Sherry Chandler » Follow up on disappearing honey bees
Follow up on disappearing honey bees
I’ve been talking about the disappearing honey bees through “colony collapse disorder” off and on this spring (and now summer). At one point I passed on the now-thorougly-debunked theory that cell phone signals were disorienting the bees.
Now a friend has passed on a link to The Straight Dope for another take on the subject.
First and most important: There are some 20,000 species of bees in the world, and many thousands more types of pollinating insects. What you’re hearing about, “colony collapse disorder,” affects one species of bee – the European honey bee. That species happens to be the one global agriculture relies upon for about 30% of its pollination requirements. So while we’re not talking about losing all the world’s pollinators, we are talking about losing a significant fraction of them. That’s the worst-case scenario, with the species wiped out completely.
Second, there’s no reason at this point to think European honey bees are going to be wiped out, now or ever. The die-offs so far appear to affect some beekeepers more than others, sometimes in the same area. That’s one reason scientists are so puzzled, but it strongly suggests the losses may have something to do with how individual beekeepers are managing their bees.
The take here makes it sound as though the crisis is more one for industrial agriculture than for the bees themselves, which, as Rebecca has pointed out and their name implies, are not a native North American species. This whole business of carting bees around on trucks from orchard to orchard was total news to me. Another argument for a local, sustainable food supply.
You can read the rest of “The Straight Dope” at the link.
Possibly related posts:
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
6 Comments
1. JimT replies at 21st June 2007, 8:35 am :
Beekeepers have routinely trucked hives of bees around the countryside for at least half a century. Between my freshman and sophomore years in college, I spent a summer as a beekeeper’s helper (at $1.05/hr.) in northern Illinois. We’d move them from the vicinity of red clover to fruit orchards to alfalfa (?) fields, sometimes trucking them 150 miles. I remember it all fondly now. Back then, though, it all seemed to be about long days, aching muscles, and too many stings.
2. sherry replies at 21st June 2007, 9:54 am :
See, JimT, just goes to show what I know. I think of bees as honeymakers first, probably because my uncle kept bees when I was a girl and there were always hives dotted around the hillside pastures I roamed.
$1.05/hr? That’s about what my first job paid, too. But mine was in an office in the local courthouse.
3. Charles W. replies at 21st June 2007, 10:00 am :
ROBBING BEES
Willie said, “John, one time I stuffed some rags in the smoker and went out to rob my bees. When I puffed some smoke into the hive, I noticed them bees weren’t actin right.
They jist kinda staggered out and fell over.
When I prized the top off the super here’s all them
little honey bees out cold’ern kraut.”
“Well what happened, Willie?” I asked. “Were they all dead?”
“Oh no,” Willie said. “Soon as they got a breath or two
of fresh air they started stirrin around again.”
“I’ll tell you somethin about bees, John.
Don’t ever smoke yer bees with an acrylic sock….
They never did find out what hit’em.”
Charlie w
4. sherry replies at 21st June 2007, 1:14 pm :
Thanks, Charlie W., for another smile. Is this your theory of the cause of colony collapse?
5. Charles W. replies at 22nd June 2007, 12:12 pm :
C D B’s. D B’s R B Z B’s. Well, they used to be, anyway.
I’m thinking, that because the bee’s demise is running concurrent with that of poetry there must be a connection.–cw
6. sherry replies at 22nd June 2007, 1:01 pm :
Poets are also suffering colony collapse? Could be, Charlie W. But the poets are disappearing in plain sight — more like the birds.
Leave a comment