Thanks for the link. This is a very important issue that is not getting nearly enough attention.

responding to this issue and these posts. Like GCC, it's terribly important, a BFD!

Thanks for your posts.

K&R.

BZZZZZ

to note, and that is all I intend:

There were no honey bees in the U.S prior to Europeans settling here.

Edit to add:

Actually there were no Honey Bees in North America.

Big difference than where they dwell.

to state a fact and stay out of the discussion.

Now, since I am in it (the discussion) now. I will comment:

The OP then uses the article to promote something leaning towards the EPA which is indeed a U.S institution.

And what would happen with their extinction? I think it wold lead to a population reduction in humans, a natural balance.

I am of the firm belief that if bees wanted to be in North America then they would have chosen to be in North America long before we arrived. We have created and illusion in many ways that this is all sustainable on a "natural" level, however our human dependency on creating false environments for things to strive will fall apart, someday.

Nature created that balance and we manipulate it, then scream that the pesticides may kill off all the bees.....there were none here to begin with. We've raped and pillaged, created concrete jungles in which masses of people live on top of one another, all of this is possible only because we can produce enough food in our "engineered society".

If the bees go extinct here then the population will be reduced or we can pay people to pollinate plants by hand like they do in large swaths of land in China that has no bees left to pollinate due to extensive use of pesticides.

Our best hope is that those mean little bastard bees (Africanized) that are on our border with mexico are finally able to move north and can deal with the weather.

We've genetically modified our "honey bees" to be gentle little production workers, now they are subject to and have no defense against our chemicals....we done this, not the bees. Now those Africanized bees can handle it, screw with them and you may end up dead...that is the way it should be, just like a hornets or yellow jacket nest. These bees (Africanized) are the way that the bees have risen up and are telling us that "enough is enough".

I love bees and will probably be adding in 4 hives this spring, I'd add in the Africanized if I could.

How can the EPA get involved in something that is a transplant to the U.S and could never live here to begin with? They are concerned about mouths to feed, not the bee itself as they know that the honey bee should not be in North America but they try and save it.

The Environmental Protection Agency should be about a natural environment, not an engineered one.

We humans are sure destructive mother fuckers for short-term gain, we must modify, manipulate and control everything, including the bees.

irrational need to control or dominate everything. I tend to agree with her, we men seem to need to be at war with everything on the planet.

I planted large perennial gardens just to keep them well fed and healthy. As a bonus, they pollinate my vegetables.

I like bees (besides for those nasty wasps that love to nest in my widows and around the house (these are really not "bees" though).

When it comes to pollinating nothing comes close to the pure production of Honey Bees. A typical hive size will be 35K-45K bees and their range is well over 1 mile. If they start producing queens when the old queen is no longer able to sustain them then their numbers in a hive may increase to well over 100K in numbers.....pretty cool, especially since most of the bees in a hive only live for around 4 weeks.

I have 13 acres, whenever I plant anything I always have the bees in mind, along with the wildlife. I just planted 16 new fruit trees 2 weeks ago. Sure I will eat and can some of the apples, pears, and peaches, however most will remain for the bees and wildlife.

or many of the other plants we depend on for food. Native American crop plants were often wind-pollinated, like maize, self-pollinated like beans, or pollinated by different insects. There was also a much smaller human population than now. The European honey been made a huge difference: in a few months people will be taking boxes of bees out into the Prunus sp. fields in California's Central Valley to start pollinating the various tree crops, trees that didn't exist there before the coming of Euro-Americans.