Thank gawd there hasn't been any major release of that stuff.

But I have seen two-headed dandelions in the last year. And the apple trees did not bear last year. And there were all kinds of butterflies last year and not this year.

Good thing radiation is safe or we'd have problems with bees and whatnot.

Sure, the US got a fine dusting from Fukushima, and Chernobyl, but all that got washed away. Don't tell me Fukushima is still burning and releasing more radioactive particles, cuz that's all been fixed, right?

Not even an ounce of understanding on your part.

He is faking being brain-dead/washed.

The two-headed dandelions is what has me laughing.

Two flower heads on one dandelion plant. Last year I saw a bunch of them. None this year.

Come to think of it, hardly saw any dandelion flowers at all this year.

But going with your "theory", it makes sense that the mutated plants would be weak and not reproduce.

Ummmmm....I'm going to go with total lack of Scientific Education on this one. CHRIST what an idiot.

It's not something that happened 20 years ago....ummmmm...yeah I got nothing. That's a level of stoopid that is just STAGGERING to me.

...and that's around 40 years ago.

And the physics behind it (refraction of different wavelengths of light within droplets, and internal reflection within the droplets) hasn't changed at all.

Its because there is a black man in the White House, right?



thought so...

Thanks for posting!
Let's hope BeFree---er---RobertEarl gets it!

it's not a leap of mystery as to why you didn't see any two-headed ones, since you've already suggested the dandelion population you observed was small, and multi-headed dandelions are a subset of all dandelions.

I mean seriously...

I didn't see any purple Mazda's this year.
In fact, I hardly saw any Mazda's this year. Something is afoot!

Three years ago they were a plague. WTF? Something is fundamentally wrong.

All the seeds sprouted in my yard.

You want em, I'd be happy to send em to you.

For decades we had dandelions beyond counting. Then, suddenly, they are gone. Dude. There is some serious bad shit going on.

That is a natural process and nothing to be alarmed about.

I used to work with flowering plants. Nothing whatsoever exceptional about it.

there are many reasons, here's one:

however I doubt that radiation from Fukushima is being soaked (in any amount worth concern) up in plants here in the US. A 5 megaton atomic bomb effect is not even comparable to Fukushima.

And you bring up radiation from Fukushima.

If someone writes about the Mississippi flooding, is that also going to be caused by radiation caused by Fukishima? Sunspots also, perhaps?

Never saw that before, have you?

The scientists don't know what is causing the bee collapse. We know what causes flooding.

Monarch butterfly pops are down 59% in the Mexican wintering grounds.

Radiation is a mutagen, meaning it causes mutations. We have more nuclear material spread around the world than we ever have. To discount that as a cause is not very scientific.

FOUR LEAVES! what is this world coming to?

Used to be many of them out here in the deep woods. My favorites were the black ones with yellow feet. Most people are scairt of them, but I used to get them to land on my hand.

Haven't seen but one this year.

Few wasps, too. Had a bunch after the first warm days. See one every once in a while these days.

Wild bees are very scarce too. Had a bunch of honeybees around, but since the last rain, gone.

Just observations from the deep woods. Not much pesticides around these parts. Hardly any farms.

I assume you have some proof to this link between radiation and what's going on. And how Fukashima cause colonies to collapse many years before it's meltdown?

The science from the Chernobyl incident details the alteration in the immediate area. Don't have links, but search can help you.

Been a bird watcher for 30 years. About 1990 is when the bird populations began to dwindle. They are now plunging.

Something is causing all these changes I and others have seen. The correlation with nuclear is worthy of studying.

But there are other correlations. It would be crazy to ignore them, to blow a raspberry at empirical data.

That explains a lot.

Declining bird populations correlate with global warming and shifting seasons (earlier springs, later autumns) and resultant changes in beetle infestations in trees, etc.

Global warming is a much more proximal cause of declining bird populations than tiny blips in global radiation that quickly disappear. Yes, quickly disappear, even though in very localized areas (30 mile radius, say) there are ongoing amounts of radiation.

