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Bees Seem To Be Dying Across USA |
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Contributed by Yvette Rosser
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 Honey Bee
Species under threat:
Honey, who shrunk the bee population?
Across America, millions of honey bees are abandoning their hives and
flying off to die, leaving beekeepers facing ruin and US agriculture
under threat. And to date, no one knows why.
It has echoes of a murder mystery in polite society. There could hardly
be a more sedate and unruffled world than beekeeping, but the
beekeepers of the United States have suddenly encountered affliction,
calamity and death on a massive scale. And they have not got a clue why
it is happening.
Michael McCarthy reports
Published: 01 March 2007. The Independent, UK
The Independent, UK
Across the country, from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific, honey bee
colonies have started to die off, abruptly and decisively. Millions of
bees are abandoning their hives and flying off to die (they cannot
survive as a colony without the queen, who is always left behind).
Some beekeepers, especially those with big portable apiaries, or bee
farms, which are used for large-scale pollination of fruit and
vegetable crops, are facing commercial ruin - and there is a growing
threat that America's agriculture may be struck a mortal blow by the
loss of the pollinators. Yet scientists investigating the problem have
no idea what is causing it.
The phenomenon is recent, dating back to autumn, when beekeepers along
the east coast of the US started to notice the die-offs. It was given
the name of fall dwindle disease, but now it has been renamed to
reflect better its dramatic nature, and is known as colony collapse
disorder.
It is swift in its effect. Over the course of a week the majority of
the bees in an affected colony will flee the hive and disappear, going
off to die elsewhere. The few remaining insects are then found to be
enormously diseased - they have a "tremendous pathogen load", the
scientists say. But why? No one yet knows.
The condition has been recorded in at least 24 states. It is having a
major effect on the mobile apiaries which are transported across the US
to pollinate large-scale crops, such as oranges in Florida or almonds
in California. Some have lost up to 90 per cent of their bees.
A reliable estimate of the true extent of the problem will not be
possible for another month or so, until winter comes to an end and the
hibernating bee colonies in the northern American states wake up. But
scientists are very worried, not least because, as there is no obvious
cause for the disease as yet, there is no way of tackling it.
"We are extremely alarmed," said Diana Cox-Foster, the professor of
Entomology at Penn States University and one of the leading members of
a specially convened colony-collapse disorder working group.
"It is one of the most alarming insect diseases ever to hit the US and
it has the potential to devastate the US beekeeping industry. In some
ways it may be to the insect world what foot-and-mouth disease was to
livestock in England."
Most of the pollination for more than 90 commercial crops grown
throughout the United States is provided byApis mellifera, the honey
bee, and the value from the pollination to agricultural output in the
country is estimated at $14.6bn (£8bn) annually. Growers rent
about 1.5 million colonies each year to pollinate crops - a colony
usually being the group of bees in a hive.
California's almond crop, which is the biggest in the world, stretching
over more than half a million acres over the state's central valley,
now draws more than half of the mobile bee colonies in America at
pollinating time - which is now. Some big commercial beekeeping
operations which have been hit hard by the current disease have had to
import millions of bees from Australia to enable the almond trees to be
pollinated.
Some of these mobile apiaries have been losing 60 or 70 per cent of
their insects, or even more. "A honey producer in Pennsylvania doing
local pollination, Larry Curtis, has gone from 1,000 bee colonies to
fewer than eight," said Professor Cox-Foster. The disease showed a
completely new set of symptoms, "which does not seem to match anything
in the literature", said the entomologist.
One was that the bees left the hive and flew away to die elsewhere,
over about a week. Another was that the few bees left inside the hive
were carrying "a tremendous number of pathogens" - virtually every
known bee virus could be detected in the insects, she said, and some
bees were carrying five or six viruses at a time, as well as fungal
infections. Because of this it was assumed that the bees' immune
systems were being suppressed in some way.
Professor Cox-Foster went on: "And another unusual symptom that we're
are seeing, which makes this very different, is that normally when a
bee colony gets weak and its numbers are decreasing, other neighbouring
bees will come and steal the resources - they will take away the honey
and the pollen.
"Other insects like to take advantage too, such as the wax moth or the
hive beetle. But none of this is happening. These insects are not
coming in.
"This suggests that there is something toxic in the colony itself which
is repelling them."
The scientists involved in the working group were surveying the dead
colonies but did not think the cause of the deaths was
anything brought in by beekeepers, such as pesticides, she said.
Another of the researchers studying the collapses, Dennis van
Engelsdorp, a bee specialist with the State of Pennsylvania, said it
was still difficult to gauge their full extent. It was possible that
the bees were fleeing the colonies because they sensed they themselves
were diseased or affected in some way, he said. This behaviour has been
recorded in other social insects, such as ants.
