandcritics.co...arming_growers

They better figure out how to fix this problem or the economy of a few States is gonna "go south"

Here's a recent update. Many people might not realize how dependent we are on honey bees to pollinate much of the food we eat, and also food like alfalfa that animals that we consume or feed pellets to so they can race, also depend on.
This could be very bad. It's still a guessing game. The rebuilding will take a while. It's not just about honey prices. There's much more at stake.
http://www.tulsaworld.com/BusinessSt..._E1_Death46191

The honey bee mystery continues. Colony collapse is now in 24 states.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/27/bu...nted=1&_r=1&hp

Update.
The mystery continues.
This could be very serious.
Over 90 fruit and vegetable crops that we depend on could be affected.
Half of the bee keepers have gone out of business.
15 billion in agricultural crops...
Yikes!!!!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070407...s_070407020928

Sounds pretty bad.

Do you know what soybean futures have been doing?

I really haven't been following soybeans lately. Corn is getting planted big this year, most acres in production since WW II due to ethanol. Should be more than $4.50 a bushel.

Update...the corn planting is way behind schedule due to wet fields.
I came across this article today. It doesn't seem to be getting much mainstream media.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/26/783/

And yes, I also like dandelions. Early "greens" fried with bacon make a nice salad. I put some mung bean sprouts on top. I also found a beauty of a watercress bed in a spring seep a couple of days ago when I was catching a limit of native brookies. Cattails should be poking up soon. If you peel off the outer leaves, the hearts are a lot like asparagus. The roots are also good. Boil the tubers with burdock root. Wild ramps will be here soon.
I make them into a kind of "garlic" soup...a little cream, a wild carrot root or two (queen anne's lace).
Anyway, eat wild.
Morels aren't here yet. They come about the same time as the apple blossoms open. I wish there were more bees around to enjoy them.
Eat wild. Report on the bee sightings.
Without those little buzzers, we've got big problems...very big.

I'll be posting my dandelion wine recipe in the "cookbook" when I find it in the clutter of recipes I've been digging through. Spring cleaning....uggh!

The mystery continues. This could have serious implications.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/honeybee_...xwVI5k78Rhr7sF

Just trying to bring this up to page one.
It's an important story.

Today I read this.
Sorry to be the one to keep bringing this up.
This doesn't seem to be getting close to being solved.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...la-home-center

Since this affects most of what we eat, and sell, it is a Big Damn Deal! I don't know when this reporter actually filed this story...seems to me that I read somewhere recently that some progress had been made...

Timm,
I hear you. It seems like it's a big deal.
And, yes, I know this is a horse racing board, but this isn't about politics.
Here's one you might be interested in.....
http://www.alternet.org/environment/53491/

Seems that lots of people more knowledgeable than me are equally as baffled.

DTS

Great info on Wikipedia as well. This is very disturbing. I hope we can find out what's wrong soon... :(

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

DTS: my hand trembled as I clicked on the link you provided...but hey, I'm fearless right? Interesting piece...the cat death/bee death scenario is scary just for the fact the priorities are skewed and the possible damage is magnified because not enough manpower and resources are being used on this deadly phenomenon!

I killed two bees today.

Miscreant!;)

Thanks for the link, Cajun.

This is how the world will end?

I read this about a Gen Eng grass for golf courses that is designed to be impervious to Roundup. So the course maintenance crew can spray Roundup on the greens, etc,... and the grass won't die. That's nice.

Problem is, it pollenates easy and spreads everywhere. And it can't be killed.

http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/g...tion092304.cfm

I would say that is contributing to the bee dilemna....but I only had troubles with wasps on the golf course...and those dreaded bogey's:D

I got off track there. Sorry. The bee story reminded me of the grass story. Apparently this grass has the potential to overtake crops, etc...

The bad thing is that all of it could be tied in to the bee problem. The possible(probable)unintentional "hybridization" of honeybees is a severe problem, if they don't find an answer.

timm,
You might find this to be of interest. It relates to Canada's bees, but if you read the link, it seems that transgenic crops (bT modified) might be causal.
Honey bees have been hybridized for many years, but not the pollen that they depend on...especially if it has a built in insecticide.
http://commonground.ca/iss/0706191/cg191_bees.shtml

The scope of the "fix" would be mindboggling. I'm not smart enough to know where to start! Einsteins' theory was quite sobering!

Timm,
Lots of great minds are working on this problem. Penn state seems to be leading the way, and here in NY Cornell is involved.
I'm not certain of a "fix" at this point, as the determination of the cause is as yet undefined. If it really derives from genetically altered crops (that have been under cultivation for years), the remedy will take a very long time.
That "genie" is already out of the bottle and into the environment.
It amazes me at all the crops that are effected. Heck, I never even thought of canola oil. Think of how many foodstuffs use that.
Ponder how that will impact all the "fast foods".
Yup! Einstein got it right again.
DTS

Explanation for disappearing bees!
 

