Billions of bees have mysteriously vanished since late last year in the U.S.• Disappearing bees have also been reported in Europe and Brazil• One-third of the U.S. diet depends on pollination, mostly by honeybees• Some beekeepers are losing 50 percent of their bees to the disorder
WASHINGTON -- Go to work, come home.
Go to work, come home. Go to work -- and vanish without a trace. Billions of bees have done just that, leaving the crop fields they are supposed to pollinate, and scientists are mystified about why. 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. If the bees were dying of pesticide poisoning or freezing, their bodies would be expected to lie around the hive. And if they were absconding because of some threat -- which they have been known to do -- they wouldn't leave without the queen. Since about one-third of the U.S. diet depends on pollination and most of that is performed by honeybees, this constitutes a serious problem, according to Jeff Pettis of the U.S. Agricultural Research Service. "They're the heavy lifters of agriculture," Pettis said of honeybees. "And the reason they are is they're so mobile and we can rear them in large numbers and move them to a crop when it's blooming." 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. Pettis and other experts are gathering outside Washington for a two-day workshop starting on Monday to pool their knowledge and come up with a plan of action to combat what they call colony collapse disorder. "What we're describing as colony collapse disorder is the rapid loss of adult worker bees from the colony over a very short period of time, at a time in the season when we wouldn't expect a rapid die-off of workers: late fall and early spring," Pettis said.
Small workers in a supersize society The problem has prompted a congressional hearing, a report by the National Research Council and a National Pollinator Week set for June 24-30 in Washington, but so far no clear idea of what is causing it. "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. There have been other fluctuations in the number of honeybees, going back to the 1880s, where there were "mysterious disappearances without bodies just as we're seeing now, but never at this magnitude," Berenbaum said in a telephone interview. In some cases, beekeepers are losing 50 percent of their bees to the disorder, with some suffering even higher losses. One beekeeper alone lost 40,000 bees, Pettis said. Nationally, some 27 states have reported the disorder, with billions of bees simply gone. Some beekeepers supplement their stocks with bees imported from Australia, said beekeeper Jeff Anderson, whose business keeps him and his bees traveling between Minnesota and California. Honeybee hives are rented out to growers to pollinate their crops, and beekeepers move around as the growing seasons change. 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. But honeybees are the big actors in commercial pollination efforts. "One reason we're in this situation is this is a supersize society -- we tend to equate small with insignificant," Berenbaum said. "I'm sorry but that's not true in biology. You have to be small to get into the flower and deliver the pollen. "Without that critical act, there's no fruit. And no technology has been invented that equals, much less surpasses, insect pollinators."
WASHINGTON -- Go to work, come home.
Go to work, come home. Go to work -- and vanish without a trace. Billions of bees have done just that, leaving the crop fields they are supposed to pollinate, and scientists are mystified about why. 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. If the bees were dying of pesticide poisoning or freezing, their bodies would be expected to lie around the hive. And if they were absconding because of some threat -- which they have been known to do -- they wouldn't leave without the queen. Since about one-third of the U.S. diet depends on pollination and most of that is performed by honeybees, this constitutes a serious problem, according to Jeff Pettis of the U.S. Agricultural Research Service. "They're the heavy lifters of agriculture," Pettis said of honeybees. "And the reason they are is they're so mobile and we can rear them in large numbers and move them to a crop when it's blooming." 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. Pettis and other experts are gathering outside Washington for a two-day workshop starting on Monday to pool their knowledge and come up with a plan of action to combat what they call colony collapse disorder. "What we're describing as colony collapse disorder is the rapid loss of adult worker bees from the colony over a very short period of time, at a time in the season when we wouldn't expect a rapid die-off of workers: late fall and early spring," Pettis said.
Small workers in a supersize society The problem has prompted a congressional hearing, a report by the National Research Council and a National Pollinator Week set for June 24-30 in Washington, but so far no clear idea of what is causing it. "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. There have been other fluctuations in the number of honeybees, going back to the 1880s, where there were "mysterious disappearances without bodies just as we're seeing now, but never at this magnitude," Berenbaum said in a telephone interview. In some cases, beekeepers are losing 50 percent of their bees to the disorder, with some suffering even higher losses. One beekeeper alone lost 40,000 bees, Pettis said. Nationally, some 27 states have reported the disorder, with billions of bees simply gone. Some beekeepers supplement their stocks with bees imported from Australia, said beekeeper Jeff Anderson, whose business keeps him and his bees traveling between Minnesota and California. Honeybee hives are rented out to growers to pollinate their crops, and beekeepers move around as the growing seasons change. 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. But honeybees are the big actors in commercial pollination efforts. "One reason we're in this situation is this is a supersize society -- we tend to equate small with insignificant," Berenbaum said. "I'm sorry but that's not true in biology. You have to be small to get into the flower and deliver the pollen. "Without that critical act, there's no fruit. And no technology has been invented that equals, much less surpasses, insect pollinators."
5 comments:
Thank you for posting about this very important subject that should be of concern to everyone on this planet. I've been searching online for information about this, as there is very little mention of it in the mainstream media. I did find an article that puts together a lot of research on the subject that may be of interest to you. You can find it at:
http://www.signs-of-the-times.org
/articles/show/130784-
To+Bee+or+not+to+Be
Gosh, did I hear about this on NPR? I don' recall. But, the news is: cell phones are responsible for this problem of the missing bees. Evidently, the bees are losing their signals because of the interference of cell phone whatevers...signals.
The argument is: how can this be? There are fewer missing bees in Europe and a larger population of cell phone usage there.
May be they could dust crops with the needed pollin from a crop dusting airplane.
Pollen actually must be inserted into the flower pod in order to take place,but another thought for the Bee disappearance is the small id chips they have been placing on the back of bees which could give some credence to the cell phone thing thank you for the comments.
spantalk.
funny thing. i just saw a news segment about the loss of bees nationwide here in the US.
lemme think....
it seems that the official reason for the loss of honey bees in the US is now a mystery. i was depressed that there was no mention of cell phones or those teeny-tiny micro chips that have been placed onto the honey bee back.
certainly, one would expect honey bees to go off course after their back has been ladden with the weight of spy devices, if that is the purpose for chips on bees.
it is sad to think about, really.
Have we in the US gone so low as to allow our government to place chips on bees, and therefore dweeb them off course, thus confusing the natural migration those bees have had for over a millenium? And, we do this for what reason?
soon all of the nuts in Northern Cali, (I believe the news mentioned possible loss of a certain tree growing nut being affected) will be non-productive. This is happening at a time when we all are looking for ways of consuming protein that requires fewer steps to the end consumer, so to speak. i know, i wouldn't prefer eating nuts over eating cows, but more folk do these days.
Another problem could be the exchange of food items from foreign land which could introduce insects that thrive on killing the beneficial insects of the America. The only reason I can think of for this type of careless activity is for the destruction of people,not being politcal but trying to discern what is happening in the US brings one to understand that maybe when Science states that humans are creating global warming then the only logical view left is we must eliminate the human,to keep the planet earth-not a theory I would support.
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