From the Independent     

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/wildlife/article2449968.ece

Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?
Scientists claim radiation from handsets are to blame for mysterious ‘colony collapse’ of bees
By Geoffrey Lean and Harriet Shawcross
Published: 15 April 2007
It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world’s harvests fail.

They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world - the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon - which started in the US, then spread to continental Europe - was beginning to hit Britain as well.

The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees’ navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up.

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) occurs when a hive’s inhabitants suddenly disappear, leaving only queens, eggs and a few immature workers, like so many apian Mary Celestes. The vanished bees are never found, but thought to die singly far from home. The parasites, wildlife and other bees that normally raid the honey and pollen left behind when a colony dies, refuse to go anywhere near the abandoned hives.

The alarm was first sounded last autumn, but has now hit half of all American states. The West Coast is thought to have lost 60 per cent of its commercial bee population, with 70 per cent missing on the East Coast.

CCD has since spread to Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. And last week John Chapple, one of London’s biggest bee-keepers, announced that 23 of his 40 hives have been abruptly abandoned.

Other apiarists have recorded losses in Scotland, Wales and north-west England, but the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs insisted: “There is absolutely no evidence of CCD in the UK.”

The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the world’s crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, “man would have only four years of life left”.

No one knows why it is happening. Theories involving mites, pesticides, global warming and GM crops have been proposed, but all have drawbacks.

German research has long shown that bees’ behaviour changes near power lines.

Now a limited study at Landau University has found that bees refuse to return to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby. Dr Jochen Kuhn, who carried it out, said this could provide a “hint” to a possible cause.

Are GM Crops Killing The

Humble Bumble Bees?

by Gunther Latsch

“If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe,

man would only have four years of life left.

No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants,

no more animals, no more man.”  Albert Einstein.

“And no more profits”.  Fraser Clark.

 

WHEN DID U LAST HEAR A BEE BUZZING AROUND?

A mysterious decimation of bee populations has German beekeepers worried, while a similar phenomenon in the U.S. is gradually assuming catastrophic proportions.  The consequences for agriculture and the economy could be enormous.

Walter Haefeker sits on the board of directors of the German Beekeepers Association (DBIB) and is vice president of the European Professional Beekeepers Association.   He warns that “the very existence of beekeeping is at stake.”

The problem, he says, has a number of causes:

1 is the varroa mite - introduced from Asia.

2 is the widespread practice in agriculture of spraying wildflowers with herbicides and practicing monoculture.

3 is the controversial & growing use of genetic engineering in agriculture.

Mysterious events in recent months have suddenly made Einstein’s apocalyptic vision seem all the more topical.  For unknown reasons, bee populations throughout Germany are disappearing — something that is so far only harming beekeepers. 

But the situation is different in the United States, where bees are dying in such dramatic numbers that the economic consequences could soon be dire.  No one knows what is causing the bees to perish, but some experts believe that the large-scale use of genetically modified plants in the US could be a factor.

>> r u ready?  expect to hear this soon: “no connection has yet been proved”.  geddit?

Felix Kriechbaum, an official with a regional beekeepers’ association in Bavaria, recently reported a decline of almost 12% in local bee populations.  When “bee populations disappear without a trace,” says Kriechbaum, it is difficult to investigate the causes, because “most bees don’t die in the beehive.”  There are many diseases that can cause bees to lose their sense of orientation so they can no longer find their way back to their hives.

Almost simultaneously, Manfred Hederer, the president of the German Beekeepers Association, reported a 25% drop in bee populations throughout Germany.  In isolated cases, he says, declines of up to 80% have been reported.  He speculates that “a particular toxin, some agent with which we are not familiar,” is killing the bees.

>> let’s call it the Blind Corporate Greed Toxin ok?

Politicians, until now, have shown little concern for such warnings.  Although apiarists have been given a chance to make their case — for example in the run-up to the German cabinet’s approval of a genetic engineering policy document by Minister of Agriculture Horst Seehofer in February — their complaints are still largely ignored.

Even when beekeepers actually go to court, as they recently did in a joint effort with the German chapter of the organic farming organization Demeter International and other groups to oppose the use of genetically modified corn plants, they can only dream of the sort of media attention environmental organisations like Greenpeace attract with their protests at test sites.

