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

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[hellaine]

uhg, this bot banned from both the communities. and his reindeer.

[astridmyrna]

My mom plants roses and I'm planting a sugar pie pumpkin plant in my patio pot today, so maybe that will help. Poor bees!

[the_siobhan]

For the Canadians here, Elizabeth May has a petition against neonicotinoids on her site.

http://elizabethmaymp.ca/get-involved/ban-neonicotinoids/

[romp]

Right on. Now I just need proportional representation so I can vote 1) Green, 2) NDP.

[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.

[moonbladem]

But U.S. farmers and pesticide companies are opposed to any such move here..."

But of course the pesticide companies would be opposed to such a move, even if it's proven that pesticides are a definite part of the problem. It's against their interests don't you know.

[the_physicist]

without a definitely link it will be hard to convince them, but yeah, even with a proven link... might be hard. i'm glad the EU has starting to curb the use of those pesticides, but they really need to find out more about what the cause is exactly.

[moonbladem]

That was especially true this past year. The same drought that left Midwestern corn fields parched and wilting also dried up wildflowers and starved the bees.

I think it's a combination of causes, including climate change, that's directly and/or indirectly playing a part in their decline. If one of the big reasons is climate change, then it means it's us, human beings, who are partly responsible. Since bees pollinate crops, it's like shooting ourselves in the foot.

[the_physicist]

Was there a drought the previous years though? They've been declining for a while, not just in the US either. It could be climate change, because the climate has been changing in Europe for a while, with the glaciers in the Alps retreating dramatically. The more sudden on-set of the collapse does point to some thing more like disease I would have thought, though. Or... yeah, could be the sudden adoption of pesticides, along with a lot of other practices that are together acting to harm bees. They probably need a lot more funding for bee scientists to figure this one out and I don't know if it will be quick :/ .