The Disappearing Bees

jeffbr

somebodyelse'ssky wrote:

THE END IS NEAR. no doubt about it, polar bears drowning, ice cap melting, sea is rising, the weather patterns are all screwed up and now the food supply is in jeopardy along with everything else. I DOUBT THERE IS ANYTHING WE CAN DO ABOUT IT NOW. GREEDY MAN HAS PILLAGED THE EARTH WAY TOO LONG...IT'S OVER NOW.

LOL. Funny you should have sky in your user name. I immediately heard Chicken Little yelling "the sky is falling" when I read your post.

THC

DeLukin wrote:

I was shocked to hear about how much of our food is tied to honeybee polination (90% according to one article I read). Crazy stuff...

Yes...that is what is scary about this phenomenon. Its not just a silly story. this could have major impacts!!

gue_barium

jeffbr wrote:

LOL. Funny you should have sky in your user name. I immediately heard Chicken Little yelling "the sky is falling" when I read your post.

So glib. Ranier is gonna blow for glibness like this.

jeffbr

gue_barium wrote:

So glib. Ranier is gonna blow for glibness like this.

I know. A lahar would really ruin my day.

nick1977

I read about this. The article I read quoted Albert Einstein saying if bees go extinct, humans will follow within 4 years.

I talked to a beekeeper last night who owns about 800 hives....he said his bees are ok. The concensous is weather and mites have led to the dissapearance of bees.

MrBrian

nick1977 wrote:

I read about this. The article I read quoted Albert Einstein saying if bees go extinct, humans will follow within 4 years.

.

I was reading that said quote may be a myth. nevertheless bees disappearing is a very bad sign of things.

RolandTD20Kdrummer

MrBrian wrote:

I was reading that said quote may be a myth

http://www.snopes.com/quotes/einstein/bees.asp

Einstein didn’t really study bees but he’s right. Botanists have been trying to artificially pollinate plants for years. We could do it, but everyone in the world would have to stop what they were doing and hand pollinate everything. If we did manage to survive it would send us back to the stone age and cost us most of our resources.

onelongsong

Dustin51 wrote:

Anyone been reading up on this? Bill Mahr and Howard Stern have both commented on this. It seems the bee population is rapidly decreasing. They’re blaming pesticides, disease, the transporting of bee’s and cell phones.

I really hope the main problem is cell phones. It would be cool if they had to outlaw them.

in the greenhouse; i have to go from flower to flower with a small paintbrush to make sure they pollinate. imagine having to do that on a large scale.

Dustin51

onelongsong wrote:

in the greenhouse; i have to go from flower to flower with a small paintbrush to make sure they pollinate. imagine having to do that on a large scale.

It would be impossible. In our attempt to fix this issue we would surely fuck something else up.

jeffbr

Bee rapture makes just as much sense as cell phones...

---

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003694330_beerapture05.html

Mystery spurs bizarre theories, stinging rebuttals
By The Associated Press

JUDI BOTTONI / AP

Magnetic fields, cellphones and even rapture have been blamed for lost honeybees.


BELTSVILLE, Md. — The answer to what happened to the nation's vanishing honeybees is simple, a caller told entomologist May Berenbaum: bee rapture. They were called to heaven.

No, wait, it's Earth's magnetic field, another caller told the University of Illinois professor.

When Berenbaum went on the Internet, she found a parody news site that quoted her as blaming rapper Kevin Federline and his concerts for the disappearance of the bees. Berenbaum loved it.

The sudden disappearance of one-quarter of the nation's honeybees has brought out some strange ideas.

"I just can't get any work done," Berenbaum said. "I'm overwhelmed by e-mails. I can't keep up."

A couple of bee myths are big on the Internet.

A small German study looking at a specific type of cordless phone and homing systems of bees exploded over the Internet and late-night television shows. It morphed into erroneous reports blaming cellphones for the honeybee die-off, which scientists are calling colony-collapse disorder, or CCD.

The scientist who wrote the paper, Stefan Kimmel, emphasized there is "no link between our tiny little study and the CCD-phenomenon ... anything else said or written is a lie."

