Mystery bee deaths accelerate

[Saru]

Honeybees have been dying off faster than ever with up to 50% of hives being wiped out last year.

A mysterious malady that has been killing honeybees en masse for several years appears to have expanded drastically in the last year, commercial beekeepers say, wiping out 40 percent or even 50 percent of the hives needed to pollinate many of the nation’s fruits and vegetables.

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[questionmark]

and it probably will keep on accelerating while certain insecticides are used. But not to worry, your dividends from a certain company are safe, Congress just passed a bill indemnifying them from all damage they caused....

Edited March 31, 2013 by questionmark

[Silver Surfer]

seriously scary ****..

[lightly]

Very bad news. I wonder if, rather than a mystery.. there is a plan?

[questionmark]

Very bad news. I wonder if, rather than a mystery.. there is a plan?

Yep, there is: freeing the causant(s) from having to pay for that damages...

[Hippycrite]

and it probably will keep on accelerating while certain insecticides are used. But not to worry, your dividends from a certain company are safe, Congress just passed a bill indemnifying them from all damage they caused....

...which was pretty simple, since a former executive and lobbyist for the certain company runs the FDA.

[Ashotep]

Yea let's protect the companies not the bees. Who cares if some of the food we eat will no longer exist as long as the modified stuff is there and protected from lawsuit.

[Helen of Annoy]

Well, when there’s shortage of certain food, its prices go up so does the profit. In that light, I can totally imagine some people running after bees with flyswats too, thinking not what will happen when bees completely die out.

On a little brighter side, I’m in backward area where the newest insecticides are not that widespread so the bees are still healthy (serious beekeeper I talked to recently says all his hives are doing well), wild bees are still alive and started to come out the wintering, bumblebees are more numerous than ever (they were imported to pollinate in closed growing environments and successfully escaped to freedom ... no damage, they’re just bumblebees, compatible with native bumblebees), so it’s not lost yet. Both wild bees and beekeeping could be recovered from hives that survived in godforsakenlandias, if someone grows a brain and stops the use of clearly too destructive insecticide.

[cherokeemist]

This is really distburing. But get used to it, at some point in time we will pretty much wipe out almost all the species on this planet. Just in our lifetime we will see alot of animals, creatures, etc.. go extinct.

But....when that happens in the future we can just clone them back. Except they will just live in a zoo type environment, not roam freely.

[ancient astronaut]

We are the makers of our own demise.

[Starseed hybrid 1111]

wow this has humanity all written over it as for the person who said lets protect the companies and who cares if the bees die or certain food how ignorant and dumb to say the least can you be.yes you should care alot.is all humanities fault im not Going to pay the price for some idiotic people's mistakes.I certainly do not side with companies.I side with humanity and with nature n the planet herself and life.this sounds a lot like the happening the movie:( poor bees and plants.its all these chemtrails and pesticides that humans create!!!!do pretend like you guys are so innocent and wait we have no research or hard evidence hell yeah we do its humanities fault not all you know who you are people.

[IamLegend]

If bees go extinct it's due to their own inabilities to adapt to change, thus is nature. Humans have a very high aptitude for dealing with change.

http://robobees.seas.harvard.edu/

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[marcos anthony toledo]

Our masters are a bunch of psychopaths anyway what do they care as long as the zillions of dollars still keep flowing in greed is their only idea the hell with the rest of us biologicals.

[Hippycrite]

If bees go extinct it's due to their own inabilities to adapt to change, thus is nature. Humans have a very high aptitude for dealing with change.

http://robobees.seas.harvard.edu/

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Well, then help yourself to a heaping bowl of neonicotinoids for breakfast every morning, and we'll watch you adapt-or die.

[awest]

Bees aren't the only thing dying off in huge amounts. Many species are dying off in the 10s of percents every year now. As far as bees go, it is terrible that it is happening, but other wild insects are as capable of doing it as bees. After all, who do you think fertilized **** before we brought bees to America? I am more worried about the fact that things are dying off in huge numbers in pretty much every ecosystem on earth. Heck, there has been a 40% drop in the phytoplankton numbers in our oceans since 1950. You can call the environmentalists nuts all you want, but phytoplankton is what marine ecosystems run on, it is the foundation. We are headed towards a collapse, the only real question is how long.

Edited March 31, 2013 by awest

[questionmark]

Bees aren't the only thing dying off in huge amounts. Many species are dying off in the 10s of percents every year now. As far as bees go, it is terrible that it is happening, but other wild insects are as capable of doing it as bees. After all, who do you think fertilized **** before we brought bees to America? I am more worried about the fact that things are dying off in huge numbers in pretty much every ecosystem on earth. Heck, there has been a 40% drop in the phytoplankton numbers in our oceans since 1950. You can call the environmentalists nuts all you want, but phytoplankton is what marine ecosystems run on, it is the foundation. We are headed towards a collapse, the only real question is how long.