The introduction of the parasitic bee mite Varroa in 1987 and the
invasion of the Africanised honey bee in 1990 have threatened honey bee
colonies in the US and in other parts of the world, but although
serious, they were easily comprehensible; colony collapse disorder is a
deep mystery.
One theory is that the bees may be suffering from stress as beekeepers
increasingly transport them around the country, the hives stacked on
top of each other on the backs of trucks, to carry out pollination
contracts in orchard after orchard, in different states.
Tens of billions of bees are now involved in this "migratory"
pollination. An operator might go from pollinating oranges in Florida,
to apples in Pennsylvania, to blueberries in Maine, then back to
Massachusetts to pollinate cranberries.
The business is so big that pollination is replacing honey-making as
the main money earner at the top end of the beekeeping market, not
least because in recent years the US has been flooded with cheap honey
imports, mainly from Argentina and China.
A typical bee colony, which might be anything from 15,000 to 30,000
bees, would be rented out to a fruit grower for about $135 - a price
that is up from $55 only three years ago. To keep the bees' energy up
while they are pollinating, beekeepers feed them protein supplements
and syrup carried around in large tanks.
It is in these migratory colonies where the biggest losses have been
seen. But the stress theory is as much speculation as anything else. At
the moment, the disappearance of America's bees is as big a mystery as
the disappearance of London's sparrows.
----------------
Vanishing bees threaten
US crops
By Matt Wells
BBC News, Florida, USA
news.bbc.co.uk
It is officially called Colony Collapse Disorder, but a more pithy way
of describing it would be Vanishing Bee Syndrome.
The Hackenbergs and their hives
Bees are driven around Florida to help pollinate early crops
All over America, beekeepers are opening up their hives in preparation
for the spring pollination season, only to find that their bees are
dead or have disappeared.
Nobody, so far, knows why.
The sad mystery surrounding the humble honeybee - which is a vital
component in $14bn-worth of US agriculture - is beginning to worry even
the highest strata of the political class in Washington.
"Hillary Clinton's got interested in this in the last week or so," said
David Hackenberg, the beekeeper leading the drive to publicise their
plight.
"And she's not alone," he said. "There's a lot of Congressmen have
called...wanting to know what's going on. It's serious.
Bees in a hive
Before: a healthy beehive....
"It's not just affecting the beekeepers, it's affecting the farmers
that produce the food, and in the end it's going to affect
the consumer," he added, sighing deeply.
What makes our interview slightly surreal is that we are standing next
to an orange grove, in rural Florida, while about 70 hives of bees buzz
angrily behind us, as if to emphasise their predicament.
Dead and dying bees in affected hive
...and after: a hive with CCD
Mr Hackenberg is suffering along with his bees. Like many in his rather
neglected profession, he and his son spend the summer and autumn in the
north of the country, driving their bees down south during the winter,
to kick-start the early fruit and vegetable crops.
In a matter of weeks, he lost just over 2,000 of his 3,000 hives. The
yard of his small honey farm near Tampa Bay, is littered with empty
boxes, which normally would be full of worker bees, doing what they do
best.
As we speak, his mobile phone chirps constantly, with yet more
beekeepers across the US, reporting losses of up to 95%.
Pesticides?
Federal scientists, the National Beekeepers Association and state
researchers have come together to form an emergency working group to
try and halt the disastrous trend.
There are as many theories as there are members of the panel, but Mr
Hackenberg strongly suspects that new breeds of nicotine-based
pesticides are to blame.
"It may be that the honeybee has become the victim of these
insecticides that are meant for other pests," he said. "If we don't
figure this out real quick, it's going to wipe out our food supply."
Just a few miles down the sunlit road, it is easy to find farmers
prepared to agree with his gloomy assessment.
In the old days, crops would be pollinated by bees living in the woods
around the fertile fields, but housing developers have gobbled up much
of the natural habitat, according to Carl Grooms, who runs Fancy Farms
Inc.
"The squash crops that we grow have a male and female bloom,
and the bee has to visit...to make it pollinate and produce,"
he said.
"We're going to have a hard time finding rental bees to aid in this
pollination and if it's as critical as it looks like it will be, I
probably won't even plant anything this spring."
Back at the Buffy Bee honey farm - the Hackenberg's Florida base - two
members from the working group checked in to pay their respects, and
take some bee samples on their way back to Washington.
Crazy theories
Dennis van Engelsdorp, a Pennsylvania-based beekeeper and leading
researcher, walks over to an isolated group of hives, and pulls out two
different wooden frames that would normally be covered in bees, busy
making honey.
The difference is obvious. While one is teeming with insects, the other
is virtually uninhabited. "The adult population totally disappears," he
said. He shakes his head in frustration.