I ain't ascairt a them mud daubers. They wall up spiders they stings into stupid. I likes to bust open they mud nests just to see the weird assed spiders they got in there. Observations, baby! I gots 'em!

"Just observations from the deep woods..."

Not quite accurate. It's observations plus an implied, yet unspoken causality based off little more than anecdotal evidence with a teaspoon of the post-hoc-ergo-prompter-hoc fallacy.

Asked a few of the old hands around these hills if they had seen anything different. You can just guess they see much as I have seen.

Could be that my observations are clouded by the many hours of observation of the natural world coupled with the science of such as Rachel Carson. That in seeking the why's and wherefore's of the degradation, and knowing that of which the OP speaks, ecological damage is logically multifaceted and on the increase everywhere?

Not to be sugarcoating it or anything....

.

Correlation is not causation.

we can all do is grow a vegetable like squash. This has been proven to improve the wild bees health. Just one bee pollinated fruit or vegetable raised organically. You don't have to be a gardener, and you can do it in a container.

but we can never seem to come up with the intestinal fortitude on something this major and start banning pesticides. I'll all hit home when we all have to go out and hand pollinate the crops next year. You think food is expensive now, just wait.

What was that Einstein said about bees disappearing? “If the bee disappeared off the face of the earth, man would only have four years left to live.”

Wow, you've lived a sheltered life. We used to pick those all the time as kids in the 1980's. Those were the big suckers; they looked like conjoined twin flowerheads, and were prized for popping at each other in dandelion fights.

If bees are so sensitive to radiation that colony collapse has been caused by fallout from chernobyl and fukushima, then there should be no bees in Japan at all. We detonated two nuclear weapons over there during the second world war, remember? Nuclear waste isn't harmless by any stretch of the imagination, but if it was as deadly as you are making it out to be, then our various Bikini Atolls and Hiroshimas should have wiped out our biosphere by now.

Are you sure your apple trees didn't fail to bear fruit last year because of the heat and lack of rain? Because my parents' cherry trees didn't bear either, and I'm pretty sure that was the reason.

multi headed dandelions here in the East for many years.
Not to mention multi headed snakes as well, and last year I saw unicorns, and there are none this year. No multi-headed snakes either.
Something must be going on.

goes nicely with "Sooner than expected".

The jinni appears. I thought of you as I posted.

There was going to be a large study to examine chemical mixtures and their effects on human health. Bush II stopped it.
People who have been injured by chemicals and doctors who treat them have known for a long time that the huge onslaught of pesticides, herbicides, fungicides (the suffix cide means to kill) and other toxic chemicals are weakening the immune systems of all living things. When you hear about fish dying off from parasites it is because their waters are polluted; when you hear about deer dying of wasting disease it is because their environment has been poisoned; when you hear about an alarming rise in autoimmune diseases in humans it is because we are being taxed to our limits.

We all are being poisoned.

Warning us that we are killing ourselves as well as everything around us.

Of course, bees are only one of the hundreds of canaries that nature has tried to warn us with in the past few decades.

My guts are sick. Even after I quit the wheat gluten. I felt way better after eliminating wheat gluten. But I'm still sick. It started after I took a lot of Motrin.

to look - maybe it is the Motrin as some people have liver damage from NSAIDS, but your environment, AKA the air you breathe is a big factor in health. Check the labels on everything you use and look up the ingredients.

1. Do you or your neighbors use yard chemicals? Weed & Feed has 2.4-D, Roundup has glyphosate and inerts that are even more dangerous.

2. New carpet? possible neurotoxins

3. Furniture made from particle board? urea formaldehyde which off-gasses for a long time. Fabric on furniture is often treated with fire retardants as is your mattress.

4. Pesticide use inside the home? Lots of bad stuff that no living thing should be around.

5. Cleaning products have many chemicals. Check out what you are using at www.ewg.org

6. Laundry soaps have brighteners and some dryer sheets have lots of chemicals including chloroform.

8. Personal care products may have formaldehyde under several different names such quarternium-15. Really learn what is in the products you are using because these chemicals enter the body through the skin.

