(no subject)
From Rowan Jacobsen's Fruitless Fall: The Collapse of the Honey Bee and the Coming Agricultural Crisis:
There had been real hope among beekeepers, fruit growers, and the general public that CCD would be a one-year blip, like some of the dwindling [honeybee] diseases of years ago. That hope was gone by 2008. Dave Hackenberg's irradiated hives, which had looked so good while feasting on clover in the Dakotas over the summer, began going downhill around Thanksgiving 2007. They were the best remaining bees he had, but by January, 80 percent were dead.
The word was no better from Florida. "You know those bees that I was hoping were gonna make it?" Bill Rhodes asked me. "Well, they ain't gonna make it."
South Dakota's Adee Honey Farms, the largest beekeeping operation in the United States, sent seventy thousand hives into the almonds [in California] in 2008. They lost twenty-eight thousand [hives], a full 40 percent. "It's off the charts this year," said Brett Adee. "It's not a sustainable thing, what's happening now."
Jerry Bromenshenk summed up the situation in early 2008. "In the last two months we've sampled operations in Arizona, Idaho, eastern Washington, Minnesota, North Dakota. We've got reports of it from the Dakotas, Florida, Texas, Colorado, California. It's about the same level and same type of distribution as it was a year ago at this time. I'd like to say [Colony Collapse Disorder] went away, but unfortunately I don't think it has."
-- Ibid, pp. 140-141
There had been real hope among beekeepers, fruit growers, and the general public that CCD would be a one-year blip, like some of the dwindling [honeybee] diseases of years ago. That hope was gone by 2008. Dave Hackenberg's irradiated hives, which had looked so good while feasting on clover in the Dakotas over the summer, began going downhill around Thanksgiving 2007. They were the best remaining bees he had, but by January, 80 percent were dead.
The word was no better from Florida. "You know those bees that I was hoping were gonna make it?" Bill Rhodes asked me. "Well, they ain't gonna make it."
South Dakota's Adee Honey Farms, the largest beekeeping operation in the United States, sent seventy thousand hives into the almonds [in California] in 2008. They lost twenty-eight thousand [hives], a full 40 percent. "It's off the charts this year," said Brett Adee. "It's not a sustainable thing, what's happening now."
Jerry Bromenshenk summed up the situation in early 2008. "In the last two months we've sampled operations in Arizona, Idaho, eastern Washington, Minnesota, North Dakota. We've got reports of it from the Dakotas, Florida, Texas, Colorado, California. It's about the same level and same type of distribution as it was a year ago at this time. I'd like to say [Colony Collapse Disorder] went away, but unfortunately I don't think it has."
-- Ibid, pp. 140-141