Honey Bees Mysteriously Dying

[Andrew]

This is a very bad thing.  Honey bee colonies are dying out and scientists are trying to find out why:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070212/ap_on_sc/dying_bees

[Ash]

It's all part of the Squirrel Conspiracy.

Didn't you know?

[ER]

Good thread! Yep, bees are in serious trouble, and that means everything else is, too. It's about much more than the increasing price of honey, bees are a cornerstone of the food cycle as we know it.

After doing some research into the catastrophic decline in bee populations, I bought a colony of bees early this year and they're really no trouble at all. Figured I'd do my part to combat the decline in the species, without which this planet would be doomed or at least way bad off. (Or maybe I should say "way-er" bad off? lol) As a nice payback from the bees I noticed an exploding profusion of pink clover blossoms and wildflowers in general by late summer.

I also bought a bat box in 2007 and put it up in the woods and within a week I had bats living in it. Now I have a small, thriving community of them in the woods a couple hundred yards from my house. I love watching them dive and twist through the air on summer nights, chasing after moths and mosquitoes.

I guess I have a soft spot in general for wildlife cause during our bad twenty-year drought last summer when raccoons kept coming out of the forest to drink in my pool (yuck) I  put a kiddie wading pool in the woods right at the tree line and filled it up daily as a makeshift watering hole. I was soon identifying tracks from birds, raccoons, opossums, deer, during that dry summer everything out there seemed in need of water.

Heck, at this rate racking up cosmic "be nice to animals" points I figure I'll ascend to Nirvana any day now. 

[Trevor]

This is a very bad thing.  Honey bee colonies are dying out and scientists are trying to find out why:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070212/ap_on_sc/dying_bees

Yikes.....I hope this doesn't mean that M Night Shyamalan's The Happening is actually happening! 

[schmendrik]

I didn't realize this was still going on. I heard about it last year.

Apparently it's called Colony Collapse Disorder, it's spread to most states, and we still have no idea what causes it.

http://www.nrdc.org/wildlife/animals/bees.asp?gclid=CLLA_5Twm5cCFQUWGgodB08xxQ

[Mofo Rising]

The Straight Dope did a recent column covering this phenomenon, wherein they pretty much pan the idea. I think the columnist is a little too eager to blame negligent beekeepers (his update includes a conspiracy of beekeeper silence), but he does bring up some interesting disputation.

This was last year's subject, and I still have people who will swear to me up and down that it is cell phones' fault.

It is a problem, but it is it serious enough that we actually have to worry about? I watched what I believe was a 60 Minutes special for a class. What amazed me most about the video is that there are traveling beekeepers who rent out the pollination services of their hives to farms. The ingenuity of small businesses never ceases to amaze me.

The problem with long-term, low-level biologic effects is that they are hard to quantify. CCD does not have a concrete highly visible explanation like DDT. You can see this same problem with trying to convince people about human-generated global warming through carbon emissions (which I agree with, but I do not want to hijack this thread to another subject). It's a long slog, because there is no simple answer.

[ghouck]

bees are a cornerstone of the food cycle as we know it.

That's a truth many people don't realize, enough so that orange and other fruit producers actually RENT bee colonies to germinate their crops. There are true beekeepers that raise bee colonies and take the hive boxes to the orchards as a business service. Less bees could mean less oranges and such.

[Andrew]

Last I heard new news on this I thought that they had pinned CCD to a biologic agent.  They had taken hives that had collapsed, some of them they irradiated, while others they did not.  The non-irradiated hives collapsed again, while most of the treated hives remained healthy.

I remember the hives on the back of a pickup truck that were moved around the farms and orchards in DE when I was young.  Some farmers had their own hives, and we had a number of wild hives (at one point Todd had a massive colony take up residence in his attic).  It seems that wild hives are less common now.  We see just as many of the smaller bumblebees as honeybees.  When I was young you couldn't run across the lawn (which had clover) barefoot during the summer without stepping on a honeybee.  With the kids I look for that now, and do tell them to put on their sandals, but just don't see the same number of honeybees.  Not even close.

[Doctor Menard]

When I was young you couldn't run across the lawn (which had clover) barefoot during the summer without stepping on a honeybee.  With the kids I look for that now, and do tell them to put on their sandals, but just don't see the same number of honeybees.  Not even close.

That reminds me of lightning bugs (fireflies); though I don't know if it is in any way related.

35 or so years ago, I used to be fascinated with the lightning bugs taking flight at dusk. The approaching darkness would twinkle with the lightning bugs coming out of the lawns.

Just a few months ago, as I noticed a lightning bug on the porch, I commented to my neighbor about how infrequently I see them anymore. Perhaps they were more abundant in certain areas where I had seen them before as a kid, or maybe I paid more attention as a kid, but it just seems like lawns do not come to life as night comes with the rising of the lightning bugs as they used to.

[ER]

Y'know, now you mention it, I'm almost sure I heard something on NPR about lightning bug numbers declining...

[frank]

There is a very plausible explanation to why it is so hard to pinpoint some chemical agent or disease to CCD. The general idea is that the "hive's immune system" is down, so all kinds of diseases become fatal. The reasons for the weakend immune system are hard to find. An educated guess would be stress, both because of the exponation to all kinds of chemicals but also because of the shipping around. Often bees are not kept anymore for honey production (in fact very few large beekeeper companies bother to harvest the honey) and colonies are regularly shipped form Florida to New England to Central USA and sometimes California and back to Florida. While beekeeping for honey production usually involves breeding skills adopted to local requirements, beekeeping for pollination services involves shipping and crossbreeding queen bees all over the world, resulting in  fast growing colonies little adapted to local environments. However, this is so far just an idea, but it is a fascinating topic.

[Mr. DS]

Some farmers had their own hives, and we had a number of wild hives (at one point Todd had a massive colony take up residence in his attic).

A woman I work with has a hive within her walls.  She said you can literally hear the buzzing when you put your ear to the wall.  An exterminator came and said it was one of the biggest hives he's ever seen.  Far as I know she hasn't had him do anything with it yet.

I hope this topic continues to be addressed because of it's importance.  Perhaps one of my favorite sounds is going out to my garden at the farm in the morning.  All you hear is buzzing and the bees swarm in and out around you simply doing their job.  Lets hope theres more to go around because those little friends of ours do a big job. 

[ER]

Reminds me of something Rick Steves said on his radio show. He said Provence is one of his favorite places on earth because it smells like lavender, it feels warm and sunny, and if you listen you hear bees buzzing all around you.

[raj]

I believe the squirrels are kidnapping them (beenapping?) as part of their plot against us.

[Hammock Rider]

 This is from Wikipedia's entry on the German Pharmaceutical company Bayer, makers of Bayer aspirin.

"Bayer AG is involved in an ongoing controversy with French and Nova Scotian beekeepers over claimed pesticide kills of honeybees from its seed treatment insecticide imidacloprid. France has since issued a provisional ban on the use of Imidacloprid for corn seed treatment pending further action. A consortium of U.S. beekeepers has also filed a civil suit against Bayer CropScience for alleged losses"

Here's a link to the article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_(company)