Dying Bees in the US

[Sean Osborne]

In alphabetical order: Almonds. Apples. Apricots. Avocados. Beans. Blackberries. Brussles Sprouts. Cantaloupes. Cherries. Cranberries. Cucumbers. And on and on through the alphabet, this is a potential $14.6 Billion dollar problem.


Knowing this, it would seemto me to be a no brainer that his issue should be reflected in the 2007 agri-commodities futures market on Wall Street; that agri-commodities futures traders would know all about this. Savvy traders would stand to reap bushels and bushels of dollars.


So I asked a trader that I know about it.

Besides foods, cotton prices would most likely be affected because honeybees are the primary pollinators of flowering cotton blooms.

Other affected primary foods would be alfalfa, corn and soybeans.

Corn especially. Think ethanol. Think biofuels. Think seed production.

Think volitility in the market.

So I went off on this tangent. It brought me right back to here.


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/27/bu...rssnyt&emc=rss



Take the green out of the above chart - which is not relective of the agri-problem on the whole - and this problem potentially approaches a pestilence-caused problem of Biblical proportions.

[American Patriot]

Yeah, most grains are not affected, since bees do not do cross pollination on those, but certainly a lot of flowering plants.

Other insects do pollination too though, including a lot of flies, butterflies and the like.

[samizdat]

Today the industry is in a weaker position to deal with new stresses. A flood of imported honey from China and Argentina has depressed honey prices and put more pressure on beekeepers to take to the road in search of pollination contracts. Beekeepers are trucking tens of billions of bees around the country every year.

[samizdat]

Well, honeychild. This is some mystree. Almonds and apples. The missing bees will be missed.

I would guess that somehow they are affected by trucking.

Soapy water kills bees. Maybe some fertilizers are killing them off. Perhaps cell phone use. That could be tested quickly.

[American Patriot]

The bees who flew too high.
Synchronizm Blog ^

Honeybees and Sunspots may be interacting in one of the most unwatched ballets since television was created. Metaphorically speaking of course:

Imagine an aquarium containing a fish. Imagine also that you are unable to see the aquarium directly and your knowledge about it and what it contains comes from two television cameras, one directed at the aquarium’s front and the other directed at its side. As you stare at the two television monitors, you might assume that the fish on each of the screens are separate entities. After all, because the cameras are set at different angles, each of the images will be slightly different. But as you continue to watch the two fishes, you will eventually become aware that there is a certain relationship between them. When one turns, the other also makes a slightly different but corresponding turn; when one faces the front, the other always faces toward the side. If you remain unaware of the full scope of the situation, you might even conclude that the fish must be instantaneously communicating with one another, but this is clearly not the case.1

If there are processes in this universe of which we are unaware of the full scope, perhaps the only way to observe them is using the multi-camera metaphor. In this ballet - which has the tragedy of the prospect of agricultural collapse, the triumph of the idea of biological interaction with quantum processes, and the drama of far away forces dancing within our presences - we can become part of the dance as we expertly shift our camera views like an experienced television producer. In the process, a mystery may be solved, one making many of us (and perhaps not enough of us) nervous lately.

Camera One: Honeybees

The first reports began in November of bees mysteriously disappearing. Not just one or two, but entire colonies of tens of thousands of bees at a time. As temperatures have warmed and it has become safe to open hives, the extent of losses is grave:

In Michigan, Terry Klein, vice president of the Michigan Beekeepers Association and a commercial beekeeper, said reports of huge losses are beginning to arrive.

“One beekeeper started with 1,500 hives and had only 500 colonies left,” Klein said. “Over three or four more weeks, he lost 70 percent of those.”2

Assuming a winter population of approximately 20,000 bees, this would leave losses for one beekeeper at 27 million bees! The losses have been widespread in North America, with some beekeepers loosing up to 80 percent of their hives. Over 400 reports have come in from at least 22 states so far. Given the extent of losses, the most puzzling thing is the lack of dead bees:

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.

27 million dead bees in a relatively small area should leave some physical evidence. Unless there is an extremely efficient physical process (like a phantom bee-eater) or a much wider geographical distribution of bee carcasses upon their demise, a very strange phenomenon is at work. Curiously, it has been noted that something similar happened in North America approximately 50 years ago.

