Plight of the humble bee: We may have less than a decade to save them and avert catastrophe

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5604401.ece

February 1, 2009

Plight of the humble bee

Native British bees are dying out — and with them will go flora, fauna and one-third of our diet. We may have less than a decade to save them and avert catastrophe. So why is nothing being done?

Richard Girling

Midwinter. In a garden not far from the sea in Plymouth, there is a splash of pale sunlight and a sound both familiar and strange. Familiar, because if we close our eyes and think of English gardens it’s the sound that fills our heads. Strange, because now it should be silent.

The drone of a bee.

It is a buff-tailed bumble, Bombus terrestris, a worker pottering among late-flowering fuchsias, heathers and mahonias like the ghost of summers past. All the textbooks say it should be dead. Only queens overwinter in holes in the ground. Yet here it is, at 200 wing-beats a second, energetically hawking the beds for nectar. And it is not alone. The man in whose garden it flits, Dr Mick Hanley, a lecturer in terrestrial ecology at Plymouth University, has recorded them in December and January all the way along the south coast as far east as Ramsgate. Others have found them as far north as Shropshire, Leicestershire and even North Wales.

Weird, you might think, but not something we should worry about. But aberrant behaviour in nature, especially when it happens suddenly, is rarely a sign of systemic good health. A bee in winter is no more proof of a thriving ecosystem than a flake of snow is disproof of global warming. The world is going haywire. If the very worst scenarios are to be believed, then the Plymouth bee is an early pathfinder en route not just to its own Armageddon but to our own.

…

[Mrs. Overall]

1. And yet the Republicans were making fun of the stimulus package because it included

a clause for giving money to help save our bee colonies.

Uninformed and short-sighted. No wonder we are in such a f*cking mess.

[glinda]

2. Crips sake Obama! PLEASE explain this to the public and to the nutty Republicans

I have a bee garden and not a single bee. Ever.

[stuntcat]

3. they don't understand..

or maybe someone's planning to make a tiny flying machine that will do the work the bumblebees did when we could still count on them.. that'll be a new 'green' industry, designing insect-size machines that take care of what those shifty bugs did.


:cry:

[OKIsItJustMe]

5. Pollination by Hand

…

Already, says Goulson, crop yields are beginning to suffer. Bald spots are appearing at the centres of bean fields where bumblebees are failing to penetrate. As in so many other aspects of global life, it is China that lights the way ahead. In Sichuan province, the most important crop is pears, which depend on pollination by bees. But there are no bees. A blunderbuss approach to pesticides has all but wiped them out. Result: thousands of villagers have to turn out with paintbrushes to pollinate the trees by hand. “It’s just about possible in a country where labour is cheap,” says Goulson, “but it wouldn’t work in Europe.”

…

[SharonAnn]

4. Because Sen. Mitch McConnell hates bees.

[happyslug]

6. Sounds more like Global Warming then what is happening in the Honey Bee.

Remember this article is discussing Bumble Bees in Britain. NOT Honeybees or Bumblebees elsewhere. Global warming is forcing it northward do to its thick body (Adapted to colder areas, like Britain prior to about 1850 then today). Honey Bees are smaller and thiner, thus able to get rid of excess heat in the summer, thus able to operate at higher temperatures then Bumblebees (Which, do to their thicker bodies, can operate earlier and later in the season AND further north then Honeybees, through Honey bees are able to survive the same type of winter as bumblebees do to they ability hibernate together as a group doing the winter, European Honey bees can do this gather together, African Honey Bees do NOT do it as while, thus can NOT migrate as far north as European Bees, thus African Bees are expected to stop at about the Ohio River, while European honeybees are expected to survive above that point).

Anyway, this article is NOT on honeybees but Bumblebees. While some of the diseases known to affect Honeybees seem to have migrated to bumblebees, this is NOT as bad as this article makes it sound. Unlike Honeybees, Bumblebees hives do NOT survive the winter and with the death of the hive so does the parasites. Queens do survive, but by burying themselves till spring, at which point they emerge and start a new hive. Honeybees, on the other hand, not only do the queen survive the winter, so do some of the worker bees (Not all, and not even the Majority, but a good number). Thus Honey bees, when it gets warm enough, can send out a lot more bees to the crops then do Bumblebees. This tendency to form hives make the honeybee able to be moved from place to place, Bumblebees can NOT be so moved, they MUST have access to pollen all year round from the area of their hive. In nature it is rare for more then one plant to come into pollen at the same time, plants come into pollen at various times throughout the year. Bumblebees depend on this to survive. Monoculture is a killer of bumblebees. Bumblebees can NOT survive in an area where only one plant produces pollen (And then for for about two to three weeks a year). Honeybees can NOT survive such mono-culture BUT given Honeybees hives, it is possible to move Honeybees from one area of Monoculture production to another area of mono-culture production (And this is why Honey bees are transported in the US from one mono-culture area to the next mono-culture area). This movement of Honeybees is the reason the various diseases known to affect bees are spread. In olden days, it could takes years if not decades for most honeybees colonies to be exposed to a disease, now it can be months (and maybe days) as the various honeybee hives are moved from one crop to the next, mixing with other bees from other hives spreading whatever each of the hives have (And spreading it to the various bumble bees colonies operating in the same areas as the honeybees).

Now late last year I ran across some honeybees, the first I have run across in a couple of years. They were on the edge of a Forest gathering pollen from Knot-weed as it went into bloom. It was a massive gathering of honey bees, huge numbers, at least several hundreds going to and from the flowers. I suspect they survive do to their location, away from any farming activities (Thus no exposure to other honey bees). Knot-weed, in my area, comes into bloom over a month long period (I live in the Appalachian mountains, the plants in the valley come into bloom first, about two to three weeks later the ones on top of the mountain comes into bloom, both within easy flying distance given the steepness of the Mountain sides in my area, which are steep do to the flow of the Conemaugh river through the Mountains in my area). It is generally believe the decline in Honeybees is tied in with the movement of the bees AND the introduction of Nicotine based insecticides. As to Bumblebees, the movement of Honeybees may be a factor (but it it is, it is a minor one at best) the bigger factor is the introduction of these Nicotine based insecticides, which


Some pass threads on the subject of Honeybees:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x925297

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x986600

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3443864

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3370297#3394216

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3688047


Some articles on Colony Collapse Disorder:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_Collapse_Disorder

http://honeybee.tamu.edu/ccd/index.html

http://www.burtsbees.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ContentView?contentPageId=531&catalogId=10051&storeId=10001&langId=-1

http://www.hcn.org/issues/342/16891

http://cas.psu.edu/spotlight/colony-collapse-disorder.html

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3688047

http://www.nrdc.org/media/2008/080818a.asp