Nathan Rice and Dennis van Engelsdorp take samples from a hive
The US Department of Agriculture is working on finding the
cause
He runs through the long list of possible causes, ranging from new mite
infestation to new chemicals, but he is adamant that it is too early to
pin the blame on insecticides.
"We have no evidence to think that that theory is more right than any
other...There's stronger evidence for some other things really," he
said.
He points to the fact that the Colony Collapse Disorder is inconsistent
even within localised regions. Some beekeepers have managed to retain
completely healthy hives.
His caution is backed up by Nathan Rice, from the Department of
Agriculture's bee research laboratory.
"While there is a lot of this crazy guessing going on, people get kind
of concerned," he said. "We're here to try to figure out why it's
happening."
Future fears
The sensitivity of the beekeepers themselves is easy to understand. For
the Hackenbergs, their livelihood is at stake, not to mention
the millions of bees that have died.
David Hackenberg's son, Davey, 35, is angry and frustrated that there
are no answers yet. "We're working hard at it every day, and we're
going to keep working hard until the bank comes and says, 'hey, we're
taking the place,'" he says with a defiant edge.
As a father of four, he thinks that the time may have come to get out
of the bee business.
Tales abound around the Hackenberg breakfast table of beekeepers who
have already given up after a calamitous few months trying to pollinate
the huge almond crop in California.
Some bankrupt beekeepers do not have the money to get themselves home,
let alone their equipment.
A bumper-sticker on one of the family trucks shows support for the
Bush-Cheney ticket in the 2004 election, but Davey is now wondering
whether anywhere near enough has been done by governments - and
everybody else - to keep his fragile industry and environment going.
Honey Bee
Die-off Alarms Beekeepers
Larry O'Hanlon, Discovery News
dsc.discovery.com
Feb. 5, 2007 — Something is wiping out honey bees across
North America and a team of researchers is rushing to find out what it
is.
What’s being called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) has now
been seen in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida, Georgia and way out
in California. Some bee keepers have lost up to 80 percent of their
colonies to the mysterious disorder.
"Those are quite scary numbers," said Dennis vanEngelsdorp,
Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture’s lead apiarist.
Whatever kills the bees targets adult workers which die outside the
colony — with few adults left inside, either alive or dead.
The disorder decimates the worker bee population in
a matter of weeks.
Aside from making honey, honey bees are essential for the pollination
of tens of million of dollars worth of cash crops all over the United
States. That’s why almond growers of California, for
instance, are taking notice and pledging funds to help identify and
fight the honey bee disorder.
Among the possible culprits are a fungus, virus, or a variety of
microbes and pesticides. No one knows just yet. On first inspection,
the pattern of die-offs resembles something that has been seen in more
isolated cases in Louisiana, Texas and Australia, vanEngelsdorp said.
"Right now our efforts are on collecting as many samples as possible,"
said vanEngelsdorp. Bees that are collected are carefully dissected and
analyzed to see what might have killed them.
Other researchers are keeping track of the problem using Google Earth,
as well as cutting edge hive-sniffing and eavesdropping technology to
investigate the problem.
We’re trying to sort out the myriad of variables,"
said Jerry Bromenshank of the University of Montana and Bee Alert
Technology, Inc. "We’ve sent teams to Georgia, Florida,
Pennsylvania, and California. The scenario was about exactly the same
everywhere we looked."
The locations of the bees are put on a global database to see it there
is any geographic pattern. Bromenshank also uses a groundbreaking audio
analysis technique that allows them to hear specific changes in bee
colony sounds when specific chemicals are present. Chemical air
sampling in hives is also being planned, he said.
Just how bad the bee problem is right now is unknown, since the first
cases came at the end of 2006 and many colonies in northern states are
not active yet.
As spring awakens honey bee colonies, it will be vital that beekeepers
send information to the scientists, regardless of how well or poorly
their bee colonies are faring, said Bromenshank. For that purpose the
scientists have put together a confidential beekeeper survey
on their Website, http://maarec.org.
"Beekeepers overwintering in the north may not know the status of their
colonies until they are able to make early spring inspections," said
Maryann Frazier, apiculture extension associate in Penn State's College
of Agricultural Sciences. "This should occur in late February or early
March.
"Regardless, there is little doubt that honey bees are going to be in
short supply this spring and possibly into the summer."
Mystery Ailment Strikes Honeybees
_ Although the bodies of dead bees often are littered around a hive,
sometimes carried out of the hive by worker bees, no bee remains are
typically found around colonies struck by the mystery ailment.
Scientists assume these bees have flown away from the hive before dying.