7. Are there pollution sources near your home?

For most things there are safer alternatives. It is amazing what can be accomplished with white vinegar, baking soda and water.
Besides ewg - Environmental Working Group, the publication of the National Institute of Environmental Health NIH) called Environmental Health Perspectives has some really good information if you like reading studies. Please learn and protect yourself - doctors do not consider environmental exposures when treating people for illnesses.

I'm clear done with NSAIDs. I bleed internally from all of 'em. I don't know what the secondary problem is but eliminating gluten was a huge improvement. We have no dandelions. We used to have millions.

I don't know about the yard chemicals but there is an extremely high incidence of cancer in my neighborhood. Everyone that used lawn chemicals in my neighborhood is now dead. I'm being 100% serious.

There are pollution sources near my house. This is Ohio.

We had our home treated for termites. That was years ago. It seemed to work on all the insects.

We're fucked, I know.

would it be possible to clone or domesticate bees and train them to do what wild bees (the ones dying off) now do?

it's about 50/50. Some of the local apiaries are having a rough time, some are doing well. Our hives are doing great, really good in fact. Knock on wood.

Regardless, we need more backyard apiaries.

On edit: We are in NE PA

decrease disease and allow more natural, wild pollinators.

The greatest asset biological evolution has is genetic diversity. The natural world could provide for everyone. But apparently it isn't compatible with thievery.

Everyone knows you must plow fenceline to fenceline, without so much as a single blade of native grass or tiny oak seedling getting in the way. Why, that little tree might prevent us from growing an extra few kernels of corn. The horror!

To paraphrase Dune: The corn must flow!

and briefly it talks about how monocroping has basically destroyed our nations once very rich top soil.

It was very depressing

and I'm sure they'll be very interested.

The main culprit seems to be fungicides which are used on fruits (the article mentioned apples).

And we wonder why half of all people in the U.S. get cancer during their lifetime.

going to be very difficult to unravel that.

We come from a race of people who have been at odds with nature for a very long time. We may love its beauty but we have not respected the intricate interdependence of all things. Our primary religion has no respect for the earth and we are made to believe our beings are eternal and not part of this world.

So what hope do we have of doing the right thing now that we know so many of the secrets of chemistry. We keep trying to mold nature into a dream we have of it but fail to account for what truly made it all possible. And we keep forgetting just how expendable we are in the grand scheme of things.

To our own demise.

Without the use of these chemicals, our food would cost up to ten times more than it does. Bread would be $8 to $10 per loaf. Those breakfast cereals would run about $15 to $20 per box. Corn would go for about $3 per ear, when you could get it at all.

We are supporting a population of 315 million people on growing acerage that historically supported only a few million. Someday that is going to come crashing down around our ears and some future civilization is going to be veiwing our remains as we view the remains of the Anazazi and thinking, as we do today, "I wonder what caused them to disappear."

New regulations would hamper business.

And we all know business is going to continue forever, to infinity, even if there is no earth b/c we'll just eminent domain the moon. Or Mars. Or something.




Of course.

But seriously I don't get the business argument. Do they not realize without an earth they can't fucking make money? Do they get to take their money with them when humans go extinct?

Fault until every last bee was dead? Until then, we have to just wait and see.

which is not something you necessarily expect.

the constant assault of insecticides would also affect the bee's ability to tolerate the effects of fungicides on their immune systems?

don't you see how this article is written in a way to put the blame on fungicides and shift it away from insecticides?

they are both impacting bees. and think about this - fungi and parasites are not all bad - some actually work to maintain the proper function of lifeforms. this is how we have all evolved. we are interdependent in so many ways.

human's need to stop thinking they are masters of life and the universe. we don't know shit.

But it could be the "witches brew" of insecticides, fungicides and 20 ag chemicals. Nutritionists say its not wise to eat apples unless they are organic as they are saturated with chemicals more than any other fruit or vegetables.

gave them to my Mom, and asked her why these tasted so much better than Strawberries from Stop & Shop......

She looked at me and said - Youre right, they are better.....