 

But that could soon change.  Since last November, the US has seen a decline in bee populations so dramatic that it eclipses all previous incidences of mass mortality.  Beekeepers on the east coast complain that they have lost more than 70% of their stock since late last year, while the west coast has seen a decline of up to 60%.

In an article in the business section of the New York Times in February, experts at Cornell University calculated the damage US agriculture would suffer if bees died out and estimated the value bees generate — by pollinating fruit and vegetable plants, almond trees and animal feed like clover — more than $14 billion.

>> think how many iraqis they coulda bommed with that!!!
“Colony Collapse Disorder” (CCD)

That’s what scientists call the mysterious phenomenon, and it’s fast turning into a national catastrophe of sorts.  A number of universities and government agencies have formed a “CCD Working Group” to search for causes, but have so far come up empty-handed.  But, like Dennis van Engelsdorp, an apiarist with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, they are already referring to the problem as a potential “AIDS For The Bee Industry.”

One thing is certain: Millions of bees have simply vanished.  In most cases, all that’s left in the hives are the doomed offspring.  But dead bees are nowhere to be found — neither in nor anywhere close to the hives.  Diana Cox-Foster, a member of the CCD Working Group, says researchers were “extremely alarmed,” adding that the crisis “has the potential to devastate the US beekeeping industry.”

It is particularly worrisome, she said, that the bees’ death is accompanied by a set of symptoms “which does not seem to match anything in the literature.”

In many cases, scientists have found that the few surviving bees found in the hives show evidence of almost all known bee viruses, some with 5 or 6 different infections at the same time, and also infested with fungi — a sign, experts say, that the insects’ immune system may have collapsed.

The scientists are also surprised that bees and other insects usually leave the abandoned hives untouched.  Nearby bee populations or parasites would normally raid the honey and pollen stores of colonies that have died for other reasons, such as excessive winter cold.  “This suggests that there is something toxic in the colony itself which is repelling them,” says Cox-Foster.

 

Genetically Modified Morality, eh Mortality

Walter Haefeker, the German beekeeping official, speculates that the fact that genetically modified, insect-resistant plants are now used in 40% of cornfields in the U.S. could be playing a role.  The figure is much lower in Germany — only 0.06% — and most of that occurs in the eastern states of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Brandenburg.  Haefeker recently sent a researcher at the CCD Working Group some data from a bee study that he has long felt shows a possible connection between genetic engineering and diseases in bees.

The study in question is a small research project conducted at the University of Jena from 2001 to 2004.  The researchers examined the effects on bees of pollen from a genetically modified maize variant called “Bt Corn”.   A gene from a soil bacterium had been inserted into the corn to enable the plant to produce an agent that is toxic to insect pests.  The study concluded that there was no evidence of a “toxic effect of Bt corn on healthy honeybee populations.”  But when, by sheer chance, the bees used in the experiments were infested with a parasite, something eerie happened.  According to the Jena study, “a significantly stronger decline in the number of bees” occurred among the insects which had been fed a highly concentrated Bt poison feed.

According to Professor Hans-Hinrich Kaatz, the director of the study, the bacterial toxin in the genetically modified corn may have “altered the surface of the bee’s intestines, sufficiently weakening the bees to allow the parasites to gain entry — or perhaps it was the other way around.  We don’t know.”

Of course, the concentration of the toxin was 10 times higher in the experiments than in normal Bt corn pollen.  In addition, the bee feed was administered over a relatively lengthy six-week period.

Kaatz wanted to continue studying the phenomenon but lacked the necessary funding.  “Those who have the money are not interested in this sort of research,” he says.

>> did they tell him to buzz off, or just not answer his messages YOU decide.

