The Bees are disappearing

[felson]

NY Times article with more details.

[guids]

Update, probably not cell phones.

[heater]

I read about this problem last year as well. It wasn't nearly as big or widespread as this year. This also happened in the 1960s, FWIW.

[ahnuld]

funny that this was posted because last night I had a cab driver who used the bees disappearing as the main argument in his theory that the Canadain government wants to kill of between 1/3 and 2/3 of our population.

[xxThe_Lebowskixx]

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funny that this was posted because last night I had a cab driver who used the bees disappearing as the main argument in his theory that the Canadain government wants to kill of between 1/3 and 2/3 of our population.

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Makes sense to me.

[bustedchucks]

i think the bees got sick of the looters and and a john galt bee talked them into going and living on his utopian farm hidden by a hologram.

word up, yo.

communism killed the bees. why do you all hate freedom?

[jokerthief]

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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.

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I'm no expert on this but based on having been to Europe 7 years ago, I would think that this would have been a problem over there before becoming a problem here if it was really mobile phones. I suspect that their use is much more widespread in other countries and has been for several years. That is purely anecdotal. When I was in Spain in 2000 it seemed like everyone had one and at that time they were still something of a luxury item here.

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It's commonly accepted as fact that the US is well behind most of Europe in terms of cell phone market saturation.

[NT!]

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"They're the heavy lifters of agriculture," Pettis said of honeybees. "And the reason they are is they're so mobile and we can rear them in large numbers and move them to a crop when it's blooming."

Honeybees are used to pollinate some of the tastiest parts of the American diet, Pettis said, including cherries, blueberries, apples, almonds, asparagus and macadamia nuts.

"It's not the staples," he said. "If you can imagine eating a bowl of oatmeal every day with no fruit on it, that's what it would be like" without honeybee pollination.

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from the CNN article.

[ozyman]

My dad is a recrational hobby beekeeper and we had a few conversations on the subject. He sent me a post he made at some beekeeping forum, hopefully it adds another perspective to the discussion:

"The collapse is symptomatic of disorientation, which is not being able to find the hive rather than poisoning as no dead bees are present at the hives. The rapid spread seems to indicate a contagion not a pesticide. Since the bees drink from the same flowers, this would broadcast the contagion rapidly as the migratory hives move from place to place, visiting the same sites as the local populations.

My gut says it is a micro biotic contagion in combination with a reduced genetic diversity.

The genetic diversity of bees has been greatly reduced over the last 20 years, due to mite infestations and replacement of lost hives with purchased bees from limited sources. This must be contributing to susceptibility.

To improve the genetic diversity, non-migratory beekeepers should change their approach and encourage the natural process of swarming instead of attempting to inhibit it. As well, they should be providing equipment for healthy swarms to occupy. This will improve the genetic diversity and provide for natural selection to participate in the evolution of bees that can withstand this assault.

Lastly, more hobbyist beekeepers would increase chances of evolving bees that can withstand all of the current challenges. Bees have not yet had time to evolve effective strategies or genetics to withstand the varrora and tracheal mites so the bees will need our help."

[xxThe_Lebowskixx]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070502/...neybee_die_off

ozzy,

your dad sounds like a cool guy.