An alarming loss of an important link in eco sustainability. Bees are dying.

Suddenly, the bees are simply vanishing

Scientists are at a loss to pinpoint the cause. The die-off in 35 states has crippled beekeepers and threatened many crops.

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The puzzling phenomenon, known as Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD, has been reported in 35 states, five Canadian provinces and several European countries. The die-off has cost U.S. beekeepers about $150 million in losses and an uncertain amount for farmers scrambling to find bees to pollinate their crops.

Scientists have scoured the country, finding eerily abandoned hives in which the bees seem to have simply left their honey and broods of baby bees.

"We've never experienced bees going off and leaving brood behind," said Pennsylvania-based beekeeper Dave Hackenberg. "It was like a mother going off and leaving her kids."

Researchers have picked through the abandoned hives, dissected thousands of bees, and tested for viruses, bacteria, pesticides and mites.

So far, they are stumped.

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It didn't take researchers long to figure out they were dealing with something new

LOL:

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In the absence of knowledge, theories have proliferated, including one that Osama bin Laden has engineered the die-off to disrupt American agriculture.

This is how food chains collapse. Humans in general remain arrogant enough to believe they can manage nature. The scientists with the uniquely developed knowledge in these areas are far less certain than those humans who get their food from the grocery store, which magically appears there, bright and shiny, every day.

You mean apples don't come from the apple factory and the alfalfa we feed our cows doesn't come from the alfalfa factory? No bees. No crops. No seeds. No food.
Retired Monk

I read about this a little while ago, and it is disturbing. I thought I had come across and article that sites a fungus as the possible culprit. I'll see if I can find it.

Lisa, I read an article recently pointing the finger to cell phones as disrupting the bees "navigational system". They may simply get lost and not be able to return to the hive. Our communications systems may have something to do with it. This isn't a certainty.

Retired Monk
"Ideology is a disease"

Here's one article that talks about possible fungus, but also how and experiment of irradiating the hives has led to the repopulation of the hive. So, whatever the culprit, it can be irradiated?

Another article

A lot of people may not understand the importance of bees disappearing. But, it's extremely serious, because bees do most of the pollinating for plants.

Save the Bees!!!

Watch this:
Bill Maher on the Disappearance of the Bees

Bill Maher was excellent.

One of the thoughts I didn't add to the first post was that the article focused on the effects on human based agricultural systems. There's more to this biosphere than us, as his quote from Einstein indicates. I implied it in my statement on human arrogance. Can we seriously think about running around and irradiating every bee hive on the planet, wild and kept?

It's very difficult to get humans to think in terms of systems theory. It's something we have to cognitively learn to do. Nature worked just fine all on its own, and we adapted to it, our brains evolved with what it provided. And then we decided we could improve upon nature. I think that was about ten thousand years ago. Of course there are those who disagree with that scenario. May we all rest in peace if they get their way.

My understanding of the problem considers two popular theories:

1) Nicotine based insecticides cause the bees to become unable to navigate back to their hive after absorbing the chemical. Validation of this theory is shown by insects which are unable to perform normal tasks after ingesting nicotine.

2) The sun has begun emitting photons of a shorter wavelength, while bees navigate by the longer wavelength photons. This results in bees unable to find their way back to the hive. While we are on the subject, has anyone noticed that the warm yellow sun of our childhood is now a burning hot white sun?

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Originally posted by Gnarlodious:
My understanding of the problem considers two popular theories:

1) Nicotine based insecticides cause the bees to become unable to navigate back to their hive after absorbing the chemical. Validation of this theory is shown by insects which are unable to perform normal tasks after ingesting nicotine.

2) The sun has begun emitting photons of a shorter wavelength, while bees navigate by the longer wavelength photons. This results in bees unable to find their way back to the hive. While we are on the subject, has anyone noticed that the warm yellow sun of our childhood is now a burning hot white sun?

I'd like to see some more research on the sun photon emissions changes and bees. I've searched. I found a complex discussion of possible interactions with sunspots. Other discussions have spun off it, I see. The word "popular" is highly suspect in that one, but I would definitely apply the word "fascinating" to what I read.