_ From the outside, a stricken colony may appear normal, with bees
leaving and entering. But when beekeepers look
inside the hive box, they find few mature bees taking care of the
younger, developing bees.
By GENARO C. ARMAS
The Associated Press
Sunday, February 11, 2007; 11:17 PM
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. -- A mysterious illness is killing tens of thousands
of honeybee colonies across the country, threatening honey production,
the livelihood of beekeepers and possibly crops that need bees for
pollination.
Researchers are scrambling to find the cause of the ailment,
called Colony Collapse Disorder.
Washington Post
washingtonpost.com
Reports of unusual colony deaths have come from at least 22 states.
Some affected commercial beekeepers _ who often
keep thousands of colonies _ have reported losing more than
50 percent of their bees. A colony can have roughly 20,000 bees in the
winter, and up to 60,000 in the summer.
"We have seen a lot of things happen in 40 years, but this is the
epitome of it all," Dave Hackenberg, of Lewisburg-based Hackenberg
Apiaries, said by phone from Fort Meade, Fla., where he was working
with his bees.
The country's bee population had already been shocked in recent years
by a tiny, parasitic bug called the varroa mite, which has destroyed
more than half of some beekeepers' hives and devastated most wild
honeybee populations.
Along with being producers of honey, commercial bee colonies are
important to agriculture as pollinators, along with some birds, bats
and other insects. A recent report by the National Research Council
noted that in order to bear fruit, three-quarters of all flowering
plants _ including most food crops and some that provide fiber, drugs
and fuel _ rely on pollinators for fertilization.
Hackenberg, 58, was first to report Colony Collapse Disorder to bee
researchers at Penn State University. He notified them in November when
he was down to about 1,000 colonies _ after having started the fall
with 2,900.
"We are going to take bees we got and make more bees ... but it's
costly," he said. "We are talking about major bucks. You can only take
so many blows so many times."
One beekeeper who traveled with two truckloads of bees to California to
help pollinate almond trees found nearly all of his bees dead upon
arrival, said Dennis vanEnglesdorp, acting state apiarist for the
Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.
"I would characterize it as serious," said Daniel Weaver, president of
the American Beekeeping Federation. "Whether it threatens the
apiculture industry in the United States or not, that's up in the air."
Scientists at Penn State, the University of Montana and the U.S.
Department of Agriculture are among the quickly growing group
of researchers and industry officials trying to solve the mystery.
Among the clues being assembled by researchers:
_ Normally, a weakened bee colony would be immediately overrun by bees
from other colonies or by pests going after the hive's honey. That's
not the case with the stricken colonies, which might not be touched for
at least two weeks, said Diana Cox-Foster, a Penn State entomology
professor investigating the problem.
"That is a real abnormality," Hackenberg said.
Cox-Foster said an analysis of dissected bees turned up an alarmingly
high number of foreign fungi, bacteria and other organisms and weakened
immune systems.
Researchers are also looking into the effect pesticides might be having
on bees.
In the meantime, beekeepers are wondering if bee deaths over the last
couple of years that had been blamed on mites or poor management might
actually have resulted from the mystery ailment.
"Now people think that they may have had this three or four years,"
vanEnglesdorp said.
http://www.heyokamagazine.com/HEYOKA.7.BEES.htm
NewsTarget.com printable article
Originally published March 21 2007
Mysterious collapse of
honeybee populations threatens national food supply
by Christian Evans
newstarget.com
The honeybee population in the United States is currently suffering a
devastating collapse. Honeybees are flying off in search of pollen and
nectar and simply never returning to their colonies. Have they all been
kidnapped by mad beekeepers, or is something more frightening occurring
with the pollinators in our ecosystem?
During the final three months of 2006, a distressing number
of honeybee colonies began to diminish from the United
States, and beekeepers all over the country have reported
unprecedented losses. According to scientists, the
domesticated honeybee population has declined by about 50% in the last
50 years.
Reports of similar losses to the honeybee population have been
documented before in beekeeping literature, but are widely believed to
have occurred at this scale previously only at a regional level. With
outbreaks recorded as far back as 1896, this is regarded as the first
national honeybee epidemic in U.S. history.
The phenomenon, referred to as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), is not
yet well understood. Even the existence of the disorder remains in
dispute. Nevertheless, what cannot be denied is that a shortage of
honeybees in the continental U.S. has affected cropowners from
California to the New England states.
"There are shortages [like this] that pop up from time to time," said
Claire Kremen, a conservation biologist at Princeton University.
"Whether there are more [shortages] than there were 20 years ago, one
would guess yes, as there are fewer bees to go around, but
it's not well documented."
Subsequent investigations suggest these outbreaks of unexplained colony
collapse were experienced by beekeepers for at least the last two
years. Are the honeybees dying in the fields they pollinate, or do they
simply become too exhausted and disoriented to find their way back home?