I’m a hundred miles behind myself - Beck, Milk and Honey

Camera Two: Sunspots

Sunspots follow an approximate 11-year cycle, corresponding to increases in solar activity. This solar activity causes geomagnetic effects during the peaks, but effects on earth’s magnetic field also occur during the minimums. Using these observations, scientists have predicted that the next solar maximum, expected to peak in 2010, could be the most intense ever. The measurement that allows the the prediction is called Inter-hour Variability. Combined with another observation on the sun, Physicist David Hathaway noticed a correlation that allowed prediction of solar activity 6-8 years later. In his observations, the last time something similar to the IHV measurements he sees today happened was about 50 years ago.

I feel it coming and I’ve got to get out of it’s way - Nine Inch Nails, Sunspots

Watching The Dance

Aside from the fact that most children would use the same crayons to draw both sunspots and honeybees, how could they two be related? Barbara Shipman, mathematician and daughter of a bee researcher, first noticed something peculiar about the dance bees use to describe where pollen sources are located to other bees. Observed over 40 years by Karl von Firsh, these movements seemed an overly complex way to convey information, especially in insect behavior. No one had yet made sense of the dance the bee scouts performed on returning to a hive, but one thing was clear. All of the dance was based on a triangulation of the hive, the food source, and the sun. Shipman first studied bees because her father left the bee books in her room, and later studied them in her freshman year as a biochemistry major. It was not until she delved into mathematics that she penetrated the enigmatic mystery of the dance. She was studying flag manifolds, mathematical constructs used in projecting multi-dimensional phenomena into fewer dimensions when something from childhood became clear:

One day Shipman was busy projecting the six-dimensional residents of the flag manifold onto two dimensions. The particular technique she was using involved first making a two-dimensional outline of the six dimensions of the flag manifold. This is not as strange as it may sound. When you draw a circle, you are in effect making a two-dimensional outline of a three- dimensional sphere. As it turns out, if you make a two-dimensional outline of the six-dimensional flag manifold, you wind up with a hexagon. The bee’s honeycomb, of course, is also made up of hexagons, but that is purely coincidental. However, Shipman soon discovered a more explicit connection. She found a group of objects in the flag manifold that, when projected onto a two-dimensional hexagon, formed curves that reminded her of the bee’s recruitment dance. The more she explored the flag manifold, the more curves she found that precisely matched the ones in the recruitment dance. I wasn’t looking for a connection between bees and the flag manifold, she says. I was just doing my research. The curves were nothing special in themselves, except that the dance patterns kept emerging.5

Since then, researchers have discovered that things such as the polarization of the light of the sun and local variations of the earth’s magnetic field affect the components of the dance, suggesting bees have sensitivities that would require re-writing our biology, physics and cosmology texts from scratch:

There is some research to support the view that bees are sensitive to effects that occur only on a quantum-mechanical scale. One study exposed bees to short bursts of a high-intensity magnetic field and concluded that the bees’ response could be better explained as a sensitivity to an effect known as nuclear magnetic resonance, or nmr, an acronym commonly associated with a medical imaging technique. nmr occurs when an electromagnetic wave impinges on the nuclei of atoms and flips their orientation. nmr is considered a quantum mechanical effect because it takes place only if each atom absorbs a particular size packet, or quantum, of electromagnetic energy.

If this were not enough, the results imply that bees can perceive quarks, thereby interacting with the quantum world without disturbing it in the ways both observed and predicted by quantum theory. And this perception would have to extend to the perception of quarks not as coherent structures, but as fields. In other words, bees may be able to perceive the unobserved quantum fields of zero-point energy, the much-debated property from which all of the phenomenal world may emerge in the eternal quantum moment.