You always have to remember that many European crops were brought to America along with the bees... now, potatoes, frijoles and maize are edible too...

[IamLegend]

Well, then help yourself to a heaping bowl of neonicotinoids for breakfast every morning, and we'll watch you adapt-or die.

It's nature. Species either continue changing, or cease existing. It's not our fault the bees can't cut it. And it won't be our fault if humans can't cut it one day.

Edited March 31, 2013 by IamLegend

[Helen of Annoy]

It's nature. Species either continue changing, or cease existing. It's not our fault the bees can't cut it. And it won't be our fault if humans can't cut it one day.

Oh, stop trolling.

Adapting to gradual changes in nature is not the same as adapting to completely artificial substances overnight. Obviously. Or if that's not obvious to you then I apologize for calling you a troll while you're simply... special.

[danielost]

This isn't the normadl kind of pesticide. This is genetic manipulation. Of course the bees can't handle it. Another unintended circumstance.

[lightly]

wait a minute!.... there were no bees in the Americas before importation??

... when i said i wonder if Bee reduction is part of a plan.. i mean.. is control of bee population/distribution a way for food MONOPOLISTS to gain tighter control on food production? just wondering..

Edited March 31, 2013 by lightly

[awest]

European Food Safety Authority already banned this stuff. To be honest I hadn't even heard of it before. I have personally used tobacco to make pesticide and it was fairly effective but this stuff seems to be more dangerous even though the people making it claim otherwise. Not really all that surprising that the EPA is turning a blind eye though, very reminiscent of the Monsanto growth hormone that was banned pretty much everywhere but here. I am curious if this stuff is making it into the honey they are selling also.

[awest]

wait a minute!.... there were no bees in the Americas before importation??

"Honey bees expanded to North America with human-assisted migration during the 17th century. Many Europeans fleeing wars, poverty, land laws or religious persecution brought extensive beekeeping skills to the United States during the next two centuries. Meanwhile, English colonists took bees to New Zealand, Australia and Tasmania, completing human-assisted migration of Apis mellifera around the globe. "

[Sundew]

It could be anything from exposure to multiple types of toxins in our modern environment (pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, plastics, hydrocarbons, etc.), an overload of pests and diseases that have finally reached critical mass for the honeybee, the every more widening used of cell towers and other electronic signals that we beam through the air, to bees feeding on genetically modified nectar and pollen from GMO plants. I have seen honeybees foraging out of garbage cans, seeking out sugar in leftover soda and other sweet (and nutritionally devoid) drinks.

I have also read that the nutritional value of even organically grown foods today is nowhere near what the same food had in the past, due primarily to depletion of soil nutrients. Poorer soil yields fewer vitamins and minerals in the plants we eat, and presumably the nectar and pollen the bees feed on as well.

While it is difficult and expensive to grow organic produce compared with standard use of fertilizers and pesticides, it is also better in the long run for the environment, its creatures and us.

[Sundew]

wait a minute!.... there were no bees in the Americas before importation??

... when i said i wonder if Bee reduction is part of a plan.. i mean.. is control of bee population/distribution a way for food MONOPOLISTS to gain tighter control on food production? just wondering..

There were and are, many bee species in the Americas before the honeybee was introduced, its just that they are more efficient pollinators of European and African plants our main food crops, brought by Europeans as they colonized the world. They also produce honey in collectable quantity. Bumblebees, wood-boring bees, leaf-cutter bees, metallic green bees, stingless bees and others are found throughout North and South America but were not deemed to work as well as the honeybee. Bumblebees are efficient pollinators in some cases; I have two species of Tabebuia tree from South America in my yard and they produce copious amounts of seeds and are pollinated almost exclusively be bumblebees.

It may be that we increasingly have to rely on these other species to do the work of the honeybee until a cure is found. The bad news is that the Africanized honeybees have replaced many of the native bees in South and Central America. So we may be forced to use the AHB for pollination instead. They are aggressive, attack in mass, are difficult to work with and being just another variety of the domesticated honeybee are likely subject to some of the same health problems as well.

[Helen of Annoy]

So it’s the domesticated bee that was carried around, both Americas had their wild bees before Europeans came, I think.

Now, the tobacco is effective natural insecticide, or I thought so. Sometimes I soak a cigarette in water and spray it on my finer plants to protect them from vermin. It works. Only now I wonder if that’s the tobacco or god knows what stuck on tobacco that kills insects.

(That brings me to old smokers conspiracy, they say people didn’t use to die from smoking while they were smoking naturally grown tobacco, like they do now when we inhale all sorts of chemicals... writing this inspires me to stop smoking but I will resist the urge to live long.)