Honey Bee Collapse Now Worse on West Coast

Earthfiles keeps good tabs on this type of situation..
This was a good one.

www.earthfiles.com...

>>
April 10, 2008 Gainesville, Florida - On April 5, 2008, England's BBC News carried a report entitled, “U. S. Fears Over Honey Bee Collapse.” A California beekeeper, Gilly Sherman, was interviewed and he said sobering words: “It's worse than last year, and last yar was worse than the year before. So, it's bad. And there are a lot of good, big beekeepers that are having a lot of problems. I think we're coming in for a big train wreck.”

I hate to hear this news. I am still holding my breath and waiting to learn more of the bees in my area. It won't help that we are expecting an unseasonable freeze this week. On a brighter note, I have seen a lot of carpenter bees for the past several weeks, more than I ever remember, but I don't know if there is even a correlation between the two.

you kind of have to live here in the west and be a farmer to know we don't use honey bees as much as people think...

Hornfaced, Orchard Mason and Blue Orchard Bees (A none hive making Solitary Bee) are better adapted to the high heat dry climate we have here. and there is no problem with collapsing haves...

Keeping of Solitary Bees is pretty easy too the live on this box like thing with a single deep hole for each bee. Solitary Bees and I dont know many farmers who dont have a set up for them right in the felds...

I only bring this up as if we did lose the European honey bee out west...its just not that big a deal

[edit on 13-4-2008 by DaddyBare]

Whether useful to west coasters or not, animals.. even bees are our "canaries in the mine", so to speak.

What I find interesting is that studies have been done to see the effects things such as earthquakes have on animals, including bees.

The past 8 months have been the craziest time for earthquakes over the past few years that I have personaly kept up with USGS reports.

Maybe the bees know something we dont. There was that thread yesterday on the 600 earthquakes off the oregon coast in the past 10 days.. makes you wonder.

reply to post by BlackProjects


The part of the article regarding genetically modified crops GMC, Monsanto et. al. caught my attention.
I have always been suspect whenever someone/company claims to know how to "improve" on mother nature, or to control her. We are smart, but not that smart - to have figured out all the possible consequences and outcomes of our actions and manipulations.
We cannot possibly understand entirely the intricacies and complexities of interconnections of the whole bio-system. What seems like a desirable thing in the short term may and often does have serious long terms outcomes. Toxins built into GM plants killing the pollinators is but one example.
Like a conductor lightly waving a little baton to help an orchestra full of individuals to make beautiful music, we would be better off to take only a light, go-with-the-flow approach towards working with the natural world to achieve our needs.

But the problem may become bigger as time goes on, figuring that flowers, trees, and even us depend on honey bees. As well as many birds, and animals. This may be only the beginning of a bad time. I hate to say it but when we lose something like honey bees we will be seeing alot of trouble ahead.

I think we need to look at the big picture not the small picture as one person said that most farms use single bees now, well nature doesnt and when nature starts dying you will soon after. Our homes are made from wood, and wood comes from trees what do you think pollinates the trees? You also use paper for many things and with no bees there wont be many new trees. And thats just the start.

Hilda

Where I live I see no problems. ( TN ) They were all out like crazy last week in the warm weather. It's now like 40 degrees out and going to be that way for a week I guess with possible snow showers around midnight. Maybe they're not liking the west coast and are moving down south to Tennessee? I'll keep an eye out for them when warm weather returns.

Actually, I just read a article a few days ago on how far flower scent (smell?) could travel. It seems that in non-polluted areas, the scent could travel up to 1200 meters. In polluted areas, the maximum distance was ~300 meters. Thats a 75% reduction! It is due to particles binding to the flower molecules, making them heavier.

And the western countries arent really known to be non-polluted..

reply to post by BlackProjects


Check out my thread on flowers losing their smell, they are attributing loss of bees to this. If the flowers have no aroma the bees seek out those that do, pollution is killing the smell from the flowers though!

reply to post by wayno


Has anyone noticed if there pets don't like there food now,sense they use
genetically alterded feed in pet foods.

Remember Einstein saying Mankind would perish 4 years after the beees died out ? 2012 !

It's only an urban legend thou ... I think.

reply to post by BlackProjects


Got to be the chemtrails... which don't exist.. but we see them.

What stays together like that... the Illuminati.




[edit on 4/14/2008 by TeslaandLyne]

This is the European honeybee right? As in, a bee that is not native to this land in the first place, even when the land was still outputting massive production before there was any significant presence of them.

Sometimes species die out, or lose too many numbers. In that case we will just make something else. The original banannas that people in the Western world ued to eat before the second part of the last century has been extinct for at least 60 years. We still have plenty of banannas to go around, granted it took a few years of research to come up with anther one, the cavendish we have now.

Problem is the cavendish is also now goign extinct as a result of lack of genetic diversity. but scientist and agricultural genetecists are already working on the replacment.

If the honeybees go extinct, which I doubt, we'll just modify and create a new species. As long as we have a stable scientific system in place, we can do this indefinetly. I dotn really reccomend it, but apparantley that is just the way things are going to be and I cannot do anything about it. So I will just go with the flow.

problem is that bees aren't just for honey, they cross-pollinate a lot of variety of plants and ensures the growth of new generations of plants. once they're gone, it'll have ill effects on the food chain. It will ultimately affect us in some way (not just the production of honey)

reply to post by DYepes


Occasionally a bio-engineered solution may appear to work, at least in the short term, but it is folly to think we can rely on that indefinitely. Monsanto's aim is to make us all totally dependent on their "creations". The problem is their products don't result from the trials of eons of existence, only short term lab results. Their long term viability is unknown, as are their long term health risks.
The richness of bio-diversity in the "unaltered" world is what saves us from natural ups and downs. A healthy nature can draw on this diversity when a "substitute" is needed to deal with some natural problem.
We can't just keep sticking plastic band-aids on one problem after another; especially when more and more of the problems in nature are a direct result of our meddling in the first place.

No, no everythings's OK. I saw a couple of honey bees outside this morning so there's no crisis.

Seriously if dogs and cats were disappearing off the face of the earth for no apparent reason would we say "Oh well, species die off. Scientists will come up with a new pet."

Hello people this aren't freaking pink elephants, they're bees and bats across the entire country. Canary in the mine is right. I'm keeping an eye on the cockroaches.

I heard somewhere recently, that organic honey bee colonies did not suffer from colony collapse. Anyone know of this?
Beekeepers (apiarists) in the CA San Joaquin valley food growing area already have to watch out for pesticide applications from growers around where the hives are kept, to prevent losing bees.