 

It was another thing i had been wondering about for years.  Happy memories when my older ones were little in the late eighties and early nineties of hanging out in the garden listening to the buzzing.  Noticing in recent years how many fewer bees and butterflies there are.  This is another one that really gets me.  I think the truth is that the sounds and sights of the bees, the birds and the butterflies have profound effects on  brain chemistry and the activities of hormones ( David Wolfe isn’t even allowed to use that word on his website any more but i am so i will while i can).  Of course we love them for themselves but they actually affect how we feel, as reflected at a biochemical level.  The vibrations of birdsong stimulate the pineal gland.  Ditto sunrises and sunsets.  I only really got that yesterday.  I have been nipping up to my hammock at the top of the garden each evening where i have  a wonderful view (albeit over housetops) of the sunset and noticing how wonderful it feels.  I think you get extra sensitisied to these experiences on ’specialised’ high energy raw ‘livets’ (as opposed to diets).  It occured to me that it is not just so much the sunset itself - that is being experienced by someone in the world 24 hours a day - it is the effect on our individual neurotransmitter levels e.g. melatonin if we actually go outside and experience it - and the sky is reasonably clear (did i mention chemtrails? - or suggest that chemtrailing is interfering with our consciousness apparatus?).  Of course if lots of people are fully experiencing sunrise and sunset 24/7 this would have a profound effect on the collective consciousness.  I don’t know where all this is coming from - a something has taken over my fingers and they are tapping furiously…..

Anyway - back to bees…

I heard a year ago about an organism that had been put into bees in Japan to make them produce more honey….

And it had all gone pear-shaped and was killing them and the disease was spreading…

I am relieved to hear that more information is coming out about this pheomenon of bee disappearance because i have been very concerned.  Oddly, just recently, because of exceptionally warm weather, we have seen more bees around than we would expect at this time of year but the picture is rarely simple!

Fascinated by the suggestion that a combination of a bacteria and pest-resistance in GM crops might be the cause.  Sounds like something that might be being done to us humans too…why not - have you never harmed a less powerful organism that yourself?  GM, GM, GM…..it’s getting beyond belief - beneficial side-effect, humans might be shaken out of belief systems.

Anyway handy tip, if bees aren’t pollinating the plants anymore we could just buy seeds to grow things off Monsanto.  Oh thank you Monsanto, you’ve saved the day.  Will you be able to grow my grandchildren too?  Probably….

But i would miss bee pollen.  And buzzing.

BEE OR NOT TO BEE

from Stewart Swerdlow’s www.expansions.com
Posted: April, 16, 2007
This is not exactly front page news, but has been making a few headlines, especially in the “alternative” press. The disappearence of millions of honey bees from apiaries in many U.S. states and a couple of countries overseas has been attributed by some to microwaves from cell-phone usage. No doubt, soon they will blame it on global warming and Khalid Muhammed, along with a severe spike in honey prices and encouraging people worldwide to decrease their intake of honey and perhaps even an “adopt-a-bee” program. Can you shed any light on this global “bee-wilderment”, as well as possible programming activations resulting from the media report?

Stewart’s Reply: There are many explanations. Actually, such disappearances are cyclical and happen every 15 to 20 years. I am sure that they will ultimately blame it on global warming, leading me to suspect that ELF was more to blame.

 

