Posted on 05/02/2007 5:20:20 PM PDT by bamahead
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 ...
Article is kind of alarmist, though.
It could be a natural event worth some concern but I’m not predicting the extinction of mankind just yet. Just be glad there are things like corn that are pollinated by the wind.
I know! I know! (Waves hand in the air.)
The answer is bigger government, higher taxes, and more restrictions on personal lifestyles.
So how did the indians survive without bees.
Oh, please - this reporter needs to shut the hell up!
How pathetic...
Lotsa protein in those babies!!!
Desert shrimp. Are they kosher?
Tastiest? What a weird list. Geez, wonder how "tasty" his cooking is.
They're kind of like popcorn - you have to pick the hulls out from between your teeth afterward.
Bee alert ping
Love your tagline...one of my favorite tunes.
That celery's a little too spicey for me.
I don’t believe before the Pilgrims arrived. The Indians called them White Man Flies.
“So how did the indians survive without bees.”
They made do without asparagus and broccoli. Replaced them with Indian turnips.
There were not wild bees here before white man’s arrival?
Are you suggesting bees did not exist before Europeans came to America?
“We Didn’t Have Flies Until the White Man Came”: A Yankton Sioux Remembers Life on the Plains in the Late 19th century
read my mind. about three hours before I did.
no, simultaneously. I was googling up these images and the first one I came to linked to this post.
***So how did the indians survive without bees.***
White man’s flies.
I wonder if this will knock the African bees in the head.
That’s it. I’m filling the garage with canned food. Where’s those Y2K MREs now that I need them?
The Honey Bee is an introduced species.
Seen the people with white faces,
Seen the coming of this bearded
People of the wooden vessel
From the regions of the morning,
From the shining land of Wabun.
Gitche Manito, the Mighty,
The Great Spirit, the Creator,
Sends them hither on his errand,
Sends them to us with his message.
Wheresoe'er they tread, beneath them
Swarms the stinging fly, the Ahmo,
Swarms the bee, the honey-maker;.
Wheresoe'er they tread, beneath them
Springs a flower unknown among us,
Springs the White-man's foot in blossom.
“Pulitzer Prize-winning insect biologist E.O. Wilson of Harvard said the honeybee is nature’s “workhorse — and we took it for granted. We’ve hung our own future on a thread, Wilson, author of the book “The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth,” told The Associated Press on Monday.”
OK, if Edward O. Wilson is involved, you can bet on lots of sound and fury, and not a whole lot of signifiance.
Staying topic....Yes.
.... The honeybee as we know it came from Europe as did all the crops that it pollinates.
......all but strawberries and the effect on those is not dramatic. There are many species of wild bees here including all the bumblebees. The will do a mediocre job of pollination. The Indians did have a squash and the bumblebees were the pollinators.
When all this came to light there was a survey of the number and distribution of wild or solitary bees. Answer: just not enough to do the job if we have large orchards and fields that need swift pollination.
The way we plant crops is different from the Indians...they just had small plots and we have hundreds of acres. All our stuff needs to be harvested at the same time and therefore pollinated at the same time. Thus they bring in trucks of colonies.
I am not so sure it is the Varroa mite, but it might be a disease that the Varroa transmits.
A parasite of an insect and the parasite carries a disease.....OH Pandora...
Interesting.
In the link I posted in #23 mentions recent domestication of the big native American bumble bees. Apparently the bumble bees are content to live inside greenhouses while the european honeybees beat themselves to death in an attempt to escape.
I periodically think about changing it ... and decide not to.
We may have to hire Mexican bees to come up here to pollinate the crops that American bees refuse to pollinate.
My shrubs are buzzing with bees. They were a little late this year but now they’re everywhere. My co-worker is a beekeeper who normally keeps 3 colonies. This year he has five colonies.
Which one? "Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside a of a dog, it's too dark to read."?
The price of honey is outrageous. I heard, don’t laugh because I’m just passing this on, that transmissions from cell phones are killing them off?!
Well, there are gizmos that you can plug in your outlets at home, to chase away insects and mice, so maybe just a smidgeon of merit? The greenies have all but outlawed all pesticides, so I don’t think we’re poisoning them. After all, did we have a shortage of bees when we used DDT?
The article is very alarmist.
There are four different species of honeybee in the world:
The Little Honeybee (Apis florea) - native to southeast Asia
The Eastern Honeybee (Apis cerana) - native to eastern Asia as far north as Korea & Japan
The Giant Honeybee (Apis dorsata) - native to southeast Asia
The Western Honeybee (Apis mellifera) - native to Europe, Africa and western Asia
I like the little guys, and I grew up around them. Never been stung by a bee, several wasps got a shot at me however. I’ve had a camera lens almost on top of bees more than a few times, and never had any trouble, you just need to move slow and appear non threatening. I was out on a ride yesterday, the local potato crop is almost ready to dig. You can see beehives next to most fields, they are vital to many food crops.
I’ve got the patent on tinfoil hats for honeybees.
What, the one where if bees die off, we have only a four year supply of honey?
Bats also pollinate 90% of the tropical fruits of the world. I have had this trivia in my brain for at least 18 years.
I know for sure avacados, peaches, kiwi, bananas (there are many others but I’m not sure which) and my personal favorite the Agava cactus from which we get tequila.
maybe the Bats will take up the slack from the missing bees.
I’ve noticed only small numbers of honeybees - that is, fewer than the other kinds of bees and wasps - on my berry bushes and plum trees these last few years, but I still have gotten decent crops.
The crabapple tree bears insanely - there are thousands and thousands of little seedlings coming up below - if it can do it, so can a regular apple.
Mrs VS
I'm pretty sure they aren't.
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