The Stage: Sun and Earth

Other than the coincidence that a similar disappearance of bees and the precursor to a strong sunspot cycle both occurred at the same time, just as is happening now, how could such revelations be related to the solar cycle? Science is still at a loss to explain the power of the sun’s magnetic field, or the Solar Dynamo. A set of observations seem all to relate, yet the observations cannot be explained individually or together:

A successful model for the solar dynamo must explain several observations: 1) the 11-year period of the sunspot cycle, 2) the equator-ward drift of the active latitude as seen in the butterfly diagram, 3) Hale’s polarity law and the 22-year magnetic cycle, 4) Joy’s law for the observed tilt of sunspot groups and, 5) the reversal of the polar magnetic fields near the time of cycle maximum as seen in the magnetic butterfly diagram.7

Taking a cue from the bees, we can look at spin as a common component. Spin is a property of quantum ‘particles’ that can be manipulated, and is a fundamental component of both NMR and quantum computers. Spin is complex conceptually, especially given the fact that the most simple description of the spin of Fermions (the ‘particles’ that make up matter as we know it) is 1/2. This means that if you could hold one of these ‘particles’ and mark a spot on it with a Sharpie, you would have to turn it 720 degrees around in your hand to see the mark once again. Quarks, the ‘particle’ bees may interact with, also have spin 1/2. The concept of spherical harmonics is used to visualize the effects of spin. Using spherical harmonics, the sun can also be visualized as a six-dimensional body with three rotational components. In another simple visualization, a two-dimensional flatlander would have a great deal of difficulty explaining an eight-ball intersecting her space while rotating both horizontally and vertically. It would seem to her that the disc she observed (the portion of the eight-ball intersecting with her plane) had a spin of 1/2. If she then used spherical harmonics to describe the object, she would be able to make some mathematical predictions about its structure and behavior, even without having an ability to visualize or perceive the third dimension directly. In our visualization of the sun, such a correlation of observable phenomena should be striking if indeed the sun is a six dimensional structure:

Here we see the sun in six dimensions (above) rotating, the magnetic component (poles) waxing, waning and switching on a 22-year cycle (magnetic flux and the Hale cycle), the 11-year “butterfly pattern” (the Schwabe cycle, the Omega effect accounting for the stretching in actual observation). The red and blue parts of the image above correspond with the “real” component of the wave function described by the spherical harmonic (sunspots and solar wind), while the yellow and green describe the “imaginary” component. Could this “imaginary” component correspond to an effect similar to the solar wind that interacts with the “unobserved quantum field”?

The Smoking Gun

The solar probe Ulysses’ circumpolar orbit took it below the south pole of the sun this past winter. While there, sunspot 938 put on the most energetic performance of any sunspot in four years, ejecting a particle storm that would have been a “ground-level event” (penetrating the entire atmosphere) had it been directed at earth. Instead, it was directed towards the south pole, shattering current models of solar functioning. If we consider such a particle stream to be a secondary stream to the “imaginary” component of the solar field that would be dominant during a solar minimum, then the quantum field to which the bees may be sensitive could have been disturbed. Or, the bees could have lost navigation, possibly abandoning the hive as one of the directional components of either the quantum field or local terrestrial magnetic variations moved drastically closer to the sun. They may have flown skyward, attempting to keep up with the rapidly moving target of home in six dimensions. Or, hyperdimentsional bee-eaters could have emerged from the sunspot, phasing the bees out of existence on contact (given the evidence, anything is possible, and equally strange. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t consider this to be very likely to say the least). Similar events could have happened 50 years ago when geomagnetic events preceded the most active solar cycle recorded. Bee disappearances were reported across the southern United States in the time preceding the increased activity. Physicist David Hathaway:

“We don’t know why this works,” says Hathaway. The underlying physics is a mystery. “But it does work.”

Enough anecdotal evidence and coincidence combined with solid observation also exists to link the disappearance of the bees with changes in the sun, even if the reason why the cameras show correlation in the dance is not clear.

Excuse me while I kiss the sky - Jimi Hendrix, Purpule Haze

[Sean Osborne]

http://news.independent.co.uk/enviro...cle2449968.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.

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

[American Patriot]

Actually, I can say that there HAVE been studies on radio frequency radiation on Amateur Radio Operators over the years, who by the way are exposed to MUCH MORE RF radiation than the averge cellular telephone gives off over a longer period of time.

And... to put it bluntly, it's a load of nonsense to say that handheld phones give off enough radiation to kill bees. Ham radio operators do not have any higher incidence of cancer than the rest of the population at large.

In humans in GENERAL, the FDA stated in this article there is no connection. As for bees, I'm sure there are no studies at all.