‘Killer bees’ seem resistant to disorder
By Dan Sorenson
arizona daily star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 03.30.2007
advertisementAlthough experts are stumped about what’s causing the colony-collapse disorder die-off in U.S. commercial beehives, there is some speculation that Arizona’s famed Africanized — or “killer bee” — wild-bee population is somehow immune.
Dee Lusby’s bees are doing fine. Actually, they’re doing better than that, says the owner of Lusby Apiaries & Arizona Rangeland Honey of Arivaca.
Lusby has 900 hives of “free range” organic bees spread out over ranches from Benson to Sasabe.
“I’ve only lost one or two, maybe three (hives) out of every 30 or 40 hives,” said Lusby.
She’s not surprised by her good fortune or the modern commercial beekeepers’ hive-mortality rates.
Lusby has a hunch the disorder is the result of a number of factors, including the use of pesticides, bee-growth formulas, artificial food supplements, breeding for size, inbreeding — all or some of which may make them susceptible to mites, viruses and fungi — and maybe even some strange side effects from feeding on genetically modified crops.
Breeding for size is a major factor, Lusby believes. She says the commercial honeybees are now too large to feed on some of the very plants that historically may have given them immunity to diseases and parasites. They’re simply too big to get into those plant’s flowers, she says.
And the man who takes the bees out of Bisbee, Reed “The Killer Bee Guy” Booth, says he’s not surprised Africanized bees are thriving.
Booth started out with beekeeping to make retail honey and honey mustard, and branched out to do bee removals after the Africanized bees invaded Arizona in the early 1990s. He says he gets one to five eradication calls a day from around Cochise County during warm weather.
“It’s going to be a banner year for bees,” he says.
“The Africanized bees are somewhat more resistant” than the European honeybees, he says of the aggressive, slightly smaller wild bees that produce bumper crops of honey and bad press. “But they’re somewhat resistant to anything, probably including nuclear war.”
Booth says he switched from European bees to wild Africanized bees not long after they spread through Arizona.
“I used to have two sets of hives,” says Booth. “But I got tired of going down and either finding my European bees Africanized or dead. I gave up, so, Killer Bee Honey.”
But Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman, research leader of the USDA’s Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Tucson, is not so quick to crown the wildly enthusiastic Africanized honeybees as superior.
“We don’t push the African populations like we do Europeans,” DeGrandi-Hoffman said of the carefully genetically controlled honeybees used by commercial beekeepers for field work.
“We’re putting them on trucks and taking them halfway across the country. We’re stressing them in almost a feedlot situation, feeding them protein supplements. We’re stressing them pretty good. And that doesn’t happen with Africans.”

 

 

GM crop taints honey two miles away, test reveals

[,This is why the bee hives are dying throughout every region in the world where GM crops are being grown. Genetically modified contamination = dead bee hives ‘]

The Sunday Times, September 15, 2002
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-416027,00.html [you have to register for Times’ sites]

EVIDENCE that genetically modified (GM) crops can contaminate food supplies for miles around has been revealed in independent tests commissioned by The Sunday Times.

The tests found alien GM material in honey from beehives two miles from a site where GM crops were being grown under government supervision. It is believed to have been carried there by bees gathering pollen in the GM test sites.

The disclosure, showing that GM organisms can enter the food chain without consumers — or even farmers — knowing they are present, will undermine assurances by Tony Blair and ministers that such crops can be tested in Britain without contaminating the food chain.

The test results come as ministers, under pressure from the American agrochemical lobby, mount a huge consultation exercise to persuade the public of the virtues of GM foods. They have previously given assurances that consumers “are not being used as guinea pigs”.

The GM material was found in honey sold from farmer David Rolfe’s hives at Newport-on-Tay in Fife, almost two miles from one of 18 sites holding trials of GM oil-seed rape.

A test carried out by GeneScan, a respected independent laboratory in Bremen, Germany, checked for traces of an NOS terminator, one of four modified genes which make the crop resistant to pesticides. This proved positive.

A second test confirmed that GM material in the honey could have come only from oil- seed rape grown at Wester Friarton, in Newport-on-Tay, by Aventis, one of the world’s biggest biotechnology firms. The fact that the GM material travelled such a distance makes a mockery of the government’s 50m-200m crop-free “buffer” zones that were created around GM sites to protect neighbouring farms. Critics have claimed that the GM crop trial sites are too close to other farms. America has buffer zones of up to 400m, Canada up to 800m, and the European Union recommends a 5km (three-mile) zone for GM oilseed rape.

When Rolfe first raised his concerns, government officials said that although it was not possible to rule out cross-pollination, they did not believe it should be “a source of concern”.

“I’m very angry and disappointed,” Rolfe said last week. “I feel I’ve been denied the right and freedom to eat my own GM-free produce. Now we can’t eat the honey or sell it.”

This weekend Defra, the ministry responsible for the crop trials, said: “We have not seen the results of the study but will treat any such findings extremely seriously.”

In the case of GM rape, like most GM products, there is no evidence that contamination poses a health risk. Concern centres on maintaining the integrity of traditionally produced products.

Tim Lang, professor of food policy at Thames Valley University, said: “The early assurances from the industry and the government that a buffer zone would allow safety and choice for consumers are falling apart. It raises environmental health worries, and what we don’t yet know is whether these warnings will translate into a risk to human health.”

