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ponder it

google it

whatever,

but we NEED to make a sincere effort to protect momma nature.

Let's take the War budgets and put it towards the environment????

Just a krazy kanuk thot . . .

there are still people on DU who think that bees dying "en masse" can be explained as 'normal' winter die-offs.

Did you bother to read my post?

I keep bees. I care deeply about their survival.

Edited to add what I've said about the issue:

Certainly bad practices, such as you've mentioned, should be minimized or even discontinued, but there's plenty of evidence pointing to the cause of 'colony collapse disorder'.

These bees are dying off because they've incorporated the pesticide in with the seed. There's plenty of scientific evidence pointing to that as the problem; the practice just needs to be shut down as it has in other countries (or at least one other country).

The USDA acknowledges this:

These bee colonies are collapsing because of a particular method of incorporating the pesticide into the seed.

That practice needs to be stopped immediately, and the guilty parties need to be held accountable for the damage that they've done to the natural environment, and 'innovations' such as this should be strongly discouraged.

Once that has been accomplished, it makes sense to evaluate these other practices for the problems that they create, but there is a simple 'cause and effect' relationship with these pesticides and it needs to be stopped first. Trying to evaluate these other practices until that is accomplished is a distraction IMHO.

Enormous tracts of single species crops cannot flourish at the levels the "market" demands without commercial bees introduced -- any more than they can "keep pace" without these genetically engineered pesticide-laced seeds.

These are problems that present themselves as part of the same issue -- massive monolithic agriculture is simply not sustainable. CCD is supporting evidence of this.

Last edited Sat Mar 30, 2013, 03:11 PM - Edit history (1)

And big ag bees need to be queued up as something to deal with from a sustainability perspective, but when it comes to CCD and bees, job one needs to be get these pesticides out of the seeds.

They are polluting the surrounding properties with this product; it is similar to discharging sewage into the stream, they should not be able to effect the 'people downstream'.

Shutting it down should be a higher priority than dismantling monoculture farming.

I did NOT mention you (nor our dialogue on a separate thread) , AND I've been posting my concerns about bees for going on five years. In that time, I've had other DUers disparage and/or diminish my concerns. THAT is why I posted about "some DUers" herein above.

(And, yes, I read your last response in that other thread. Since you seem intent upon promoting your position, I'd already decided I was not going to continue my effort to determine whether you think contemporary pesticides contribute to CCD. FURTHERMORE, I've personally witnessed a severe decline in the honeybee population in the Ozarks, where Agri-businesses tend toward a similar myopic approach to raising chickens, turkeys and hogs.)

keeping bees last year in NE-MN.

The evidence and impact of colony collapse disorder (CCD) is not anecdotal nor reflecting a seasonal event.

It took a couple of years for it to finally catch up to the larger bee keepers here in Washington State, then everyone started to see hive losses from 50 to 90 percent.

While we do experience some die off during the winter months, CCD is quite different in that healthy hives will suddenly fail in a period as short as a month.

We've seen some evidence that it was a virus but the evidence that it is correlated with the increased used of a new class of pesticides has everyone concerned.

Pollination services in the US alone is a 3 billion dollar a year industry and is responsible for one quarter of all our agricultural production. A typical bee hive is a $250 dollar investment, a 'package' consisting of a queen and three pounds of bees is $125. A queen alone can easily be up to $80 depending on the time of year and the breeder.

When CCD first began to struck, hives were in such demand that the cost of a hive to pollinate the almonds drove quickly up wards from $45 a hive to $125-$145 a hive.

Of all agriculture that depends on commercial pollination, almonds make the most for keepers. If you were to look at the almond orchards, you'd see a hive on the end over every single row of trees.

CCD has shown no evidence of either geographic or species preference.

Suggestions that this is simply a 'winter die off' are not born out by the data we have.

I ask whether commercial beekeepers' hives would be as large as they are were it not for the feeding of medicines and sugars, and the transporting them so as to never experience a winter die-off.

CCD has not been measured in either "wild" hives nor in naturally-kept ones. That should give us all pause.

A number of good observations being made.

It does make statistical analysis a bit more tricky that the larger commercial pollinators transport their hives over large distances but not all pollinators truck state to state but remain well within state borders.

The distances traveled, the destinations, how a keeper manages their have and their treatment strategy would be working in as part of the data collection cycle.

Whether an individual keeper is using tetracycline for foul brood or a mitacide or is using one of the newer non chemical treatment strategies would be included as part of the data set.

Feral colonies would be left out of the populations.

Because of my elevation and location in the forest margin I choose last year to use a new hybrid of Carolinian queen (in part developed with WSU) While we didn't have the usual winter snow accumulations we did have some cold snaps so I was pleased to see that the Carolinian's survived well.

The only down side to the Carolinian is that the initial build up time from the package is longer than I've seen with my Italians or Russians.

Just pure luck; one formed in our next-door-neighbor's front yard. We didn't even need a ladder!