Jeff Pettis, top bee researcher for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, laughs at the idea. He said whenever he goes out to investigate dead bees, he cannot get a signal on his cellphone because the hives are in such remote areas.

Also on the Internet is a quote attributed to Albert Einstein on how humans would die off in four years if not for honeybees.

The quote is wrong on two counts.

First, Einstein probably never said it, according to Alice Calaprice, author of "The Quotable Einstein" and five other books on the physicist.

"I've never come across it in anything Einstein has written," she said. "It could be that someone had made it up and put Einstein's name on it."

Second, it's incorrect scientifically, Pettis said. There would be food left for humans because some food is wind-pollinated.

For his part, Pettis jokes that the bees are out creating crop circles, "and it's working them to death."

onelongsong

Dustin51 wrote:

It would be impossible. In our attempt to fix this issue we would surely fuck something else up.

we still have wind and other insects but the harvest would be greatly reduced. the best example i can think of is:

if it costs $100 to produce 100 pounds of carrots; carrots cost $1.00/pound. if the crop is reduced by 50%; then it takes $100 to produce 50 pounds of carrots. thus the price of carrots is $2.00/pound.

something i haven't seen mentioned is seed production. i need seeds to plant my pasture to feed my buffalo and provide you with food. if seed production is down 75%; my cost goes up 400%.

brianlux

This is interesting and quite surprising to read.  According to this (gifted) New York Times article, honey bees are not endangered as had widely been reported.  This quote really stands out here:

“If you overcrowd any space with honey bees, there is a competition for natural resources, and since bees have the largest numbers, they push out other pollinators, which actually harms biodiversity,” he said, after a recent visit to the B&B bees. “I would say that the best thing you could do for honey bees right now is not take up beekeeping.”

I remember reading (and mentioning somewhere in another thread here that I couldn't find) that we have placed more emphasis on the importance of honey bees than nature does for the exact reasons mentioned in the quote above.  This strikes me as yet another example of how we tend to view nature from an anthropocentric human) view point rather than a biocentric (nature oriented) viewpoint, and the inherent dangers of doing so.  This may also be another example of "follow the money".

If we really want to take care of the planet and all species, including ours, we would do well to respect the balance of nature and not just our own self-centered desires. 

Here's the article in full:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/19/business/beekeeping-companies-colony-collapse.html?unlocked_article_code=5NWYlk0bIrcVGmP7m6XyBzBibYroT7G7gHYoIv8L2VVyTz1Ej1crE-thDqUIESeJXPeZ3ADrlYVga7vck4GSZjet7IobSn2vGKjitmOyWpIxEVlrfuM5rsEMbjQcURQ2Yv-PxH7ESpAIjBYCfSKCFk9ylj23wcGtVCeBs2HT2Y6IGNpUSKvJYKfulNQ6rQYO2-VZ61fn51OPSkecGUbBvyUlbLcqm_qsto20F3k4-ZKap1EKiPxuk60wLBQWKmrtUrAX9-_huvI8whVM7CM099F3Y50D8x8Thj3nc3VvgZogVxL09xmfmXFzJJWwvXO6-G5lYbOPfY1Mqw1B9zUGvBDK8mnNeSyMM_D7qYTTM3k&smid=url-share

tempo_n_groove

brianlux said:

This is interesting and quite surprising to read.  According to this (gifted) New York Times article, honey bees are not endangered as had widely been reported.  This quote really stands out here:

“If you overcrowd any space with honey bees, there is a competition for natural resources, and since bees have the largest numbers, they push out other pollinators, which actually harms biodiversity,” he said, after a recent visit to the B&B bees. “I would say that the best thing you could do for honey bees right now is not take up beekeeping.”

I remember reading (and mentioning somewhere in another thread here that I couldn't find) that we have placed more emphasis on the importance of honey bees than nature does for the exact reasons mentioned in the quote above.  This strikes me as yet another example of how we tend to view nature from an anthropocentric human) view point rather than a biocentric (nature oriented) viewpoint, and the inherent dangers of doing so.  This may also be another example of "follow the money".