Britain has imposed a moratorium on the widespread planting of GM crops until it has analysed the impact of GM crop trials at 18 farm-scale sites around Britain.

However, The Sunday Times’s tests confirm earlier work that was carried by Friends of the Earth, the environmental group, and will increase pressure on the government to scale down its support for the GM industry.

It will also come as a personal setback to Blair, who is determined that British companies will win a share of the potentially lucrative bioscience industry. In May the prime minister attacked GM protesters as part of an “anti-science fashion” in Britain.

The tests will bring pressure on Aventis, which was accused of a “serious breach” of regulations earlier this year after GM trials in 12 sites were contaminated with antibiotic genes. These are controversial because of the danger of gene transfer to bacteria in animals and humans, who could become immune to common life- saving antibiotics.

While the government tends to support the GM lobby, food retailers have been more cautious. The big supermarkets insist that such products are properly labelled and refuse to take honey from within six miles of UK test sites.

In Canada, a leading cultivator of GM crops, sales of honey have plummeted by 50% amid concern that the integrity of the product has been compromised.

A spokesmen for Aventis said: “We would be very interested in looking at both the origin of the honey sample and how the tests were carried out. We would like to look at this further

Source: Norfolk Genetic Information Network (ngin),
http://www.ngin.org.uk

 

 

Beginning Of The End? - Rense.com warning in year 2000.
Genes In GM Crops Jump
The Species Barrier..
http://www.voila.co.uk/News/afp/uk/000528085900.15e4xfxz.html
5-28-00
LONDON (AFP) - Research by a leading German zoologist has shown that genes used to genetically modify crops can jump the species barrier, newspapers reported here on Sunday. A three-year study by Professor Hans-Heinrich Kaatz at the University of Jena found that the gene used to modify oil-seed rape had transferred to bacteria living inside honey bees. The findings will undermine claims by the biotech industry and supporters of GM foods that genes cannot spread.
 
They will also increase pressure on farmers across Europe to destroy fields of oil-seed rape contaminated with GM seeds. In an interview for The Observer newspaper, Kaatz said: “I have found the herbicide-resistant genes in the rapeseed transferred across to the bacteria and yeast inside the intestines of young bees. This happened rarely, but it did happen.” Asked if his findings had implications for the bacteria inside the human gut, Kaatz replied: “Maybe, but I am not an expert on this.”
 
The Observer said Kaatz was reluctant to talk about his work until it is officially published and reviewed by fellow scientists. The reports come a day after Britain’s Agriculture Minister Nick Brown urged farmers to destroy crops contaminated with genetically modified seeds. Up to 600 farmers in Britain are believed to have inadvertently planted more than 30,000 acres of oilseed rape contaminated with GM rape seeds, supplied by Anglo-Dutch seed company Advanta. Similar crops have been planted elsewhere in Europe, including in France, Germany and Sweden. The French and Swedish governments have already announced they are ordering the uprooting of the crops.
 
 
_____
 
 
 
Modified Crop Genes ‘Jump The Species Barrier’ By Anthony Barnett - Public Affairs Editor
http://www.observer.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,319418,00.html 5-28-00
 
A leading zoologist has found evidence that genes used to modify crops can jump the species barrier and cause bacteria to mutate, prompting fears that GM technology could pose serious health risks.
 
A four-year study by Professor Hans-Hinrich Kaatz, a respected German zoologist, found that the alien gene used to modify oilseed rape had transferred to bacteria living inside the guts of honey bees.
 
The research - which has yet to be published and has not been reviewed by fellow scientists - is highly significant because it suggests that all types of bacteria could become contaminated by genes used in genetically modified technology, including those that live inside the human digestive system. If this happened, it could have an impact on the bacteria’s vital role in helping the human body fight disease, aid digestion and facilitate blood clotting.
 
Agriculture Minister Nick Brown, who was yesterday advising farmers who have accidentally grown contaminated GM oilseed rape in Britain to rip up their crops, confirmed the potential significance of Kaatz’s research. He said: ‘If this is true, then it would be very serious.’
 
The 47-year-old Kaatz has been reluctant to talk about his research until it has been published in a scientific journal, because he fears a backlash from the scientific community similar to that faced by Dr Arpad Pustzai, who claimed that genetically modified potatoes damaged the stomach lining of rats. Pustzai was sacked and had his work discredited.
 
