When did Obama know about this, and what did he know?
Obama’s fault.
But seriously, this IS a real issue. For once the Guardian is reporting well.
I thought it was concluded that it was caused by nicotine
There has been considerable focus on the RF from mobile phone towers.
If this theory were to pan out, it would be disastrous.
Very odd. Farmers have been using pesticides for many, many bee generations. Why the sudden problem. Why would the bees leave, en mass, prior to dying? Why such a preponderance in winter?
Has there been a decline in crop production? If so many bees are dying there should be a corresponding drop in production. I have read nothing about that.
We are doomed.
Yet environmentalists will tell us this is because the bee's natural habitat is under attack from global warming.
When the truth is bees are not native to North America!
This is truly scary. And since there are now fewer bees, the ones left are literally being worked to death. And bumblebee populations are also crashing. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/08/tech/main3341254.shtml
Not only do we depend on bumblebees for food, but birds and bears depend on them for berries. When I was a kid, there were always plenty of bees (in the wild) around. Now I`m lucky if I see a handfull all spring and summer.
Why isn’t the price of honey rising?
We’ve had an unusual spring here in the southeast, pollen went wild as did just about every blooming thing, it was copious. I’ve never seen hollies bloom like that. The insects noticed, too. The hollies on the corners of my house had an audible hum from a distance. Honeybees, I checked. If there is or was a problem here, it’s no longer evident.
Too cold for bees ehh.
Way back when, normal losses were 10-20%. Since mites arrived, losses have been about 25-35%, so this is actually not new news.
Beekeepers split their colonies to make two or more from one, so the losses can be made up. The current problem is a combination of pathogens that should soon be identified and can be controlled.
Most of the hype comes from the anti-pesticide group, but the losses have nothing to do with it.
I had a beehive in a tree in our backyard. The bees came in mid-summer last year and went to work. I had a bee keeper come and look at it. He speculated the hive would not survive the winter because they started building so late and with dry conditions, there would not be enough pollen available to make enough stores for the winter. Sure enough, they died off in December.
Amazing thing to watch.
It’s those d$$ned Tea Partiers again. Now they’re going after the busy little bees.
It’s lack of affordable housing. There’s plenty of bees around, they just don’t want to live in these hives because the grasping mean old beekeepers charge too much rent (steal all their honey).
We need affordable housing for bees—where they can live rent free, where their honey isn’t stolen by greedy capitalists.
Free the Bees, I say. We need a Federal Department of Bee Housing Authority and Paperwork. They can set up a Blue Ribbon Panel to investigate how to create a Federal Bee Planning and Pollen Options Commission to start to figure out how to plan an Emergency Reponse Team to create affordable bee housing.
Never waste a good crisis.
Wow. I have 2 beehives, and they have swarmed already. Saw a “piping” virgin queen the other day after the swarm.
I think these are the commercially raised ones and not the ones hobby bee keepers use. What about the honeybees in the wild? I wonder how they are doing.
There’s still a heck of a lot of them coming in to my house through my broken screen door in the kitchen that my husband has promised for the last 2 years to fix.
Found 4 in the bedroom the other day, burrowing into the holes for adjusting shelf height in a cheap bookcase by the bedroom window.
Shoo’ed them safely out, but if anyone wants some, I’ll ship them off to you.
1.Do hives last forever?
2. And if not, historically, how many years do they last?
3. If a 35% failure rate is not normal, what is normal?
4. Why can't reporters do 5th grade math?
Obama’s fault.
Last I heard, it’s the cell phone towers that are confusing the bees. They can’t function normally.