Fears for crops as shock figures from America show scale of bee catastrophe

[autumnjane]

The world may be on the brink of biological disaster after news that a third of US bee colonies did not survive the winter

Comments

[iluvhistory]

Why in the fuck is Monsanto still allowed to exist when this bee issue is pretty much their damn fault?!

[liveonthesun]

Because the world is a tragic and unjust place.

[yunghustlaz]

Don't forget, it's Bayer too!

[evildevil]

[carverhawke]

i'm allergic to bees and should not like them but i always get pissed off when people think they can just kill them and it'll be all fine and dandy but that's totally not the case i wish people would actually LISTEN instead of thinking most insects are useless

[liveonthesun]

From what I hear, they eat dead skin which helps keep dust and allergens down.

[kynn]

you forgot the closing /sarcasm tag

[autumnjane]

Well, part of it is that they've been able to replace the missing hives each spring. But this cannot be sustained if this problem continues and grows. In China they're already having to hand pollinate pear orchards because they've used so many pesticides that they've killed off all their bees in the Sichuan Province (http://www.newsweek.com/id/141461). Bees can pollinate thousands of trees a day while humans can only do 30 or so. So basically crop output is really going to suffer if this keeps up.

[autumnjane]

Oh. I think this is sarcastic? My meter is off. If so-- sorry for my earnest response. Ha. If not, there's some info for you.

[blackjedii]

Bees: the perfect organic mechanical device

This realllly scares me, tbh.

[carverhawke]

me too i felt so paranoid reading this article. :(

[superfan1]

Batman: Bees my god! :P

Scary yeah, I agree.

[karikinetic]

I have a possibly stupid question (not a biologist in the least).

Given the lack of dead bodies and the amount of "missing" colonies, wouldn't that suggest a fertility problem? Maybe a pesticide interfering with their egg laying ability or something?

Obvious question is probably obvious, I'm just curious.

[devil_ad_vocate]

No one has a definitive answer to the problem. Air pollution destroys flowers' aroma by as much as 90 percent. Scent molecules that once traveled three quarters of a mile may now migrate less than one quarter of a mile. Because scent molecules cover only a short distance before they are chemically altered, it's difficult for pollinators to find them.

[ook]

That's really interesting about the air pollution. I live in a city that has some of the most polluted air in the U.S. (in fact, there's a bad air advisory alert right now on my Weatherbug). I should note the honeybee activity in my yard to see if there are less bees when the air pollution is worse.

That said, bees are awesome! I'm always glad to see them in my yard (even if I sometimes have to detour to walk around where they're gathing pollen). :)

[autumnjane]

I'm still new to the game so anyone can feel free to correct me if I'm wrong but when the hives are active in the spring/summer the beekeepers monitor the brood production of the queen to make sure the hives are healthy. If not, the queen is replaced or if the hive is sick then the keeper will treat the illness (fungus, mites, bacteria, etc). So keepers can see if there is a fertility problem. So when the bees just disappear without warning like a lot of these bees are doing it's kind of a head scratcher. And in the winter keepers can't monitor the bees in cold climate because the hives are sealed up to maintain livable temperatures for the brood. But I would think that if the hive is healthy going into the winter that it isn't a fertility problem in the winter. But I'm no scientist or a professional keeper so I'm not clear on this.