Why honeybees are the invisible link to an abundant food supply
Whatever the reason, why should we care so much? Why should it matter
at all to Americans?
When entire bee populations seem to disappear or die out in alarming
numbers, the ramifications can be astounding. Bee pollination, which
most farmers depend on, is responsible for as much as 30% of the U.S.
food supply.
"Every third bite we consume in our diet is dependent on a honeybee to
pollinate that food," said Zac Browning, vice president of the American
Beekeeping Federation.
A Cornell University study has estimated that honeybees
annually pollinate more than $14 billion worth of seeds and crops in
the United States. These include such diverse food sources as almond
blossoms, pumpkins, cucumbers, raspberries, avocados, and alfalfa.
Unless something is done to protect the honeybee population soon, many
fruits and vegetables may disappear from the food chain.
"The sudden and unexplained loss of honeybee populations is an early
warning sign for coming disruptions in modern agriculture," explained
Mike Adams, executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center
non-profit group (www.ConsumerWellness.org). "If we continue to lose
honeybees at this rate, we may find ourselves in a dire food supply
emergency that will not be easily solved," Adams said.
"During the last three months of 2006, we began to receive reports from
commercial beekeepers of an alarming number of honey bee colonies dying
in the eastern United States," said Maryann
Frazier, a senior extension associate in the Department of Entomology
at Pennsylvania State University's College of Agricultural Sciences.
"Since the beginning of the year, beekeepers from all over the country
have been reporting unprecedented losses. This has become a highly
significant yet poorly understood problem that threatens the
pollination industry and the production of commercial honey in the
United States," she said.
Honeybees are killed by synthetic chemicals
Scientists, for now, have primarily attributed the honeybee decline to
diseases spread as a result of mites and other parasites as well as the
spraying of crops with pesticides. It may also result from the
treatment of forests, rangelands and even suburban areas to control a
wide variety of pests.
"There is no question that the extremely irresponsible use of synthetic
chemicals in modern farming practices is significantly contributing to
this devastating drop in honeybee populations," said Mike
Adams. "The more chemicals we spray on the crops, the more poisoned the
pollinators become. And the fact that honeybees are now simply
disappearing in huge numbers is a strong indicator that a key chemical
burden threshold has been crossed. We may have unwittingly unleashed an
agricultural Chernobyl."
In order to deal with this devastation, a newly formed CCD working
group has been organized in hope of finding a solution to the dwindling
honeybee population. According to the CCD mandate, the group will
explore "the cause or causes of honeybee colony collapse and finding
appropriate strategies to reduce colony loss in the future."
Comprised of university faculty researchers, state regulatory
officials, cooperative extension educators and industry
representatives, the working group hopes to develop management
strategies and recommendations for this epidemic. Participating
organizations include the USDA/ARS, the Florida Department of
Agriculture, the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, Pennsylvania
State University, and Bee Alert, Inc., a technology transfer company
affiliated with the University of Montana.
Research involving the value of honeybees to agriculture could be
beneficial to both the beekeeper and the grower. The knowledge formed
from such research maximizes the likelihood of finding answers that
will aid beekeepers in promoting good health for honeybees within the
pollination industry. It should also keep the grower well informed
about the process of pollination and the relative damage of different
pesticides to honeybee populations.
A detailed, up-to-date report on Colony Collapse Disorder can be found
on the Mid-Atlantic Apiculture Research and Extension Consortium Web
site at http://www.maarec.org
The pesticide link to honeybee populations
Pesticides, specifically neonicotinioid pesticides,
including imidacloprid, clothianiden and thiamethoxam, poison the bee
while it is in the process of collecting nectar and pollen. The
poisoning may occur when the material is ingested, or it may be
transported to the hive where it poisons other bees in the colony.
According to a recent report, "Pesticides in Relation to BeeKeeping and
Crop Pollination, even organic insecticides -- the chlorinated
hydrocarbons, organophosphates, and carbamates -- vary in their
toxicity and are not recommended."
Pesticides can also damage wild bees, but the toxicity level of a
specific insecticide to honeybees and wild bees is not always the same.
Even among wild bees, some materials are more toxic to one species than
to another.
According to the CCD report, "If bees are eating fresh or stored pollen
contaminated with these chemicals at low levels, they may not cause
mortality but may impact the bee's ability to learn or make memories.
This could cause the colonies to dwindle and eventually die."
So far a few common management factors have been found, but no common
environmental agents or chemicals have been identified. There is no one
substance currently being branded as the culprit.
Not limited to the United States, this problem is complex and the
ramifications are alarming. Such a loss to the honeybee population can
occur in other countries that have highly developed agricultural
infrastructures.
