Diabetes?
X-Files.
Bee inbreeding?
ping
Mid-Atlantic Apiculture Has many links that I haven't checked out yet.
/Salute
MaxMax
Al Gore hasn't blamed global warming yet?
So that's what all the buzz has been about. My beeber is stungged.
Bee happy. Eat your honey.
FYI
ping
All joking aside, this is a very serious problem. Without honeybees to pollinate, many crops cannot thrive, and major colony losses will have very serious and immediate consequences to our food supply.
Much of the problem for beekeepers is the vast amount of honey being imported from China and Vietnam: China imported over 270 million pounds of honey to the U.S. last year. The total demand for honey is just over 400 million pounds, and beekeepers are forced into leasing their colonies to growers for pollination purposes.
It is suspected that the constant moving, by truck, of large quantities of bee colonies is the major cause of the decline in bee populations. One of my neighbors recently shipped nearly 5000 colonies to California to help pollinate the almond crop. He gets around $130 per colony for this service, and due to the decline in the demand for domestic honey, he needs this income desperately. His losses on the trip were almost 20% of the total shipped.
If you are a consumer of honey, be sure you buy American honey.
The problem has been evident for a very long time.
I lost and replaced several colonies in the mid 90's. Careful attention and management was ineffective.
http://www.nj1015.com/absolutenm/templates/?a=5835&z=1
Beekeepers Deal With Mysterious Ailment Killing Their Colonies
Wednesday, February 21, 2007 - Millennium Radio New Jersey
A mysterious ailment has been plauging colonies of Honeybees in New Jersey and across the country. And it is devastating.
They are calling it, "Colony Collapse Disorder". In essence, it involves the unusual deaths of tens of thousands of Honeybee colonies here and elsewhere. Bob Hughes is President of the New Jersey Beekeepers Association. He says right now, the questions about this far exceed the available information. Hughes says everyone is involved, the University of Pennsylvania and others trying to come up with the answers as quick as they possibly can.
Hughes says he recently found three of five colonies he kept at one location dead. Honeybees do a lot more than Honey production. Their pollination skills are also vital to Jersey farmers for producing more than 50 different varieties of fruits and vegetables.