British man claims to have bred indestructible bees

All the bees are at my house, I wanted to give them away but the beekeepers didn't want to put out the effort to take them.

It's not as bad as they made it out to be

^ good point actually.

Sadly, the bees are not extinct at my house yet. But when I'm done with them they will be!!

Originally posted by davespanners

Has the guy done enough testing and seen results in enough generations of Bees to be confident that he hasn't introduced any other genetic problems by giving the bees this resistance.

My first thought.

He had better know exactly what he is doing or he could compound the issue and exacerbate the declining of the Bee population.

He may need to have someone else check in on his work.

After all, some other Beekeeper took it upon himself to create what later became the aggressive "Killer Bee" by doing something like this to make a better form of honey.

Hope this guy knows what he is doing.

- Lee

I love bees, they make delicious honey for us!

reply to post by SeventhSeal


Right? This is great and everything...butttt I do not want to come across them...=/

Interesting, although it's being pretty seriously missold!

Mites are problematic for the health of honeybees, but they do not cause colony collapse. In fact, we do not even have colony collapse disorder in the UK as it is known in the US for example. Our bees suffer from lack of personal hygiene in the same way that most purpose-domesticated animals now lack natural survival practices and researchers have been purposefully selecting more fastidious bees for some time now - this is the culmination.

This marks progress for the UK and other countries where mites are the primary issue, but the US will still need to take a serious look at its agricultural practices if it wants to establish healthy bee colonies again (and stop importing, at extortionate cost, bees from Australia etc!).

Bees are great.......

This might be "far out" but if the bees were to all die out, wouldn't the Earth just find another way? Sure there would be some downtime during the transition but I think nature would find a way. It adapts and evolves. This could be natures way of doing it, but if it's not then we could be making the problem, or a natural cycle worse.
Just an idea.

[edit on 25-8-2010 by SeeingBlue]

I absolutely agree that it is a combination of changes in the environment.

Small steps from people who love their “craft” will find an honest answer. He is not associated with pharma or any agency and thus his knowledge is handed over to us. I find it honourable and remarkable that his years of knowledge and intuition is helping.

Pesticides linked to bee decline, say green groups

Mobile phones responsible for disappearance of honey bee

Now researchers from Chandigarh's Punjab University claim they have found the cause which could be the first step in reversing the decline: They have established that radiation from mobile telephones is a key factor in the phenomenon and say that it probably interfering with the bee's navigation senses.

Bayer, Monsanto killing bees with patented chemicals, process


Electronic smog 'is disrupting nature on a massive scale'

reply to post by SeeingBlue


The Earth would find another way. You are absolutely right. Lots of insects pollinate, not just bees.

The Earth is not 100% dependent upon the bee. But humans are incredibly dependent upon the bee to pollinate our food crops. As usual, our concern for the bees is really concern for ourselves. And there is nothing wrong with that. The problem is, that many people focus on the bee end of things, and wonder why they should care about a little stinging insect. "The sooner they are gone, the better" this sort thinks.

They dont see the chain of dependency, human depends on plant, plant depends on bee,.....etc.

In fact, our shortsightedness is one of our biggest problems as a species. We just cant predict very well the consequences of our own actions, and, when trying to solve problems, we arent very good at looking broad and far and comprehensively, (for instance CCD may not have "one cause" but many interlinked factors) we always look for the closest possible single causative. You can see that here too, when people think that because they see plenty of bees in their yards, there could not possibly be a problem with the bee population. "If I cant see the problem, the problem does not exist."

They will notice the problem with bees when food costs go way up. And then, here on ATS, they will likely start a conspiracy thread saying that the bee population decline was orchestrated to facilitate a rise in food costs, and the whole thing was an evil plot from the start, because "there is no bee problem, I have 5 in my yard right now." It wont matter in the least to them that the bees they see are likely wild bees, who arent yet having the same degree of trouble the domesticated bees we rely on to pollinate our crops are.

They have been using people with brushes to pollinate some crops in China since a couple of years ago, they have a serious lack of Bees
Article
I remember seeing someone on UK TV a while back saying that this may be a much bigger problem then anyone realizes, and it just doesn't get as much media attention as it should

reply to post by davespanners


I have been reduced to hand pollination of my garden some years too. And I am apparently really bad at it, because while I had lovely healthy vines I had no tomatoes or melons. Bees rock.

Unintended consiquence of manipulating enviornment comencing in 5...4...3...2...1........

Has no one ever considered that these bee's were supposed to be dying off for a natural cyclic reason?

Originally posted by Sly1one
Unintended consiquence of manipulating enviornment comencing in 5...4...3...2...1........

Has no one ever considered that these bee's were supposed to be dying off for a natural cyclic reason?

no

nothing natural about electrical smog et al..how is it natural ?

perhaps this may be a way of eradicating the african crossbred bees from north america?
we could introduce the mites into the african colonies, then replace the colonies of africans with the grooming bees to carry on with?
or is this just too whacky?or risky?

Originally posted by Illusionsaregrander
reply to post by davespanners

 

I have been reduced to hand pollination of my garden some years too. And I am apparently really bad at it, because while I had lovely healthy vines I had no tomatoes or melons. Bees rock.

Fortunately I've only been reduced to hand pollination on the apricots (as they flower to early) and am pretty bad at it too not one apricot this year

Originally posted by BANANAMONTANA
I absolutely agree that it is a combination of changes in the environment.

Pesticides linked to bee decline, say green groups

Mobile phones responsible for disappearance of honey bee

Bayer, Monsanto killing bees with patented chemicals, process

Electronic smog 'is disrupting nature on a massive scale'

Thanks for the links I quite agree that what we are doing to the planet is causing some of the issues we face, just as we have by mucking around with mother nature's creations.

The Black/Dark honey bee evolved here as it did for a reason, just as the Italian did in it's environment. mucking around with what mother nature has already spent millennia perfecting is IMHO generally a bad idea.

Here is the TV program I remember watching, It's a science / comedy thing that was on the BBC called "It's only a theory"

Something is telling me that its the Cell Towers that are causing these mass colony collapses. Since they navigate using a certain frequency, I remember reading that a few of these cell towers are tapped into this frequency and causing bee's to "get lost" and never go home again. Then again, maybe its intentional!?? I can only get away with that last statement on a conspiracy forum after all...

Originally posted by thoughtsfull

Originally posted by Illusionsaregrander
reply to post by davespanners

 

I have been reduced to hand pollination of my garden some years too. And I am apparently really bad at it, because while I had lovely healthy vines I had no tomatoes or melons. Bees rock.

Fortunately I've only been reduced to hand pollination on the apricots (as they flower to early) and am pretty bad at it too

not one apricot this year

You have a queen this year =]

, you can get very inexpensive hives or build one..

www.modernbeekeeping.co.uk...

I'm not to sure how much effort to put into this post as the boards seem a bit screwy at the moment with regards to allowing freedom of expression due to their deletion of posts left right and centre and so I will take lieu of my usual supplication of well versed hyper-knowledge and state that there is more going on here that is known.

If for nothing else than for the fact that Sherlock Holmes spent his final days studying bees.

Just thought I'd throw it out there

-m0r