This only begs an even deeper question for society to answer: If we are
so dependent on honeybee pollination for our food supply, what happens
when the bees are wiped out? Mike Adams calls our current food
production situation a "food bubble" and explains that as mankind
disrupts nature and destroys sustainable ecosystems, the natural
backlash will impact the food supply first. "Following a century of
synthetic chemical poisoning of planet Earth, the human race is in for
a rather abrupt population correction. The collapse of
pollinators is merely a sign of things to come. Humans will either find
a way to live in balance with the planet, or they may ultimately face
the same fate as the honeybees."
---------
When Bees Disappear, Will
Man Soon Follow?
Apr 5th, 2007, 7:45 AM
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/3545166/
Jean-Claude Gerard Koven
Last week I received an email from a friend reporting a sudden,
devastating collapse in America's bee population. The message triggered
an immediate unpleasant shiver through my body as I recalled the
ominous quote attributed to Albert Einstein: "If the bee disappeared
off the surface of the globe, then man would only have four years of
life left.
No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no
more man."
Being a bit skeptical, I assumed this was just another piece of
alarmist misinformation finding its way onto
Internet distribution lists. A few minutes' research not only confirmed
the story, but made me realize that the problem is far from local. In
official circles, the condition is called either Fall-Dwindle Disease
or, more commonly, Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).
The communication I received stated: "Honeybees are flying off in
search of pollen and nectar and simply never returning to their
colonies.
During the final three months of 2006, a distressing number of honeybee
colonies began to diminish from the United States, and beekeepers all
over the country have reported unprecedented losses. According to
scientists, the domesticated honeybee population has declined by about
50 percent in the last 50 years. Reports of similar losses to the
honeybee population have been documented before in beekeeping
literature, but are widely believed to have occurred at this scale
previously only at a regional level. With outbreaks recorded as far
back as 1896, this is regarded as the first national honeybee
epidemic in U.S. history."
The topics grabbing headlines these days leave little room in the news
for the plight of an insect. What we fail to appreciate is that without
an abundance of bees to pollinate crops, the United States could lose
as much as 30 percent of its food supply. According to Zac Browning,
vice president of the American Beekeeping Federation, "Every third bite
we consume in our diet is dependent on a honeybee to pollinate that
food."
There is no doubt about what is happening - or its consequences if the
situation is not rectified. What remains murky is the cause. According
to Walter Haefeker, director of the German Beekeepers Association, CCD
has four possible causes: the varroa mite, introduced from Asia; the
widespread practice of spraying wildflowers with herbicides; the
practice of monoculture (a single crop covering a large area); and the
controversial yet growing use of genetic engineering in
agriculture.
However, it is the thinking of one of the cell phone industry's former
scientific hired guns that caught my attention. When George Carlo,
M.D., the celebrated author of "Cell Phones: Invisible Hazards in the
Wireless Age" and current chairman of the nonprofit Science and Public
Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., weighs in with an opinion, we'd
all be fools not to listen carefully.
On a recent conference call, Dr. Carlo laid the blame for the sudden
demise (often within 72 hours) of entire bee colonies on the recent
proliferation of electromagnetic waves (EMF). He cited the startling
statistic that, at present, there are some 2.5 billion cell phone users
around the world. While this (plus the explosive growth of cell phone
towers) used to be the major concern, the problem has been
significantly exacerbated by the recent introduction of satellite
radio. Imagine being closeted in a confined environment filled with
chain smokers; it would be impossible for you to get a breath of clean
air. It is becoming equally difficult for you to avoid the
now-measurable damage from EMF exposure.
Dr. Carlo commented that the constant electromagnetic background noise
seems to disrupt intercellular communication within individual bees,
such that many of them cannot find their way back to the hive. His
conclusions are confirmed by a recent study conducted by three
departments of Panjab University (India), which has found that cell
phone towers - the dominant source of electromagnetic radiation in the
city of Chandigarh - could well be the cause behind the mysterious
disappearance of butterflies, some insects (like bees), and birds.
Andrew Weil, M.D., author of "Spontaneous Healing and 8 Weeks to
Optimum Health," fully agrees: "Electromagnetic pollution may be the
most significant form of pollution human activity has produced in this
century, all the more dangerous because it is invisible and
insensible."
In some countries, up to 10 percent of the population suffers from a
serious EMF-induced condition that Dr. Carlo and others call membrane
sensitivity syndrome. In a recent address to the Health, Social
Services and Housing Sub-Panel in the United Kingdom, Carlo explained:
"Originally, this type of condition was the result of high chemical
exposures; we used to call it chemical sensitivity. Now we have
identified the same type of condition in patients who are exposed to
various types of electromagnetic radiation. It is a medical problem.