Some things from a techincal standpoint. (This is something I DO have credentials in by the way). Bees are small creatures. Cellular phones operate between 800-900 Mhz. So they are extremely shortwave frequencies, and yes since they are short, and bees are small, it is possible (haven't worked out the details yet, but will) that bees might have bodies that are resonant at those frequencies.

That would be a bad thing, but it is most likely NOT the cell phones causing the issues (assuming it is RF energy in the first place) but more likely the cellular towers, which transmit at much higher powers than do the phones in your hand.

A typical cell phone puts out less than a watt of energy. A tower might deliver a couple of hundred watts.

Also... here's another little tidbit. Radio energy, like all waveforms, including light, have very specific properties. There is a rule in physics called the inverse-square law. Basically, as a radio wave, or light wave travels away from it's origin, it becomes weaker and weaker.

The distance versus the original power causes a drastic power drop over long distances, so someone 1 mile from a radio tower is exposed to almost insignificant energy compared to a person standing under a tower. Insignificant in the fact that is nearly zero... but enough for sensitive radios to pick it up but not enough to affect people.

First, the energy level of radio waves is relatively low. Electromagnetic energy comes in "packages" that are referred to as photons. Photon energy is measured in electron volts (eV), the energy gained by an electron after accelerating over 1 volt. The energy in the photons depends directly on the frequency, and decreases as one moves down the electromagnetic spectrum. X-rays have about 1,000 eV of energy, while the photon energy of radio waves from cellular phone towers is about one millionth of an eV, not enough to alter molecules in the body.

http://www.cancer.org/docroot/PED/co...p?sitearea=PED

So, basically, while the article is really speculating, there isn't a whole lot of real information about this at all. Essentially, the radio energy would have to be strong enough to cause changes in molecular structures in biomass -- and cellular phones aren't powerful enough.

Further, radio signals have been used for over 100 years and there is no evidence that evne powerful signals affect people at a distance at this point. Microwaves, if CONCENTRATED on people can cause thermal heating (the principle behind microwave ovens). Microwave ovens operate at about 2.6 gigahertz or so, and can injure humans or animals as we all know.

But they are much higher in frequencies than are cellular phone RF signals.

One last thing, I just did a quick calculation. An 800 Mhz rf signal is approximately 1 FOOT long. That is MUCH longer than a bee, and no where NEAR a resonant frequency of a bee, thus, that idea is out the window.

[American Patriot]

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.

I need to say something else.

This is BAD science. "Because phones were placed nearby" is NOT good science. Nor, what the author said "because cancer takes decades to show up" is also bad science.

Bees might not be showing up because of any number of things, like the smells from the plastics, or perhaps there is some sub-sonic sounds a phone makes that bees can hear. How about the smell of humans? and how do they KNOW bees aren't coming back???? Did they leave in droves or did one or two bees fail to return in this 'study'?

Also, the causes of cancer are known in some cases. And, what studies indicate bees have cancer at all?

So.. that's pretty bad science and mostly speculation on the part of the paper (a Green party paper is it????)

[American Patriot]

Vanishing honeybees mystify scientists
Reuters ^ | 9:40 p.m. EDT, April 22, 2007 | Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Go to work, come home.

Go to work, come home.

Go to work -- and vanish without a trace.

Billions of bees have done just that, leaving the crop fields they are supposed to pollinate, and scientists are mystified about why.

The phenomenon was first noticed late last year in the United States, where honeybees are used to pollinate $15 billion worth of fruits, nuts and other crops annually. Disappearing bees have also been reported in Europe and Brazil.

Commercial beekeepers would set their bees near a crop field as usual and come back in two or three weeks to find the hives bereft of foraging worker bees, with only the queen and the immature insects remaining. Whatever worker bees survived were often too weak to perform their tasks.

If the bees were dying of pesticide poisoning or freezing, their bodies would be expected to lie around the hive. And if they were absconding because of some threat -- which they have been known to do -- they wouldn't leave without the queen.

Since about one-third of the U.S. diet depends on pollination and most of that is performed by honeybees, this constitutes a serious problem, according to Jeff Pettis of the U.S. Agricultural Research Service.

"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.

(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...

[American Patriot]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...477804,00.html

LONG article. Click the link to read it.

