This is my current commute to the food store, until Whole Foods opens in a month. Note that the climate and ecosystem are completely falling apart – full of verdant vegetation, flowers and bees pollinating the flowers.
Government experts call this climate/bee colony collapse.
Regretfully, I suspect your analysis is correct again.
Omanuel— I have read a bit farther into your claims. Very intense around WW11.
Regarding what seems to be illogical neutron-neutron repulsion. Are you saying that NNR might be more the cause of the expanding universe than the sneaky, hiding black matter?
In my little suburban ‘utopia’ (overseen by city ‘code enforcement’ officers) that would the basis for a ‘cite’ (literally: a citation; payable in US bucks or coinage if not trimmed to under 12 inches in height within 10 days.)
It’s amazing that somebody links bee colony collapse to AGW. Bees like it warm, and global warming would open up places that are currently too cold for bees. The bees are being killed by pesticides. They flourish in cities where people don’t spray crops. Has zero to do with climate.
It’s too cold in the Adirondacks for honeybees. They have never lived here. Although they live in the valleys, there have never been honeybees on the hills, all the flowers are pollinated by wasps, hornets, ants, beetles, bumble bees, flies, birds, etc. It’s a stupid myth that honeybees are required for pollination, since they were introduced by Europeans a few hundred years ago and North America has had flowers for 500 million years, so I was told.
Sorry, angiosperms are 160 million. Close enough. Add butterflies and moths to the list.
For all the exaggerated hype about the decline of apis mellifera (the honeybee), they are in no danger of extinction. (yet)
Most articles focus on chemical stresses (herbicides & pesticides) and ignore the other environmental stressors. The bees are still adapting to the varroa mite, and other devastating imported pests and viruses. A varroa infestation weakens the colonies allowing other diseases to emerge. For some fascinating, non-hyped information, Randy Oliver has written a wonderful series of factual articles discussing this issue. If you are interested here is the link: http://scientificbeekeeping.com/colony-health/ (the first article summarizes where we are at, the rest of the series may be a bit deep for non beekeepers)
Fortunately bees adapt quickly and they will adapt to the pests and viruses. And the GMO crops will be a short term blip as they tend to produce less and the pests are adapting very rapidly as well. (Super weeds and Bt resistant insects)
The main problem with honey bees is the monocultures. Both of the crops they pollinate and that the bees themselves. The main US commercial honey bee is, in the main, a monoculture of the European honey bees (Apis mellifera Linnaeus) mostly from Italian stock (see http://www.beesource.com/resources/usda/history-of-beekeeping-in-the-united-states/).
Part of the reason for experiments with crossing these docile bees with the more agressive wild bees was to encourage better honey production, more vigor and better natural resilience. Unfortunately we got the dangerous and aggressive Africanized bees. Though many reports say that the extremes of their aggressive traits are tempering down, unfortunately they still do not like to remain within confined and (human) controlled hive colonies, like their European cousins. Also see http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/MISC/BEES/euro_honey_bee.htm
But there are many wild American bees, and nature shall ensure these will proliforate into niches that the commerial bee leave – eventually. http://bugguide.net/node/view/475348
I grew up on a fruit farm in the Hudson Valley. Everybody was alarmed one year in the 1960’s, because there were no bees. No bees means no apples, so they thought. Some of the farmers spent a fortune importing bees, but most could not afford it and expected there to be no crop. Guess what? All the apples grew normally. Everybody got apples.
There must be 1000 species of flower pollinators that live in downstate NY. Honeybees and 999 others. Everything that flies, hops, crawls or slithers likes pollen. Even the wind spreads pollen.
There is a lot of alarmist non sense written and spoken about the loss of honey bees. Very few people seem to appreciate that these honey bees are an alien European species that human brought to the Americas.
Honey bees are useful but there are plenty of othe critters out there that we have no control over, that can pollinate plants.
And that is often the alarmist problem – control. And to them I say, ‘well that’s nature, get used to it. Hope for the best, plan for the worst’
If you were to go around saying that we don’t need honeybees to pollenate crops, they would call you a denier, bee hater, who works for big tobacco.
By the way, I have apple trees and they are mainly pollenated by vespa vulgaris, the common wasp. All the rednecks around here call them bees. I have no honeybees here, never have.
In the First World only about 4% – 5% of our food is pollinated with the help of “ANIMALS” and the honeybee “animal” is responsible for only a small infinitesimal (mole fraction in Steve’s words) part of that pollination. However honeybees are vital for large scale so called “factory farm” agriculture because like in the accompanying article only honey bees are available and are plentiful enough during the early fruit setting season to pollinate hundreds or even thousands of continuous acres of a single crop grown in a single region in only a few short weeks.
Michelle Obama’s sky high sugar prices (sugar is used to build bee populations in the early Spring) used to make sure that the hives have enough food to get through the Winter coupled with Obama’s record high fuel prices are more responsible for any plight that commercial beekeepers find themselves in today.
