Reply #5: "Why not let regulators make the final judgment, instead of you?" [View All]

[mike_c]

Because I'm a scientist, and that's the way we do things. We ask to see the data published openly in peer reviewed journals. This is not any sort of personal vendetta! I don't know diddly about Beelogics beyond what they're saying in this corporate advert-- I'm just pointing out that it's not science-- it's an advertisement for a commercial product the company is trying to market globally. I do tend to be skeptical about such things, especially when advertisements are touted as IMPORTANT SCIENTIFIC ANNOUNCEMENTS!

As far as the rest of your comments, about how critical an issue CCD is, I posted this in the other thread:

with all due respect, "the collapse of civilization" is just plain yellow journalism...

...and the worst sort of hyperbole. Loss of the european honey bee-- the only bee thus far in any danger from CCD, which is itself a VERY poorly understood or even defined phenomenon-- loss of the euorpean honey bee would ultimately affect little more than the bee keeping industry. All the hyperbole about how agriculture would collapse, humans would starve, and natural pollination would cease is just that-- a load of hyperbole that sells newspapers but is actually pretty ignorant.

Regarding agriculture: first, only about 30 percent of human agriculture depends upon insect pollinators. The major cereal crops, upon which civilization arguably depends, are all wind pollinated. The only partial exception is corn, which is also wind pollinated, but which honey bees will gather pollen from-- but it's low quality pollen from the bee's perspective, just abundant, and corn is not itself dependent upon insect pollination in any event.

Second, there are LOTS of native pollinators that can handle the 30 percent or so of insect pollinated crops-- they'll just require some significant changes in HOW we perform managed pollination, and they won't produce a cash crop of honey on top of their pollination services. But that's hardly the "collapse of civilization."

As far as non-agricultural pollination services are concerned, loss of honey bees would have a temporary impact, primarily because honey bees compete with native pollinators for floral rewards and have supplanted their pollination services at least partly, but that would not be catastrophic and would pass quickly in the relatively few cases where any impact is really measurable.

I'm sorry, but the WORST impacts of declining honey bee populations will affect the managed pollination industry, not "civilization."