Mobile Phones and Dying Bees

By Holger Dambeck
Bee colonies have been dying in Europe and America for years. Scientists have studied the usual suspects -- climate change, genetic engineering -- but a new theory is even more bizarre. Maybe mobile phones are to blame.

AP

Is your phone fatally confusing to bees?


Journalists as well as technophobes have wondered for years if there was something wrong with mobile phones. A nagging suspicion that they just can't be healthy has twisted more than one finding about their effects into popular myths. Last January, for example, a German newspaper cited a new study in a breathless article on the supposed higher risk of brain tumors from mobile-phone use -- something the authors of the study never found.

[American Patriot]

Taiwan stung by millions of missing bees
Reuters ^ | 4/25/07



TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan's bee farmers are feeling the sting of lost business and possible crop danger after millions of the honey-making, plant-pollinating insects vanished during volatile weather, media and experts said on Thursday.


Over the past two months, farmers in three parts of Taiwan have reported most of their bees gone, the Chinese-language United Daily News reported. Taiwan's TVBS television station said about 10 million bees had vanished in Taiwan.


A beekeeper on Taiwan's northeastern coast reported 6 million insects missing "for no reason", and one in the south said 80 of his 200 bee boxes had been emptied, the paper said.


(Excerpt) Read more at today.reuters.com ...

[American Patriot]

Scientists Identify Pathogens That May Be Causing Global Honey-Bee Deaths
Edgewood Chemical Biological Center ^ | April 26, 2007 | Edgewood Chemical Biological Center






Scientists Identify Pathogens That May Be Causing Global Honey-Bee Deaths

Science Daily — Researchers have identified potential culprits behind the wide-spread catastrophic death of honey bees around North America and Europe. A team of scientists from Edgewood Chemical Biological Center and University of California San Francisco identified both a virus and a parasite that are likely behind the recent sudden die-off of honey-bee colonies.

ECBC researchers have identified potential culprits behind the wide-spread catastrophic death of honey bees around North America and Europe. (Credit: Scott Bauer, USDA/ARS)

Using a new technology called the Integrated Virus Detection System (IVDS), which was designed for military use to rapidly screen samples for pathogens, ECBC scientists last week isolated the presence of viral and parasitic pathogens that may be contributing to the honeybee loss. Confirmation testing was conducted over the weekend by scientists at the University of California San Francisco. ECBC scientists presented the results of their studies yesterday to a United States Department of Agriculture working group, hastily convened to determine next steps.

For the past year, experts have observed a marked decline in the honey bee population, with entire colonies collapsing without warning. Approximately 50 percent of hives have disappeared and researchers around the country are scrambling to find out why. Scientists have termed this phenomenon "Colony Collapse Disorder" and fear that without honey bees to pollinate crops like fruits, vegetables, and almonds the loss of honey bees could have an enormous horticultural and economic impact around the world.

ECBC is one of many academic, commercial and government concerns studying the honey bee population decline. ECBC’s role will be to identify the extent of the problem and conduct ongoing detection activities.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Edgewood Chemical Biological Center.

Honey Bee Pathagons
Hundred Million Year Old Honey Bee

[Malsua]

It's probably a mite or some parasite or something.

[Malsua]

Guess I posted too soon...just found this one...

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0426100117.htm


-------------


Scientists Identify Pathogens That May Be Causing Global Honey-Bee Deaths

Science Daily — Researchers have identified potential culprits behind the wide-spread catastrophic death of honey bees around North America and Europe.

ECBC researchers have identified potential culprits behind the wide-spread catastrophic death of honey bees around North America and Europe. (Credit: Scott Bauer, USDA/ARS)A team of scientists from Edgewood Chemical Biological Center and University of California San Francisco identified both a virus and a parasite that are likely behind the recent sudden die-off of honey-bee colonies.

Using a new technology called the Integrated Virus Detection System (IVDS), which was designed for military use to rapidly screen samples for pathogens, ECBC scientists last week isolated the presence of viral and parasitic pathogens that may be contributing to the honeybee loss.

Confirmation testing was conducted over the weekend by scientists at the University of California San Francisco. ECBC scientists presented the results of their studies yesterday to a United States Department of Agriculture working group, hastily convened to determine next steps.