Thousands of acres of one crop is true, in the Mid-Hudson Valley apple country, about 50% of the land is dedicated to apple orchards. NY is the number 2 apple-producing state after Washington.
But like I said, in years when there are no honeybees, there are normal crops. Somebody is hopping, crawling, or flying around those apple blossoms.
I got two calls last week asking me to dig feral bee colonies out of the walls and soffits of occupied dwellings. One of these colonies was 3 years old. Keeping bees is the dirtiest of the dirtiest stoop labor. Few US citizens will work hard enough anymore to succeed at bee keeping.
As proof of what I say here is a BBC video of an African bee person named Tee Tee and the extremes what people without easy access to cane, beet, and corn sugar will go to satisfy their sweet tooth. I highly recommend you view this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3W_iMve4xvg
Wow what a video.
thanks
Whoa! What a video!
As someone who has done both rock climbing and bee-keeping, I am impressed!
Apiculture using the Africanized bee, Apis mellifera scutellata, is the norm in tropical America. With a bit of care, this more robust bee is a good producer.
http://www.beekeeping.com/articles/us/fert/nicaragua.htm
As your link shows (thank-you) the Africanized bees are used but with care, it is a shame they are displacing the local, and less productive, stingless bees. As it says of the local bees ” ..melipone bees.This large family of stingless bees, endemic throughout the continent’s tropical zone, produces a highly appreciated honey. It was the only bee exploited during the pre-Hispanic era but was later neglected in favour of the more productive European bee.”
One glaring thing in the bee colony issues is they stack hives directly on top of each other and next to each other, then act shocked that mites and diseases have spread to surrounding hives. Everyone understands what crowded human populations in refugee camps and cities means in terms of disease spread, but somehow no one sees that issue with hives. It makes no sense. I’ve even seen documentaries where they say that bees will bump into each other in the field or land at the wrong hive helping spread disease. Yet they won’t so much as put the hives a reasonable distance apart in the field.
Yes it won’t solve all the issues, but why not take simple steps that are within their control versus hoping for the scientist gods to come up with the magic solution to their problems?
We get into extreme trouble when we attempt to apply personification to an insect. Since one honey bee colony can forage on over 80 square miles and to get good pollination an almond grove requires two or more hives per acre you need to go back to school and learn something about either bees or agriculture, preferably both. Your ideas won’t solve the issue. Besides the drone bee is welcomed as a prodigal son in every hive he visits and drones from every hive in the surrounding area congregate hundreds of feet in the air to compete for the favors of virgin queen bees. In other words quoting an old song that came out of WWl,”How you going to keep ’em’ down on the farm after they’ve seen gay Parie?”
Wow, I don’t know what to make of that. It is not “personification”. I assume you mean anthropomorphizing, which I did not do. What I said is that people understand what crowding of people does for disease spread. I did not say the bees were stressed because they’re bored with their jobs, or the bees were depressed from the regularity of cultivated crops and were dying from the resulting diseases, or any attribution of human traits to bees.
Commercial beekeepers have been reporting colony collapse disorder which is unexplained, and you’re saying I need to go back to school to learn something about bees or agriculture. I’ve seen it attributed to mites, and fungus, and then pesicides, starvation, etc. You say that having hives a reasonable distance apart will not “solve the issue.” And I would say, show me the studies that say so, because wild colonies seem to be a bit more resilient, and if transmittable infestations or fungus plays a role, then concentrating populations does not seem to make sense.
I love the chicory. It’s the flower of summer to me.
Andrew
Looks like Lactuca tuberosa to me.
After further review, it could be Cichorium intybus.
I picked one this AM while Schwinning.
Once again junk science says that pesticides are killing bees.
http://junkscience.com/2014/04/05/bees-are-more-important-than-you-think/
You need that same ride only to Whole Foods. I go in there and want to binge feed. They have giant crab cakes that are incredible. The fruits and veggie section is amazing.
The bee population has drastically increased in the last few decades on the deserts around Yuma. It ‘s probably due to Africanization of the population and increased greening due to increasing CO2 levels. There’s probably a good thesis or scientific paper or two that could be done here.
If you live with at least a south-facing balcony or yard space in Maryland and will be there during the next year, you should be able to grow large, sweet, Big Boy tomatoes, English peas, and strawberries of a quality not available in any local market, except maybe some farmers markets. In summer in the 70’s we used to go to Western Maryland to pick our own peaches right off the trees. If that is still possible, I have never found any that sweet and delicious in any other part of the United States. There was no lack of trying. Apple and cherry trees do well there, also.
Apparently you haven’t been paying attention. Global warming is going to cause both plant die offs because of drought and increased pollen allergies such as ragweed due to accelerated plant growth…at the same time.
Yep. Plant die off and plant growth at the same time. Check.
Let me guess. Good plants will die off and only ragweed, poison ivy, etc will grow more.
Not sure if you’re be facetious, but that last part has been predicted by the alarmists:
http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/07/23/global-warming-encourages-boom-poison-ivy-growth
Steve Schneider said CO2 is bad for crops because it encourages weed growth.