I said.......Theyre not GMO

Maybe the secret ingredient was ideology?

plus honeysuckle and other flowering plants that bees adore. During pollination there are hundreds of honey bees coming and going all day week after week. That was 2 years ago.

This year I have literally seen 4 honey bees all season. This is the sad fact and it is scary. There are plenty of yellow jackets, wasps and a few bumbles, but the honey bees are just gone.

Look around. What do you see?

There is a huge increase in gastrointestinal disorders in humans like celiac disease. There is some serious shit going down. I think the regulatory agencies are completely bought out.

like greater awareness of the disease, and it's kin, plus the over addition of Gluten in everything.

thickening agent, natural flavoring agent and it's widely used to prevent sticking. It's injected into both turkey and chicken. You must search the grocery store for "gluten-free" chicken. Seriously. I recently learned that wine barrels are often sealed using a wheat flour paste.

and it's a nightmare keeping things GF.

Wheat is also being bread to contain higher amounts of it.

Salvia, yarrow, lavender, oregano, goldenrod...

I don't use pesticides and I haven't used herbicides in years.

I get big black bees, but I almost never see honeybees.

My friend (in KC, Mo) has lots of bee balm and a whole bunch of other flowers. There are lots of bumblebees and other types of little bees. But I think I have seen a total of 2 honeybees this year. Same thing happened last summer. But then at the end of the summer a bunch of honey bees showed up.

She doesn't use any chemicals on her plants.

Our butterflies have been so wonderful this year. And moths, too.

The bee balm really brought the bumblebees. The whole top of the plants was covered with them. They are really very gentle little souls.

I wonder if we will see other insects move into the honeybee niche that is being vacated.

Mostly pipevine swallowtails, but I did see a monarch yesterday.

Had a couple of them last year, too.

Swallowtails - white and yellow - lots of cabbage butterflies. Just all kinds. I could watch for hours.

Fuck Monsanto

I noted the effects of last year's drought and extreme heat: native flora blossoming a month or more early, stunted growth, sparse populations. The hills looked like they had measles because of the deaths of significant numbers of trees.

I lived with a friend who has a pear tree in her upper pasture (and two mulberry trees). I went in search of honeybees multiple times. I counted four. Four honeybees on a massive pear tree loaded with blossoms.

Right now, it seems like our worst positive feedback loops have their OWN positive feedback loops.

fruit trees in bloom used to have a wonderful humming/buzzing sound with all the bees. I haven't heard that sound in a long time.

first trimester was heavily polluted with farm chemicals from the fields above the well. She has a severe condition including 4 types of seizures and profound mental retardation plus digestive problems. When I wrote to the EPA regarding what in that water may have caused her condition they told me that it probably was not one chemical but a chemical soup.

Today the state that she was born in (not MN) drinks bottled water and not well water.

I believe the idea that these soups kill our bees.

and are then astounded when our the environment turns poisonous.

It isn't just agribusiness. My neighbors spend god knows how much money dumping poison into their lawns every year, putting up those little yellow flags that warn children and pets to stay off (didn't know pets could read). When I've tried explaining that they are literally poisoning the ground upon which they live, most of them are incredulous. "But but but...my beautifui lawn? What will happen to my beautiful lawn??!!"

People in the future (if there ARE people in the future) will stand aghast at our collective stupidity.

natural lawn. The monoculture soil was hard, the natural was soft. They had to water more because water didn't soak in as well.

I hadn't thought of that.

Our backyard was once home to dozens of birds. Now? Nothing. And I've seen no bees of any shape. Not even their cousins; wasps, hornets, etc..

It's kinda' spooky. I wonder how long it will be until humans start suffering from Colony Collapse Disorder?

Nectarines and Peaches have been awful...
Blueberries this year were bland and flavorless or exceedingly soft and mushy...
Strawberries have seemed to be decent...