Clearly, if radiating a hive fixes the problem in some cases, as cited in the lead post link, then something is amiss with sun spot/photon emission as the primary theory. It may have an influence, just as the cell phone syndrome has.

Yes, the insecticide is one of the theories.

The notion that there is no single cause, but rather a multiplex of systemic relationships should also be considered.

Oddly as I read this thread, a bee has flown into my cabin and is buzzing against a window about three feet from my head. I seldom see honey bees here in the mountains of North Carolina. Most common are those huge yellow jackets that live in the ground. Walk over a nest and they spoil your day.

Sawdust, reminds me of visiting a park in Corvallis and a co-worker stepped over one. He thought that he could stand still and they would not bother him...

Well I ran like a ????

He ended up in the hospital. I got one sting.

I had one of those sub surface hives out side one of the side doors at work.
A big cup of gas and a match...no more bee's.

I still like the Osama did it theory.

It's good to see the bees getting their own thread, Ren. I just remembered that I'd been reading about this, in part because of stuff that came up in the Ecopsychology thread. One of the best parts about board exchange is how the thoughts and the questions loop around and crystalize, or take on a new focus, a new path, but there's a common thread that's recognizable. Lots of times, though, I don't really want to know where it leads. The leads go to very sad places.

We've just had some bee experience. In our farm house a wild colony set up in the East Wall. We asked some people around what to do about it. We were told that the honey will attract other insects and can set up mold so we must get them out. Didn't want to kill them, and didn't have bee suits handy or anywhere near--no experience either. So one day my husband and I were on that side of the house and a few bees were flying in and out and I just decided to tell them that unfortunately the home they had chose was our home and that they would have to find another and we would like for them to take that inititive. Then a funny thing happened. One bee came our of the whole in the wall that was their entrance and flew over to my husband and bopped him on the head and then flew off. We decided to go somewhere else.

The next time we went out to visit our farm place, the nest had been abandoned. However, we had not found the time to take the wall apart and get the comb and honey out, and 3 weeks ago we went back out and again we were on that side of the house. I was checking some buffalo grass seed I had thrown out about a month earlier to see if it had sprouted, when my husband said, "Hey there are bees again." Sure enough bees were coming back out of the whole, but then, I looked up at the window of that section and the room on the other side of the wall was swarming with bees. It was really kind of spooky and I began to feel like these could be Africanized--strictly a feeling. So we left without going into the house.

My husband called the Texas Tech Ag dept and asked for an entomologist that was familiar with honey bees. They discussed quite a bit, including the colony collapse disorder. According to this guy, they now know what it is. It's a combination of a fungal and bacterial infection, and right now they are simply hoping that it doesn't get all of the bee hives. NOne-the -less, he recommended that we get someone to fumigate, as they could set up a hive inside the house.

But when we went out the next time, the bees swarming inside were apparently trapped, or the hive was diseased and they fleed it by going into the house. Their were hundreds of dead bee bodies inside. The hive was empty again.

eley

Sounds like that movie where the husband keeps dying and reappearing and the days get all mixed up.

Quite a story eley.

Yes, it is quite a story, eley. Made me think of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds.

I remodeled a large house in Tampa quite a few years ago. In one bedroom there was a constant buzzing. I noticed a bunch of honey bee activity near a chimney that ran up next to the bedroom. A little investigative demolition proved that bees had built a huge hive in the ceiling.

I found a bee keeper and had him look at the situation. Attics are hot places and if you kill all the bees, the wax in the hive melts because the bees air condition the hive by constantly flapping their wings and moving the air around. If the wax melts, the honey and wax can leak through the ceiling.

I tore the ceiling out of the bedroom and the bee keeper took most of the hive out and took the queen and who ever else wanted to go along with him. He told me it was the largest hive he'd ever seen in a house.

You and your bee's......