I believe more CO2 to be a boon to the green world, water and CO2 are the two centrally important ingredients. But more CO2 means that less water is necessary. Double win!
We need government enforcement of climate justice for bees and redistribute pollen equally amongst all bees and we also need to prevent the global warming that is causing bees to freeze to death.
http://survivaljoe.net/blog/70-percent-of-honey-bees-in-midwest-dead-due-to-harsh-winter/
Amen Sundance! Amen!
Check that stats, it didn’t really happen. 2014 was just an average winter in the USA.
According to NOAA Dec-Feb 2013-2014 winter was 33 coldest out of 119 winters in data set. When I look at data for Midwest which is specific to the bee story I linked, the rank was #6 coldest out of 119. You have no sense of humor or statistics.
I find the whole “Bees are dying and we are to blame” meme fascinating. The US Gov’t issues regular “bee reports” around the USA and I recently went through them and all reports said the bee population is normal and healthy. (scratches head)
I raised bees where there is very little farming due to free trade killing off most farms here which were mainly dairy farms and raising sheep. The bees here all died suddenly and totally due to hive collapse which is a disease brought in by foreign bees thanks to free trade.
And I couldn’t restart my colony that died. Even with new boxes. Even when a queen bee moved into an empty box by her own initiative, her hive which thrived for one year, suddenly collapsed and died, too.
This is rather sad to observe. The blame for all this is all over the place, the fact is, we don’t know why it is happening.
I do know that this is due to commercial bee keeping which over concentrates hives during transport and when they ‘overwinter’ in the south before being shipped all over the nation in spring. This ‘industry’ is quite destructive and spreads diseases.
The commercial guys are having a lot of problems due to their “silver-bullet” approach to controlling the varroa mite. Some of them will use commercial miticides until the mites develop resistance, then complain about CCD. A mite induced collapse generally presents as a viral disease outbreak. Root cause is more likely the compromised immune system due to mite parasitism.
If you wish to try again, you may find Randy Oliver’s series of articles a help. http://scientificbeekeeping.com/varroa-management/
Randy can be a bit cranky and opinionated at times. (remind you of anyone on this site?) and I loved this rant:
Randy Oliver
ScientificBeekeeping.com
I’ve been encouraged in recent years by the number of beekeepers who appear to be successfully keeping locally-adapted stocks of bees without treatment for varroa. I am a strong supporter of their efforts, and see them as the wave of the future.
But First A Rant
Unfortunately, there is also a great deal of confusion as to what “treatment free” beekeeping really means. Allow me to use an analogy to explain:
Dairymen prefer to keep Holstein cattle. Holsteins are thin-skinned, thoroughly domesticated cattle selected solely for milk production. Their normal care requires shelter, supplemental feeding, routine vaccinations, and treatment with antibiotics. If a dairyman turned his Holsteins out on the range to fend for themselves without care, and half of them died each year, he would be accused of having committed animal neglect—“the failure to provide the basic care required for an animal to thrive.”
Yet this is exactly what thousands of recreational beekeepers do every year. Under the misconception that they are practicing “treatment free” beekeeping, they are in actuality simply neglecting their domesticated animals. The reason for this is that they are starting with commercial package bees—bees akin to Holstein cattle, in that they are bred for high brood and honey production under standard management practices (notably mite management, but also supplemental feeding or antibiotic treatment if indicated). Most commercial bee stocks should be considered as domesticated animals. There is absolutely no reason to expect that your wishful thinking will miraculously transform your newly-purchased “domesticated” bees into hardy survivor stock able to survive as wild animals without standard care and treatment.
Now don’t get me wrong, I am no more criticizing the commercial queen producers than I would criticize the dedicated breeders of Holstein cattle. The queen breeders are producing the best breeds for beekeepers willing to provide their colonies with the “standard” degree of husbandry (which includes at this time, treatment(s) of some sort for varroa). I have no problem whatsoever with that; but my crystal ball says that someday the market will dwindle for bees that require regular treatment for mites.
Do not delude yourself. Allowing domesticated package colonies to die year after year is not in any way, shape, or form a contribution to the breeding of mite-resistant stocks. There is a vast difference between breeding for survivor stock and simply allowing commercial bees to die from neglect! By introducing commercial bees year after year into an area, and then allowing those package colonies to first produce drones and then to later die from varroa, these well-meaning but misguided beekeepers screw up any evolutionary progress that the local feral populations might be making towards developing natural resistance to varroa. Not only that, but those collapsing “mite bombs” create problems for your neighbors. Referring to yourself as a bee-keeper confers upon you a responsibility to the local beekeeping community. Allowing hives to collapse from AFB or varroa makes you a disease-spreading nuisance!
(emphasis as Randy bolded it on his own site)
And I had the same experiences in 2011 and 2012…. This year, I’m running out of equipment. And I blame Mr. Oliver for that.
Good luck.