Obama gives order to protect bees and bats

Obama signed a presidential memorandum on Friday ordering the federal government to develop a plan for protecting pollinators such as honey bees, butterflies, birds and bats in response to mounting concerns about the impact of dwindling populations on American crops.

"The problem is serious and requires immediate attention to ensure the sustainability of our food production systems, avoid additional economic impact on the agricultural sector, and protect the health of the environment," Obama said in the memo, which was sent to Cabinet secretaries and agency heads.

According to the White House, the number of bee colonies in the United States has declined from 6 million in 1947 to 2.5 million today. Some crops, including almonds, rely almost exclusively on pollination from honeybees, and honeybee pollination alone is responsible for $15 billion in value every year.

Although scientists can't fully explain why bee colonies are dying off, a combination of stressors, including the loss of their natural habitats and exposure to certain pesticides, is thought to be responsible.

Under the president's order, the government will establish a new task force tasked with developing a "coordinated research action plan" to help better understand and prevent the loss of pollinating species.

Government agencies will also be tasked with developing plans to enhance habitats for pollinating species on federal lands. And agencies will partner with local governments, farmers, and the business community in a bid to increase the quality and availability of available habitats for the species.

Additionally, the president has requested $50 million in his 2015 budget for the Department of Agriculture to help study and prevent pollinator loss.

"Given the breadth, severity, and persistence of pollinator losses, it is critical to expand federal efforts and take new steps to reverse pollinator losses and help restore populations to healthy levels," Obama said. "These steps should include the development of new public-private partnerships and increased citizen engagement."

This is a serious problem, but I do not trust the government to come to any correct answers, because they will ask the wrong questions, based upon incorrect assumptions.

1. Bee colonies have been decreasing in numbers since WWII.

2. What else has been decreasing or lost entirely since WWII?

A, DDT, then later, more & more pesticides, have disappeared or been dramatically curtailed.
B. Airborne aerosols have been dramatically decreased by increasing government regulations.
C. Phosphates have been removed from most cleaning products; and phosphate fertilizer runoff has been drastically reduced. (So much phosphate has been removed that streams are now phosphate deficient, threatening fish populations and leading to huge increases in “rock snot”)¹
D. Lead has been removed from gasoline.
E. NOx has mostly been removed from auto exhaust gasses.
F. Wood smoke from stoves, fireplaces, etc has been reduced or even eliminated in most areas of the country

Each of these has been incrementally implemented, with subsequent tightening of each of the previous regulations limits. As these measures keep becoming more numerous, as well as all becoming more stringent over time, bee colonies
become fewer and fewer, at an increasing rate.,

CONCLUSION: lOSS OF BEE COLONIES IS CLOSELY CORRELATED WITH GOVERNMENT MEASURES TO “REDUCE POLLUTION” AND TO “CLEAN UP” THE ENVIRONMENT!

SOLUTION: ABOLISH THE CLEAN AIR AND CLEAN WATER ACTS, AND THEIR RESULTING REGULATIONS; BRING BACK DDT AND OTHER BANNED PESTICIDES; PUT THE LEAD BACK IN GASOLINE!

¹ While growth in most types of algae is stimulated by high levels of phosphorus and other nutrients, didymo blooms take place when phosphorus levels are present in streams in low concentrations, due to human-induced environmental changes.

Thanks to climate change, rock snot won’t be slipsliding away - See more at: http://www.wvgazette.com/article/20140510/GZ01/140519950#sthash.GqDITKeF.dpuf

Bees have a much better chance of surviving when tended by a beekeeper. If they are not tended their chances of successfully overwintering are thought to be in the 1 in 10 range. Although my personal belief is that they’re doing better than that in recent years. Depending on how good the beekeeper is and how good the stock, the weather, and whether the bees are moved around for pollination, you can keep your losses down to the tolerable range of less than a third. What folks don’t think about (and we as beekeepers wisely downplay) is that bees reproduce prolifically. Tripling your existing hives in a year is easy. Some beekeepers who intensely manage their hives, use some methods that are beginning to take hold, and who propagate their own queens are able to increase their hives almost exponentially. So, let’s say you have 10 hives and suffer a horrible loss rate of 50%. That’s 5 hives. But you intensively manage and quadruple your hives. At the end of the next year you have 20 hives. Now, it won’t be a greatly rosy picture as the most productive hives are 2nd year hives. But as you can see, predictions of the end of honeybees are greatly exaggerated.

And I agree that about the worst thing that can happen to bees is that they be subject to some sort of Federal regulation to help. We’re actually seeing the honeybees doing better. So I think the efforts are a day late and a dollar short. The bee informed numbers for this year were about 30% overwinter losses in spite of a really cold winter. That’s a significant improvement over last year.

Again, the issue here is economics. One thing that we’re finding is that migratory beekeepers have the most problems. Taking a bunch of bees and moving them to chase pollination schedules is very hard on bees, spreads bee diseases, etc. it also makes the bees a lot more susceptible to pesticide or FUNGICIDE kills. But that problem is being solved by economics. Beekeepers who chase the pollination schedules are charging a lot more than they were 5 years ago, charging pesticide surcharges, refusing bees to farmers who are spraying during the pollination season, and in general being a lot more picky in the contracts they take. Hobby beekeepers are having nothing to do with chasing pollination contracts, and are effectively voting with their feet.

The sudden interest in pollinators at this point is in my opinion just more crony capitalism in action. Large corporate farmers who are practicing large scale monoculture farming are having to pay a hefty price to those bothersome beekeepers who are also effectively vetoing some of their practices. The beekeepers actually have some leverage for the first time, and we can’t have that now, can we?

Everything is an economic issue.

And I agree with everything you have said, but we Beekeepers must accurate data to the public about what they real problems are for bees and beekeeping.

The mites and Nosema are by and large the major problems for the bees but the neonics and CCD are getting all the popular media attention.

Both of those are issues, but we above all else, the mites must be addressed not only on the micro level of every beekeeper but among the public and any research that is conducted.

I first kept bees in the early 1980’s and my one beekeeping lesson consisted of, “Go catch your swarm, but them in a hive, when you think the hive is full of bees add your supers. If they get real aggressive, get a new queen, but other than that, they will be okay.”

I get back into beekeeping in the 21st century and it is much more difficult.

Re-queen every year and a half to prevent Africanization.

Do a hive inspection every two weeks and check for mites, moths and if your queen is still there.

I am up to ten hives now and it is just a hobby, but I find the more honey I give away, the more friends and family come out of the woodwork wanting honey.

It’s a fun hobby but I don’t see how people can make money from beekeeping, bit when I think about how they may make money, it scares the hell out of me and I will never consume bought honey again.

Absolutely, but keep in mind that the problems are somewhat regional. Here in VA, we have mites but for most beeks they just aren’t the horror they were years ago. I don’t even bother with mite counts. We don’t have nosema to any significant extent and so far have avoided AHB. On the other hand small hive beetles are an utter scourge, we’ve been having problems with EFB and we have short, intense nectar flows that keep production low. But all in all, for an insect that is allegedly going to die out, I’ve run out of equipment and space to handle the splits my hives are generating.

One thing that is interesting about VA though is that for all the disagreements beeks tend to have, there is a sort of broad agreement that out of state packages are a bad idea, and local survivor stock bees are the gold standard. We also have no migratory beekeepers to speak of so we don’t get to participate in the annual post almonds bee pathogen festival. Probably why nosema just isn’t encountered that much.

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