But in his first newspaper interview, Kaatz told The Observer: ‘It is true, I have found the herbicide-resistant genes in the rapeseed transferred across to the bacteria and yeast inside the intestines of young bees. This happened rarely, but it did happen.’ Although Kaatz realised the potential ’significance’ of his findings, he said he ‘was not surprised’ at the results. Asked if this had implications for the bacteria inside the human gut, he said: ‘Maybe, but I am not an expert on this.’ Dr Mae-Wan Ho, geneticist at Open University and a critic of GM technology, has no doubts about the dangers. She said: ‘These findings are very worrying and provide the first real evidence of what many have feared. Everybody is keen to exploit GM technology, but nobody is looking at the risk of horizontal gene transfer.
 
‘We are playing about with genetic structures that existed for millions of years and the experiment is running out of control.’ One of the biggest concerns is if the anti-biotic resistant gene used in some GM crops crossed over to bacteria. ‘If this happened it would leave us unable to treat major illnesses like meningitis and E coli .’
 
Kaatz, who works at the respected Institute for Bee Research at the University of Jena in Germany, built nets in a field planted with genetically modified rapeseed produced by AgrEvo. He let the bees fly freely within the net. At the beehives, he installed pollen traps in order to sample the pollen from the bees’ hindlegs when entering the hive. This pollen was fed to young honey bees in the laboratory. Pollen is the natural diet of young bees, which need a high protein diet. Kaatz then extracted the intestine of the young bees and discovered that the gene from the GM rape-seed had been transferred in the bee gut to the microbes.
 
Professor Robert Pickard, director-general of the Institute of the British Nutrition Foundation, is a bee expert as well as being a biologist and has visited the institute where Kaatz works. He said: ‘There is no doubt that, if Kaatz’s research is substantiated, then it poses very interesting questions and will need to be looked at very closely. ‘But it must be remembered that the human body has been coping perfectly well with strange DNA for millions of years. And we also know many people have been eating GM products for years without showing any signs of ill health.’
 

 

No ORGANIC Bee losses
2007 05 06

Received from Lancifer | redicecreations.com

I am quite involved with many alternative agriculture
groups, and I received this email from a trusted
friend…you might want to check it out for your news
section…

“Sharon Labchuk is a longtime environmental activist and part-time organic beekeeper from Prince Edward Island. She has twice run for a seat in Ottawa’s House of Commons, making strong showings around 5% for Canada’s fledgling Green Party. She is also leader of the provincial wing of her party. In a widely circulated email, she wrote:

I’m on an organic beekeeping list of about 1,000 people, mostly Americans, and no one in the organic beekeeping world, including commercial beekeepers, is reporting colony collapse on this list. The problem with the big commercial guys is that they put pesticides in their hives to fumigate for varroa mites, and they feed antibiotics to the bees. They also haul the hives by truck all over the place to make more money with pollination services, which stresses the colonies.

Her email recommends a visit to the Bush Bees Web site at Here, Michael Bush felt compelled to put a message to the beekeeping world right on the top page:

Most of us beekeepers are fighting with the Varroa mites. I’m happy to say my biggest problems are things like trying to get nucs through the winter and coming up with hives that won’t hurt my back from lifting or better ways to feed the bees.

This change from fighting the mites is mostly because I’ve gone to natural sized cells. In case you weren’t aware, and I wasn’t for a long time, the foundation in common usage results in much larger bees than what you would find in a natural hive. I’ve measured sections of natural worker brood comb that are 4.6mm in diameter. What most people use for worker brood is foundation that is 5.4mm in diameter. If you translate that into three dimensions instead of one, it produces a bee that is about half as large again as is natural. By letting the bees build natural sized cells, I have virtually eliminated my Varroa and Tracheal mite problems. One cause of this is shorter capping times by one day, and shorter post-capping times by one day. This means less Varroa get into the cells, and less Varroa reproduce in the cells.