People who have membrane sensitivity syndrome have internal bleeding.
They can be in a room where somebody puts on a cell phone, and they
will end up having an immediate reaction; they will go home and they
will bleed and in their stool they will have blood. This condition is
very debilitating. It prevents these people from being able to work;
they cannot earn a living, they have difficult relationships with their
children, their spouses give up on them. .. It is a very, very serious
medical problem."
The bees are the modern-day counterpart of the canaries that miners
used to carry with them as they descended into the mine shafts. If the
birds died, it was an early warning of a buildup of toxic gases in the
mine.
When canaries die or bees disappear, we are being cautioned that we too
are in immediate danger. It is time to listen to the message nature is
telling us. Denial - the favorite ploy of those whose profits are being
threatened - is no longer an option. As Arthur Schopenhauer said, "All
truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it
is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."
I shudder to think of what will become of humankind if we linger too
long in stage two: "no more bees, no more pollination, no more plants,
no more animals, no more man."
----- End forwarded message -----
Millions of Bees Die - Are Electromagnetic Signals To Blame? eeng.net
Informant: smileycoyote
--------
Ecological Apocalypse: Why Are All The Bees Dying?
prisonplanet.com/
--------
Keepers fear mystery bee illness
buergerwelle.de
I also wrote to the London bee keeper man as follows,
Dear John Chappel
Statement from Ingrid
There is a huge body of research on bees from Germany that
has never been considered in the UK.
This research shows that bees carry magnesomes in their underbelly and
are thus highly sensitive to magnetic fields. They communicate and
navigate via electromagnetic frequencies.
The German researchers consider bees to be bio indicators for the
biological effects of radiation. They are the canaries in the coal mine.
The current environment with microwave radiation levels billions of
times higher than the natural background levels is like putting a fish
in a poisoned pond.
The bees try to escape the radiation and get lost and exhausted.
Ingrid Dickenson
Director hese-UK
hese-project.org
Dr Warnke is one of the leading researchers in Germany in this area. He
is convinced of the harmfullness of the phone masts to bees and has
been saying so for years.
Please feel free to contact us if you want any information.
We are currently translating a Swiss research paper summarising the
effects on bees.
Re are mobiles killing our bees?
Andrea has spoken to Dr Warnke. He is convinced of the radiation being
the cause.
See one of his early papers:
Effects of electric charges on honey bees
Dr Warnke
Bee World vol 57 no 2 1976 hese-project.org
--------
Cell Phones May Be Wiping Out Bees, say Scientists
http://www.buergerwelle.de/pdf/cell_phones_may_be_wiping_out_bees.htm
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=bees
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=bees
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Carlo
celsias.com
March 15, 2007 · Filed under Agriculture & Food,
Environment & Wildlife by Craig Mackintosh
Here is an update to the brief bee story we did a few weeks ago.
I’ve been keeping an eye on the Colony Collapse Disorder
phenomenon that is causing a lot of furrowed brows in the U.S., as this
may well become the biggest issue of 2007.
Things are getting dire on the U.S. agricultural front,
and there are similar reports beginning to filter through
from countries in Europe. Disappearing by the billions, on a worker
strike we do not know how to negotiate
The sad mystery surrounding the humble
honeybee - which is a vital component in $14bn-worth of US agriculture
- is beginning to worry even the highest strata of the political class
in Washington.
“Hillary Clinton’s
got interested in this in the last week or so,” said David
Hackenberg, the beekeeper leading the drive to publicise their plight.
“And she’s not
alone,” he said. “There’s a lot of
Congressmen have called…wanting to know what’s
going on. It’s serious. - BBC
There’s still no concrete evidence about what is killing the
millions and billions of bees around the country, but there are a lot
of guesses.
The phenomenon is recent, dating back to
autumn, when beekeepers along the east coast of the US
started to notice the die-offs. It was given the name of fall dwindle
disease, but now it has been renamed to reflect better its dramatic
nature, and is known as colony collapse disorder.
It is swift in its effect. Over the
course of a week the majority of the bees in an affected colony will
flee the hive and disappear, going off to die elsewhere. The few
remaining insects are then found to be enormously diseased - they have
a “tremendous pathogen load”, the scientists say.
But why? No one yet knows.
… The disease showed a
completely new set of symptoms, “which does not seem to match
anything in the literature”, said the entomologist.
… the few bees left inside
the hive were carrying “a tremendous number of
pathogens” - virtually every known bee virus could be
detected in the insects, she said, and some bees were carrying five or
six viruses at a time, as well as fungal infections. Because
of this it was assumed that the bees’ immune
systems were being suppressed in some way. - The Independent
There are as many theories as there are
members of the panel, but Mr Hackenberg strongly suspects that new
breeds of nicotine-based pesticides are to blame.