If we really want to take care of the planet and all species, including ours, we would do well to respect the balance of nature and not just our own self-centered desires. 

Here's the article in full:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/19/business/beekeeping-companies-colony-collapse.html?unlocked_article_code=5NWYlk0bIrcVGmP7m6XyBzBibYroT7G7gHYoIv8L2VVyTz1Ej1crE-thDqUIESeJXPeZ3ADrlYVga7vck4GSZjet7IobSn2vGKjitmOyWpIxEVlrfuM5rsEMbjQcURQ2Yv-PxH7ESpAIjBYCfSKCFk9ylj23wcGtVCeBs2HT2Y6IGNpUSKvJYKfulNQ6rQYO2-VZ61fn51OPSkecGUbBvyUlbLcqm_qsto20F3k4-ZKap1EKiPxuk60wLBQWKmrtUrAX9-_huvI8whVM7CM099F3Y50D8x8Thj3nc3VvgZogVxL09xmfmXFzJJWwvXO6-G5lYbOPfY1Mqw1B9zUGvBDK8mnNeSyMM_D7qYTTM3k&smid=url-share

I mentioned this on here before about bait fish.  One of the states here on the East stsrted regulating the amount of Bunker fish/Manhaden and well the eastern seaboard has been flourishing.  We have more whales, tuna, bass and dolphins than I have ever seen in the 48 years that I have been on NY beaches.

Sometimes it helps to let them populate and in Bees it does not.

brianlux

tempo_n_groove said:

brianlux said:

This is interesting and quite surprising to read.  According to this (gifted) New York Times article, honey bees are not endangered as had widely been reported.  This quote really stands out here:

“If you overcrowd any space with honey bees, there is a competition for natural resources, and since bees have the largest numbers, they push out other pollinators, which actually harms biodiversity,” he said, after a recent visit to the B&B bees. “I would say that the best thing you could do for honey bees right now is not take up beekeeping.”

I remember reading (and mentioning somewhere in another thread here that I couldn't find) that we have placed more emphasis on the importance of honey bees than nature does for the exact reasons mentioned in the quote above.  This strikes me as yet another example of how we tend to view nature from an anthropocentric human) view point rather than a biocentric (nature oriented) viewpoint, and the inherent dangers of doing so.  This may also be another example of "follow the money".

If we really want to take care of the planet and all species, including ours, we would do well to respect the balance of nature and not just our own self-centered desires. 

Here's the article in full:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/19/business/beekeeping-companies-colony-collapse.html?unlocked_article_code=5NWYlk0bIrcVGmP7m6XyBzBibYroT7G7gHYoIv8L2VVyTz1Ej1crE-thDqUIESeJXPeZ3ADrlYVga7vck4GSZjet7IobSn2vGKjitmOyWpIxEVlrfuM5rsEMbjQcURQ2Yv-PxH7ESpAIjBYCfSKCFk9ylj23wcGtVCeBs2HT2Y6IGNpUSKvJYKfulNQ6rQYO2-VZ61fn51OPSkecGUbBvyUlbLcqm_qsto20F3k4-ZKap1EKiPxuk60wLBQWKmrtUrAX9-_huvI8whVM7CM099F3Y50D8x8Thj3nc3VvgZogVxL09xmfmXFzJJWwvXO6-G5lYbOPfY1Mqw1B9zUGvBDK8mnNeSyMM_D7qYTTM3k&smid=url-share

I mentioned this on here before about bait fish.  One of the states here on the East stsrted regulating the amount of Bunker fish/Manhaden and well the eastern seaboard has been flourishing.  We have more whales, tuna, bass and dolphins than I have ever seen in the 48 years that I have been on NY beaches.

Sometimes it helps to let them populate and in Bees it does not.

The big question about the bigger issue is, What can we do to leave animal and insect populations to their own natural balance?  I'm not sure there is a pat answer, but giving wildlife more space surely is a major starting point.  We need more wild lands, less  human invasive activity.