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My husband called the Texas Tech Ag dept and asked for an entomologist that was familiar with honey bees. They discussed quite a bit, including the colony collapse disorder. According to this guy, they now know what it is. It's a combination of a fungal and bacterial infection, and right now they are simply hoping that it doesn't get all of the bee hives.

So, Bill Maher and the blame Mankind first crowd is wrong? What a surprise.

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So, Bill Maher and the blame Mankind first crowd is wrong? What a surprise.

If the June 10 article linked in the first post accurately indicates the most up to date information at the time also includes the hypothesis Texas Tech put forth to eley some time before is actually only one of many, than I'd suspect your sarcasm is premature. But the facts remain about human effects on the biosphere, whether the bees are an example of it or not is open for debate, and there's not much your disdain for those concerned can do to change it.

From the June 10 article:

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The dead bees under Dennis vanEngelsdorp's microscope were like none he had ever seen.

He had expected to see mites or amoebas, perennial pests of bees. Instead, he found internal organs swollen with debris and strangely blackened. The bees' intestinal tracts were scarred, and their rectums were abnormally full of what appeared to be partly digested pollen. Dark marks on the sting glands were telltale signs of infection.

"The more you looked, the more you found," said VanEngelsdorp, the acting apiarist for the state of Pennsylvania. "Each thing was a surprise."

My disdain is directed at people like Maher who before they even know 1 % of the facts automatically blame me, you, Mankind. This knee jerk reaction is getting to be so predictable it has become laughable.

A knee jerk reaction to a knee jerk reaction is also a... well, you get the picture. Is it possible that Maher actually had his staff do some research on this? What he said was actually quite reflective of the research I've read.

I don't have access to the corporate produced public media, like television, and I don't listen to radio, so I'm not in touch with the "predictable" knee jerk reaction you seem to see. However, it's my impression from what I do review on the Internet, that what I had become aware of, myself, in terms of the general health of biosystems and the deleterious effects of human intervention in the mid seventies, went through a period of suppression in the eighties and nineties, and is only now beginning to resurface again.

Maybe what you are seeing is symptoms of the public in general waking up again, along with a whole series of eco events that were predicted over thirty years ago that would occur if nothing was done to begin mediating these human based effects. Yes, some things were done, but much suppression of the things that were outlined then also occurred over the years. It's interesting to me that in the seventies the US was somewhat ahead of the curve on these issues, and now Europe especially has long since passed us by, both in being conscious of the problems facing us, and in developing solutions in a forward looking attempt to deal with what are not short term problems.

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My disdain is directed at people like Maher who before they even know 1 % of the facts automatically blame me, you, Mankind. This knee jerk reaction is getting to be so predictable it has become laughable.

My speculation would be that your disdain is really about jealousy. Maher's knee jerk reactions are far more clever than yours -- in fact he gets a fair amount of money for his quips. Whereas you, well, are confined to message boards.

Is there anything but knee jerkiness coming from you? Most of the reactions in this thread are knee jerks, yet most of them also have a fair amount of actual content to digest and contemplate. But from you? Notta, save the knee jerk.

One thing I've been rather interested in, regarding the bee issue, is how most people I talk to about it tell me that they've read an article that proclaimed the cause was found. However, each of these various people I've spoke with put forth completely different conclusions. This subject is fascinating in that respect.

Asian Parasite Killing Western Bees - Scientist

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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.

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My speculation would be that your disdain is really about jealousy. Maher's knee jerk reactions are far more clever than yours -- in fact he gets a fair amount of money for his quips. Whereas you, well, are confined to message boards.

Wrong again Jason, I am not jealous of Maher, He can make as much money as he wants, good for him. That does not change the fact that he overreacted to the bee story and was wrong like you. It may go against your “religion” but man is not responsible for every bad thing that happens in nature.

Hey Kulak,

I see you have a warm heart for the bees in particular and our environment in general. Kudos! Love your Avatar, too! Very appropriate.

BTW> You just made it to my ignore list. Cya.

I am sure he is really broken up about that.
Of course can you put me on ignore also.
It is so much fun