For the past year, experts have observed a marked decline in the honey bee population, with entire colonies collapsing without warning.

Approximately 50 percent of hives have disappeared and researchers around the country are scrambling to find out why. Scientists have termed this phenomenon "Colony Collapse Disorder" and fear that without honey bees to pollinate crops like fruits, vegetables, and almonds the loss of honey bees could have an enormous horticultural and economic impact around the world.

ECBC is one of many academic, commercial and government concerns studying the honey bee population decline. ECBC’s role will be to identify the extent of the problem and conduct ongoing detection activities.
Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Edgewood Chemical Biological Center.

[American Patriot]

LOL look a couple message up mal.

[Malsua]

You know why that happened? I had a browser open to TAA on this page got pulled away for a while, then I read the other article and posted to the thread.

Ah well, bears repeating

Flying back from Honduras today....man it's HOT here.

-Mal

[American Patriot]

lol
Honduras still?

I'm headed for Jamaica, Mon!

[American Patriot]

Experts may have found what's bugging the bees
The Los Angeles Times ^ | April 26, 2007 | Jia-Rui Chong and Thomas H. Maugh II

A fungus that caused widespread loss of bee colonies in Europe and Asia may be playing a crucial role in the mysterious phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder that is wiping out bees across the United States, UC San Francisco researchers said Wednesday.

Researchers have been struggling for months to explain the disorder, and the new findings provide the first solid evidence pointing to a potential cause.

But the results are "highly preliminary" and are from only a few hives from Le Grand in Merced County, UCSF biochemist Joe DeRisi said. "We don't want to give anybody the impression that this thing has been solved."

Other researchers said Wednesday that they too had found the fungus, a single-celled parasite called Nosema ceranae, in affected hives from around the country — as well as in some hives where bees had survived. Those researchers have also found two other fungi and half a dozen viruses in the dead bees.

N. ceranae is "one of many pathogens" in the bees, said entomologist Diana Cox-Foster of Pennsylvania State University. "By itself, it is probably not the culprit … but it may be one of the key players."

Cox-Foster was one of the organizers of a meeting in Washington, D.C., on Monday and Tuesday where about 60 bee researchers gathered to discuss Colony Collapse Disorder.

"We still haven't ruled out other factors, such as pesticides or inadequate food resources following a drought," she said. "There are lots of stresses that these bees are experiencing," and it may be a combination of factors that is responsible.

(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...

[American Patriot]

Honeybee die-off threatens food supply
Yahoo! ^ | May 2nd, 2007 | SETH BORENSTEIN

Unless someone or something stops it soon, the mysterious killer that is wiping out many of the nation's honeybees could have a devastating effect on America's dinner plate, perhaps even reducing us to a glorified bread-and-water diet.

Honeybees don't just make honey; they pollinate more than 90 of the tastiest flowering crops we have. Among them: apples, nuts, avocados, soybeans, asparagus, broccoli, celery, squash and cucumbers. And lots of the really sweet and tart stuff, too, including citrus fruit, peaches, kiwi, cherries, blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, cantaloupe and other melons.

In fact, about one-third of the human diet comes from insect-pollinated plants, and the honeybee is responsible for 80 percent of that pollination, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Even cattle, which feed on alfalfa, depend on bees. So if the collapse worsens, we could end up being "stuck with grains and water," said Kevin Hackett, the national program leader for USDA's bee and pollination program.

"This is the biggest general threat to our food supply," Hackett said.

While not all scientists foresee a food crisis, noting that large-scale bee die-offs have happened before, this one seems particularly baffling and alarming.

U.S. beekeepers in the past few months have lost one-quarter of their colonies — or about five times the normal winter losses — because of what scientists have dubbed Colony Collapse Disorder. The problem started in November and seems to have spread to 27 states, with similar collapses reported in Brazil, Canada and parts of Europe.

Scientists are struggling to figure out what is killing the honeybees, and early results of a key study this week point to some kind of disease or parasite.

(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...

[MTStringer]

This is something I've been looking at for a while. From the content Of several chat rooms/bulletin boards I've visited, the number of farmers not even planning to plant this season is alarming. Combined with the effects of the late freeze, fruits and veggies ain't gonna be cheap this year.