Griff;358409 wrote:Looks like other insects can take over for most crops.
Ibram;358411 wrote:The colonies are collapsing?!
Oh no!
Goodbye, Australia! Au revoir, Canada! And good riddance, America!
...oh wait, you meant bees.
xoxoxoBruce;358429 wrote:It appears to be a virus or a mite.
The Sons 'O Bees will be tougher to kill.
skysidhe;358420 wrote:I hope so. You think that's a possibility?
The problem is the other pollinators usually take more than just pollen/nectar, so they spray heavily for them.Griff;358441 wrote:In places where wild populations still exist it should develop that way, but matching crops to pollenators will be hit or miss. It probably depends a lot on undeveloped land being adjacent to the farms. Looking around here, we have a lot of different bees.
busterb;358464 wrote:Is this not the second thread about this?? 1st was by, maybe Kitsune???sp from FL
Since then, new clues have developed. For example, Hackenberg was one of the first to call attention to this colony collapse. From a source long since forgotten:skysidhe;359624 wrote:sorry for the repeat busterb but unless I know the title of the thread the search function fails.
Mr. Hackenberg, the beekeeper, agreed to take his empty bee boxes and other equipment to Food Technology Service, a company in Mulberry, Fla., that uses gamma rays to kill bacteria on medical equipment and some fruits. In early results, the irradiated bee boxes seem to have shown a return to health for colonies repopulated with Australian bees.Previous discussion was Bee's disappearing that began 7 Apr 2007.
tw;359669 wrote:Since then, new clues have developed. For example, Hackenberg was one of the first to call attention to this colony collapse. From a source long since forgotten: Previous discussion was Bee's disappearing that began 7 Apr 2007.
xoxoxoBruce;358429 wrote:It appears to be a virus or a mite.
The Sons 'O Bees will be tougher to kill.
The authors of both studies contend that their results raise serious questions about the use of the pesticides, known as neonicotinoids. ...
The insecticides, introduced in the early 1990s, have exploded in popularity; virtually all corn grown in the United States is treated with them. Neonicotinoids are taken up by plants and moved to all their tissues — including the nectar on which bees feed. The concentration of neonicotinoids in nectar is not lethal, but some scientists have wondered if it might still affect bees.
In the honeybee experiment, researchers at the National Institute for Agricultural Research in France fed the bees a dose of neonicotinoid-laced sugar water and then moved them more than half a mile from their hive. The bees carried miniature radio tags that allowed the scientists to keep track of how many returned to the hive.
In familiar territory, the scientists found, the bees exposed to the pesticide were 10 percent less likely than healthy bees to make it home. In unfamiliar places, that figure rose to 31 percent. ...
Jeffery Pettis, a bee expert at the United States Department of Agriculture, ... is also convinced that neonicotinoids in low doses make bees more vulnerable to disease. He and other researchers have recently published experiments showing that neonicotinoids make honeybees more vulnerable to infections from parasitic fungi.
"Three or four years ago, I was much more cautious about how much pesticides were contributing to the problem," Dr. Pettis said. "Now more and more evidence points to pesticides being a consistent part of the problem."
Don't tell Jenny McCarthy. She will waste more bandwidth.ZenGum;804541 wrote:Great, autistic bees, just what we need.