“It may be that the honeybee
has become the victim of these insecticides that are meant for other
pests,” he said. “If we don’t figure this
out real quick, it’s going to wipe out our food
supply.”
Just a few miles down the sunlit road,
it is easy to find farmers prepared to agree with his gloomy assessment.
… Dennis van Engelsdorp, a
Pennsylvania-based beekeeper and leading researcher… is
adamant that it is too early to pin the blame on
insecticides.”We have no evidence to think that that theory
is more right than any other…” - BBC
Urban sprawl and farming also have taken
away fields of clover and wildflowers, as well as nesting
trees.
Pesticides and herbicides used in
farming and on suburban lawns can weaken or kill bees.
Caron said a new class of pesticides
used on plants, called neonicotinoids, don’t kill bees but
hamper their sense of direction. That leaves them unable to find their
way back to their hives.
… Because these bees
aren’t returning to their hives, researchers don’t
have a lot of evidence to study.
Those dead bees that have been found
nearby have only deepened the mystery.
“They are just dirty with
parts and pieces of various diseases,” said Jim Tew, a
beekeeping expert with the OSU Extension campus in Wooster.
“It looks like a general stress collapse.”
Similar disappearances have occurred
over time. Tew said he remembers a similar phenomenon in the 1960s.
Then, it was called “disappearing
disease.”
“It was exactly the same
thing,” he said.
But this one, Caron said, apparently
causes hives to collapse at a much quicker rate and is more widespread.
Cobey said it could be from too much of
everything: bad weather, chemicals, parasites, viruses.
“If you give them one of these
things at a time, they seem to deal with it,” she said.
“But all of these things, it’s too hard.
“I think the bees are just
compromised. They’re stressed out.” - Columbus
Dispatch
Whatever the cause, some farmers are getting desperate, to the point of
not bothering to plant their crops.
“The squash crops that we grow
have a male and female bloom, and the bee has to visit…to
make it pollinate and produce,” he said.
“We’re going to have
a hard time finding rental bees to aid in this pollination
and if it’s as critical as it looks like it will be, I
probably won’t even plant anything this spring.” -
BBC
Huge monocrop farming systems and specialisations, and the spread of
suburbia across natural habitat, are removing natural diversity. Bees
have been lumped together in the millions, in a factory farm type
environment not so unlike that of our chickens and other livestock
animals. Many of these bees are transported across several states to
perform pollinations in orchards and farms around the country. Today
they are in contact with substances they shouldn’t have to
deal with - pesticides, herbicides, antibiotics, and pollen from
genetically modified crops. Researchers are scrambling to find answers,
and as the spring season is upon us, time is running out.
Honey bees, which are not native to the U.S. incidentally (they were
imported for crop pollination), are tasked with the pollination of
approximately one third of all U.S. crops.
… scientists are very
worried, not least because, as there is no obvious cause for the
disease as yet, there is no way of tackling it. - The Independent
------------------
Are mobile phones wiping
out our bees?
news.independent.co.uk
Scientists claim radiation from handsets are to blame for mysterious
'colony collapse' of bees
By Geoffrey Lean and Harriet Shawcross
Published: 15 April 2007- The Independent & The Independent
on Sunday
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.
Dr George Carlo, who headed a massive study by the US government and
mobile phone industry of hazards from mobiles in the Nineties, said: "I
am convinced the possibility is real."
The case against handsets
Evidence of dangers to people from mobile phones is increasing. But
proof is still lacking, largely because many of the biggest perils,
such as cancer, take decades to show up.
Most research on cancer has so far proved inconclusive. But an official
Finnish study found that people who used the phones for more than 10
years were 40 per cent more likely to get a brain tumour on the same
side as they held the handset.
Equally alarming, blue-chip Swedish research revealed that radiation
from mobile phones killed off brain cells, suggesting that today's
teenagers could go senile in the prime of their lives.
Studies in India and the US have raised the possibility that men who
use mobile phones heavily have reduced sperm counts. And, more
prosaically, doctors have identified the condition of "text thumb", a
form of RSI from constant texting.
Professor Sir William Stewart, who has headed two official inquiries,
warned that children under eight should not use mobiles and made a
series of safety recommendations, largely ignored by ministers.
Honeybees Vanish,
Leaving Keepers in Peril
New York Times
New York Times link
This is a very
serious problem. We need to bring massive media
attention to this. It could be the last straw holding together
civilization. Please contact your government or an NGO. See that
attention is being paid to this (unnoticed) emergency in your area.
This seems to be a worldwide plague that could wipe us all
out.... and
it is hardly getting any attention! PLEASE HELP!
Thanks,
Yvette |
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