Who should be surprised that the major media reports forget to tell us that the dying bees are actually hyper-bred varieties that we coax into a larger than normal body size? It sounds just like the beef industry. And, have we here a solution to the vanishing bee problem? Is it one that the CCD Working Group, or indeed, the scientific world at large, will support? Will media coverage affect government action in dealing with this issue?

These are important questions to ask. It is not an uncommonly held opinion that, although this new pattern of bee colony collapse seems to have struck from out of the blue (which suggests a triggering agent), it is likely that some biological limit in the bees has been crossed. There is no shortage of evidence that we have been fast approaching this limit for some time.

We’ve been pushing them too hard, Dr. Peter Kevan, an associate professor of environmental biology at the University of Guelph in Ontario, told the CBC. And we’re starving them out by feeding them artificially and moving them great distances. Given the stress commercial bees are under, Kevan suggests CCD might be caused by parasitic mites, or long cold winters, or long wet springs, or pesticides, or genetically modified crops. Maybe it’s all of the above…

Article Received from Lancifer

 

Suddenly, the bees are simply vanishing
Scientists are at a loss to pinpoint the cause. The die-off in 35 states has crippled beekeepers and threatened many crops.
By Jia-Rui Chong and Thomas H. Maugh II, Times Staff Writers
June 10, 2007
 
 Photo Gallery
Bee Mystery
Related Stories
- Bees are going missing, yes, but the crops are just fine
The dead bees under Dennis vanEngelsdorp’s microscope were like none he had ever seen.

He had expected to see mites or amoebas, perennial pests of bees. Instead, he found internal organs swollen with debris and strangely blackened. The bees’ intestinal tracts were scarred, and their rectums were abnormally full of what appeared to be partly digested pollen. Dark marks on the sting glands were telltale signs of infection.

“The more you looked, the more you found,” said VanEngelsdorp, the acting apiarist for the state of Pennsylvania. “Each thing was a surprise.”

VanEngelsdorp’s examination of the bees in November was one of the first scientific glimpses of a mysterious honeybee die-off that has launched an intense search for a cure.

The puzzling phenomenon, known as Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD, has been reported in 35 states, five Canadian provinces and several European countries. The die-off has cost U.S. beekeepers about $150 million in losses and an uncertain amount for farmers scrambling to find bees to pollinate their crops.

Scientists have scoured the country, finding eerily abandoned hives in which the bees seem to have simply left their honey and broods of baby bees.

“We’ve never experienced bees going off and leaving brood behind,” said Pennsylvania-based beekeeper Dave Hackenberg. “It was like a mother going off and leaving her kids.”

Researchers have picked through the abandoned hives, dissected thousands of bees, and tested for viruses, bacteria, pesticides and mites.

So far, they are stumped.

According to the Apiary Inspectors of America, 24% of 384 beekeeping operations across the country lost more than 50% of their colonies from September to March. Some have lost 90%.

“I’m worried about the bees,” said Dan Boyer, 52, owner of Ridgetop Orchards in Fishertown, Pa., which grows apples. “The more I learn about it, the more I think it is a national tragedy.”

At Boyer’s orchard, 400 acres of apple trees — McIntosh, Honey Crisp, Red Delicious and 11 other varieties — have just begun to bud white flowers.

Boyer’s trees need to be pollinated. Incompletely pollinated blooms would still grow apples, he said, but the fruit would be small and misshapen, suitable only for low-profit juice.

This year, he will pay dearly for the precious bees — $13,000 for 200 hives, the same price that 300 hives cost him last year.

The scene is being repeated throughout the country, where honeybees, scientifically known as Apis mellifera, are required to pollinate a third of the nation’s food crops, including almonds, cherries, blueberries, pears, strawberries and pumpkins.

Vanishing colonies

One of the earliest alarms was sounded by Hackenberg, who used to keep about 3,000 hives in dandelion-covered fields near the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania.

In November, Hackenberg, 58, was at his winter base in Florida. He peeked in on a group of 400 beehives he had driven down from his home in West Milton, Pa., a month before. He went from empty box to empty box. Only about 40 had bees in them.

“It was just the most phenomenal thing I thought I’d ever seen,” he said.

The next morning, Hackenberg called Jerry Hayes, the chief of apiary inspection at the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services and president of the Apiary Inspectors of America.