In germany's bucolic Baden-Württemburg region, there is a curious silence this week. All up and down the Rhine river, farm fields usually buzzing with bees are quiet. Beginning late last week, helpless beekeepers could only watch as their hives were hit by an unprecedented die-off. Many say one of Germany's biggest chemical companies is to blame. In some parts of the region, hundreds of bees per hive have been dying each day. "It's an absolute bee emergency," Manfred Hederer, president of the German Professional Beekeeper's Association, told Spiegel Online. "Fifty to 60 percent of the bees have died on average, and some beekeepers have lost all their hives." The crisis hit its peak last weekend. Beekeepers from Germany's Baden-Württemburg reported hives full of thousands of dead bees. The worst-hit region, according to state officials, was along the upper Rhine river between the towns of Rastatt and Lorrach. The Rhine valley is one of Germany's prime agricultural regions. Regional officials spent the week testing bees, pollen, honey and plant materials to look for the die-off's causes. The Julius Kühn Institute in Braunschweig, a federal research institute dealing with agricultural issues, set up a special hotline for beekeepers to send in dead bees for analysis. Blaming the Pesticides: But on Friday, Baden-Württemburg Agriculture Minister Peter Hauk said scientists still weren't sure what was behind the disaster. "As long as the causes are still unclear, we must consider all the possible ways we can reduce the risks for the bees," Hauk said.

Hauk encouraged beekeepers to move their hives outside the affected area to prevent further damage. Meanwhile, Germany's beekeepers were pointing fingers at one of Germany's largest companies, blaming a popular, recently-introduced pesticide called clothianidin for the recent die-off. Produced by Monheim-based Bayer CropScience, a subsidiary of German chemical giant Bayer AG, clothianidin is sold in Europe under the trade name Poncho.

View: Full Article | Source: Spiegel Online

This is scary stuff.

Everyone seemed to laugh when the first warning bells sounded, but it looks like it's getting worse!

“If the bee disappears from the surface of the Earth, man would have no more than four years to live. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.”

- Unknown.

I'm frightend even moreso for our children If something like this was to happen.

thats amusing, you think we would just stand-by in our own pitty and watch as plants and animals die off cause of no pollenation? Subsequently killing man? LOL, we are a little more advanced of a civilization than that! If the bees die off we will pollenate things ourselves. We are advanced enough to survive w/ no SUN! after all the mellee that is. Arificial lights would pop up everywhere and u would see people wearing sunlamps on their backs walking down the street. I know Bees are important to the normal processes of the enviorment but we would adapt to anything thats put in front of us. NO need to worry people.

I believe it was Albert Einstein...

He was simply quoting Albert Einstein.. and somehow I'd rather trust someone that formed the law of relativity, rather than the law of:

The bee population is failing all over...What would make anyone think it's going to get better before it gets worse...The beekeepers are doing their part, this is their livelyhood, but the warnings have been out there, and noone paid attention...Like they say "nip it in the bud before it gets ten times worse".......

Everything seems to be against bees these days. there seem to be so many viruses and parasites and things killing them.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, cell phones, bees have been dieing off for the last decade. As more cell phone providers appeared the more the bees died. When satellite radio appeared there was also a big jump in bee deaths.

As for the if we had no sun we could continue to live comment. NO. Without the sun 99% of this planet's life would die. Our solar lamps are super expensive and burn out quickly and use massive amounts of power. We wouldn't be able to make fields large enough to grow all the feed and vegetables to eat and feed to our live stock. Not to mention the lack of oxygen that would become a problem. Oh and the riots for the right to be in one of the places with the solar lamps nearby.

Its first usage was back in 1994. 39 years after Einstein kicked the bucket. Although it's generally given credit to him, when in fact no one is quite sure who the auther of the quote is.



Don't get ahead of yourself. We can't pollinate whole woodlands by ourselves, let alone an entire world. Do you really think governments would pay over a two billion people to walk around woods, forests, the amazon, countrysides, cities, villages ectect, with a little paint brush to spread pollen from one flower to the next? Nature is not set around mankind, it'll be impossible to organise over two billion people in only 4 years. Hell it takes 10 years to think about a political bill considering Scotland and England. We're not on about farmland here, which can look after themselves, concerning staple foods anyway.

The plants that pollinate through wind and animals, will survive, for a bit longer (dandelions for example) however. Flowers and fruit trees; not so much, being that they need to be pollinated to produce there fruit, so the fruit can be eaten, and the seeds are fertalized and able to germinate. Bee's, butterflies, wasps and a couple others, are the only insects that are in such a close connection with pollination. Bee's more-so than the others.

The sun is also needed, how stupid can someone be to think it's not. For one, the entire Earth will freeze, and everything shall die. No matter how many UV lights you have, the Earth will die in a couple of days at best. With no sunlight due to thick clouds covering the atmosphere: The Earth will freeze also. And can you even comtemplate the amount of energy needed to fix the entirety of Earth's land with UV lights? No matter the cost of the manufactering of over a billion billion lights. With all that pollution generated, we'd heat up the world alright. Venus style, and I've heard they have great forests there...

This is very disturbing. It seems as though we're observing the extinction of a species in a very short time and the causes aren't fully understood yet. There may or may not be cause for alarm since we can't be sure just how serious this is yet, but the time it's taken for any serious investigations to begin makes me wonder if we as human beings have become too skeptical. Will our complacency be the cause of our own extinction?

Edit: Chokmah was quicker on the draw with the "no sun" explanation.

Colony Collapse Disorder

EDIT: Whoops

Maybe someone is doing this with sound somehow. Something to disorient the bee's into thinking something different. Could it be the Earth's rotation? The magnetic poles? Something major in the environment is doing this or some mad scientist is reaking havoc on the poor bees for some strange reason.

As well, there must be a mystery to bee's that's still unknown(besides the fact that they aren't able to fly but do).

Not too be a doomsayer again! This is going to come across as a wee bit harsh but my tone is mellow but to the point as in straight up and clean as I see it...

Or whipping the same ol horse “Just thinking out side of the Box Again!”
But in lu of humankinds willingness to live as out of sight out of mind, taking for example the billions of Tonnes of useless plastic crap discarded into the environment mostly the impact is upon the sea and the food chain (and please don't even care to not educate your selves upon that fact), here is the Jest of it, if the known causes for just the bee populations threatened and declining even to the point of Extermination (Oops I meant extinction) if the cause was in fact the mass communication as in Microwaves and cell phones of the multibillion dollar communication industry including Emergency services and police communication, who do you really believe will be the ones that lose out? The Bees... and yes I know it will affect the food chain from flowers to fruit, and that it will just upon speaking on the Human greed factor here (Oops I meant economic impact) but we as a human race do not care as a whole to stop and fix the environmental situations until we ourselves are threatened at the moment with death case in point all the many extinct species elimanated by man to date and falling off as we speak here... it will be the wee bee that will lose out, because the human race is good at shuffling their feet and presenting lip service in the name of good intentions when money big buisness and corpate money is at stake...I know I am very long winded but my point is very valid…Pavot

man sure has screwed up.

You can hand pollinate, but it is extremely expensive. Date trees are hand pollinated.

Wonder what the chemical is that kills the bees. We once tried getting rid of a swarm of bees near a house and they are tuff critters. Needless to say we failed. Even if you smoke them they just come back.

The "buzz" from "some" scientists say that interference in the earths electromagnetic signals causing this. I remember reading two theories about the dissapearence of the bees. The other theory was about a parasite called the ??nosema cerana??

that "bee-sad"

More people need to watch"bee movie"it shows what happens when the bees stop helping humanity.I had no idea that bees ment that much to humanity before watching it.