"The X-Files" is a surprisingly good movie that does not try to get cute and go away from the things that made the series such a national phenomenon. David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson seem out of place working with bomb squads and doing other mundane duties after their department is shut down by the government. However the two feel that something really major is up which involves alien colonization on Earth and a vast government cover-up that goes through the highest places in the U.S. political realm.

That evening, Mulder encounters a paranoid doctor, Alvin Kurtzweil (Martin Landau), who explains that the four victims were already dead, and the bomb was allowed to detonate to destroy the evidence as to how they died. Mulder enlists Scully to travel with him to the morgue to examine the bodies. They learn that the bodies have suffered a complete cellular breakdown, not at all caused by the bomb. Mulder leaves Scully in the morgue to fly back to Dallas to investigate evidence left from the explosion. He urges Scully to join him, and she shares evidence that the bodies were infected with an alien virus. They travel to the boy's home, but find a brand-new park in place of the hole in which he fell. Unsure what to do next, they wind up following a team of tanker trucks to a massive cornfield surrounding two bright, glowing domes. When they infiltrate the domes, they find simply a large empty space. However, grates on the floor open up, and a massive swarm of bees chase the agents into the cornfield. Soon helicopters fly overhead, and the two make a harrowing escape back to Washington.:eek:

Interesting paragraph in this link that deals with the honeybee genome and its immunology's inability to detoxify. Kind of like HIV for bees.
http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=12178

US Dept of Agriculture predicts 75 billion dollar hit to economy!

It's all George Shinns fault. It all started with the Charlotte Hornets. They had the Honeybees and they were some good looking cheerleaders let me tell you. And then he leaves town and moves everyone to New Orleans and the Honeybees who handled Charlotte were no match for New Orleans

Good grief.

I just read this on Drudge.....seems promising!

Timm,
That link didn't open for me. Could you cut and paste the important stuff?
Thanks.

DTS: that was a BAD link...I clicked on it and DT just shut down after being frozen for a minute! www.drudgereport.com is the best I can do! I had trouble with the other

Did that one work?

Here it is. Thanks Timm, I'll pass it along.



Asian Parasite Killing Western Bees - Scientist
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SPAIN: July 19, 2007


MADRID - A parasite common in Asian bees has spread to Europe and the Americas and is behind the mass disappearance of honeybees in many countries, says a Spanish scientist who has been studying the phenomenon for years.


The culprit is a microscopic parasite called nosema ceranae said Mariano Higes, who leads a team of researchers at a government-funded apiculture centre in Guadalajara, the province east of Madrid that is the heartland of Spain's honey industry.
He and his colleagues have analysed thousands of samples from stricken hives in many countries.

"We started in 2000 with the hypothesis that it was pesticides, but soon ruled it out," he told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday.

Pesticide traces were present only in a tiny proportion of samples and bee colonies were also dying in areas many miles from cultivated land, he said.

They then ruled out the varroa mite, which is easy to see and which was not present in most of the affected hives.

For a long time Higes and his colleagues thought a parasite called nosema apis, common in wet weather, was killing the bees.

"We saw the spores, but the symptoms were very different and it was happening in dry weather too."

Then he decided to sequence the parasite's DNA and discovered it was an Asian variant, nosema ceranae. Asian honeybees are less vulnerable to it, but it can kill European bees in a matter of days in laboratory conditions.

"Nosema ceranae is far more dangerous and lives in heat and cold. A hive can become infected in two months and the whole colony can collapse in six to 18 months," said Higes, whose team has published a number of papers on the subject.

"We've no doubt at all it's nosema ceranae and we think 50 percent of Spanish hives are infected," he said.

Spain, with 2.3 million hives, is home to a quarter of the European Union's bees.

His team have also identified this parasite in bees from Austria, Slovenia and other parts of Eastern Europe and assume it has invaded from Asia over a number of years.

Now it seems to have crossed the Atlantic and is present in Canada and Argentina, he said. The Spanish researchers have not tested samples from the United States, where bees have also gone missing.

Treatment for nosema ceranae is effective and cheap -- 1 euro (US$1.4) a hive twice a year -- but beekeepers first have to be convinced the parasite is the problem.

Another theory points a finger at mobile phone aerials, but Higes notes bees use the angle of the sun to navigate and not electromagnetic frequencies.

Other elements, such as drought or misapplied treatments, may play a part in lowering bees' resistance, but Higes is convinced the Asian parasite is the chief assassin.




Story by Julia Hayley