It's the end of the world as we know it (it is started and is gaining momentum every week)...bee colonies, crop failures, wildfires, droughts, diseases emerging, oil spills that cannot be stopped, natural gas fires that cannot be put out, Republican politicians (trying to convince themselves that everything would be better if only we make things a little MORE draconian for dark skinned people) out of control and incalitrant, Democratic politicians doing what they do best (capitulating and selling out the progressive agenda) and all the while, rich smug asshats like the Koch brothers (custom made from central casting for 'bad guys' like the Duke Brothers from Trading Places) are sitting on high fiddling as the world burns...well, at least I have the small comfort of knowing something that seems to have eluded them - all the money in the world can't save you or make you live forever.

And I had hoped to be dead before the worst of it started...looks like I better get busy dying or I am not going to miss it after all...best wishes to you all in the coming apocalypse. Sorry to say to my fundie relatives that there will be no rapture of them

. . . who could ever have imagined such a thing???????

honey bees show up on my flowers.

far into the sparsely populated Woods of Western Arkansas,
surrounded by National Forest,
no Ag Farms, or Industry,
and few neighbors within a 3 mile radius.

We started Keeping Bees in the Spring of 2007,
and have maintained two healthy colonies of European Honey Bees since then.

We practice Low Stress, natural BeeKeeping.
We don't move our hives,
or feed our Bees Corn Syrup, a common practice even among "organic" BeeKeepers.

We DO harvest Honey,
but we leave our Bees PLENTY of their own honey for Winter,
and if it becomes necessary to feed them over Winter,
we will first fed them their own Honey from our stores,
or feed them a solution made from Cane Sugar.

Until someone can convince me that Corn Syrup is NOT contaminated with ANY GM pollen that has escaped the manufacturing, packaging, or transportation of GM Corn Syrup,
we will not even consider the possibility of feeding our Bees Corn Syrup.

Naturally, ANY and ALL GM crops and seeds are forever banned from our little hilltop,
along with ANY and ALL non-naturally occurring pesticides, fertilizers, or herbicides.

Our irrigation and drinking water comes from a natural Spring and rain water.

We have NOT had an incidence of CCD,
or any other problem with our Bees,
and still have the original line of Bees we started in 2007.
Our Bees are happy and healthy,
and we have fallen in love with these wonderful and fascinating creatures.
(It DOES take while for the natural fear of 50,000 swarming Bees to wear off)

We have met several other natural BeeKeepers in our area who practice these same methods, and they have had no problems with CCD either.

We believe that De-Centralized, small scale, low stress, natural BeeKeping
may be the answer to this problem.
but distance from the Cities, Suburbs (VERY toxic), and Commercial Agriculture
will be a necessity.

Honey Bees have a 3 mile forage radius,
and this radius will support only a handful of natural colonies.
When you pass a Commercial Bee Yard with stacks and stacks of BeeHives,
or pass a Semi Truck with hundreds of hives stacked on the back,
well that is part of the problem.
No wonder the Bees don't want to live there.
I wouldn't.

I realize this is only anecdotal testimony,
but our Bees seem to enjoy living here,
and we treat them well.



Early Honey Bounty in Central Arkansas
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1182412

I live way out, too. The bees are doing well, my neighbor has several colonies, and they are down on my hayfields, on the clover and whatnot. I love them. The butterflies get their share - I always make sure there is a part of the field that is left in full clover, and don't spray my fields. I've used a little backpack sprayer and just hit it up plant by plant - lots of time - but there is just too much life out there that doesn't need a chemical dose. The farm was almost all weed field when I bought it, mostly I mowed them off. Takes patience.

Life is beautiful. Hope this bee research trips somebody's cords in DC like DDT did.

I hope you will let me come visit some day!

I have my bio-intensive garden started, as well as my compost bin. I will not allow poisons or GMOs on my property, either.

It is playing in Boulder and I'm going to see it tomorrow.

we make the planet inhospitable for humans?

honey is used in many products throughout the world.

why do you think the market for organic food keeps growing? People know this, they just cannot afford it, perhaps.

The chemicals allow food to be produced for far less money, it is simple. But that money is not really saved, we all pay a price....the question is who will actually fess up to this?

Not the chemical farmers, or the agrichemical industry.