Bee Deaths May Have Reached A Crisis Point For Crops

[crossfire]

According to a new survey of America's beekeepers, almost a third of the country's honeybee colonies did not make it through the winter.

That's been the case, in fact, almost every year since the U.S. Department of Agriculture began this annual survey, six years ago.Over the past six years, on average, 30 percent of all the honeybee colonies in

Comments

[the_physicist]

Most of the important studies seem to place the blame in the corner of the pesticides, while stressing that it is likely to be a combination of a lot of issues. One recent study talked about how feeding bees high fructose corn syrup instead of honey could be hurting their chances of fighting off the pesticides (as the syrup doesn't contain natural bee immune system boosters etc) that they used to be able to fight off before when they were allowed to eat their own honey.

There's a lot that's unknown because they haven't been able to study enough bodies of dead bees from what I understand? :/

[crossfire]

My bet is on pesticides too. But I also think the fact that bees are an introduced, invasive species (the honeybee is not native to North America) has something to do with it too.

[the_physicist]

Honey bees are native to Europe though and that is where the steep decline in their numbers first began, before the numbers started to decline dramatically in the USA.

[romp]

We have bees and had read about giving them HFCS in the winter. WTF?

Glad we didn't do it.

[the_physicist]

That study of HFCS was published end of last month I think... so it's not something people have really thought about yet.

[hinoema]

Good gods, why are they feeding them HFCS? (I hope it's not just a profit motive for the HFCS manufacturers.) That and the pesticides are both problems that need addressed.