Who Killed All Those Honeybees? We Did

[one...two...tree 2,762]

The great bee die-off is not such a mystery after all: Industrial agriculture has stressed our pollinators to the breaking point.

by Morgan E. Peck

It was mid-July, and Sam Comfort was teetering at the top of a 20-foot ladder, desperately trying to extract a cluster of furious honeybees from a squirrel house in rural Dutchess County, New York. Four stingers had already landed on his face, leaving welts along the fringe of his thick brown beard. That morning, the owner of the squirrel house had read an article in the local paper about Comfort's interest in collecting feral honey­bees, so he called and invited him over. Commercial bee colonies, faced with massive mortality rates, are not faring so well these days, and unmanaged hives like this one could be their salvation. Comfort hurried over, eager to capture the hive's queen and bring her home for monitoring and, if she fares well, breeding.

The nation's great bee die-off has provoked a furious debate: What has caused a third of all commercial honeybee colonies to perish each year since 2006? Although widespread bee deaths have occurred before, the current sharp decline is different. This time some bees have simply vanished, abandoning their hives. The phenomenon, known as colony collapse disorder (CCD), has been attributed in part to the same viral and bacterial infections, pesticide poisonings, and mite infestations that devastated bees in the past.

Whatever the proximate cause, it increasingly appears that the bees are succumbing to a long-ignored underlying condition—inbreeding. Decades of agricultural and breeding practices meant to maximize pollinating efficiency have limited honeybees' genetic diversity at a time when they need it the most. Addressing CCD may therefore require more than a simple fix. "We need to have a diverse set of genetic raw material so we can find bees resistant to disease," says Steve Sheppard, an entomologist at Washington State University. "Genetic diversity is an important part of the solution."

The problem is hardly trivial. A third of the total human diet depends on plants pollinated by insects, predominantly honeybees. In North America honeybees pollinate more than 90 crops with an annual value totaling almost $15 billion. Indeed, that importance lies at the root of what went wrong. In trying to make bees more productive, apiarists have torn the insects from their natural habitats and the routines they mastered over millions of years. As a result, today's honeybees are sickly, enslaved, and mechanized. "We've looked at bees as robots that would keep on trucking no matter what," says Heather Mattila of Wellesley College, who studies honeybee behavior and genetics. "They can't be pushed and pushed."

In the beginning, honeybees and their partners, the flowers, drove an explosion of natural diversity. While most bees preferred a specific type of plant, honeybees were equal-opportunity pollinators—"pollen pigs," beekeepers called them. The most socially complex of the bees, they thrived in colonies led by the egg-laying queen, who ensured the genetic fitness of her progeny by breeding with multiple male drones from other colonies.

All that began to change in the early 20th century, when farms and orchards started enlisting honeybees to pollinate their crops. Bees that were adapted to harvesting pollen from a variety of plants suddenly spent a month or more at a time surrounded by nothing but almond or apple trees. Farmers eager to increase their crop yields turned to commercial beekeepers, who offered up massive wooden hives stocked with queen bees genetically selected to produce colonies of good pollinators. These breeding practices slashed the genetic variety that helps any species survive infections, chemicals, and other unforeseen threats.

And lately those threats have been profound. During the 1980s, tracheal mites and then varroa mites arrived in North America, decimating honeybee populations. One entomologist studying the mite invasion was Michael Burgett of Oregon State University, who spent much of his career searching for pesticides that would kill the mites but not the bees. In 1995 he published the results of a 10-year bee survey. The average annual honeybee loss, attributed to both mites and chemicals, was about 23 percent.

more...

http://discovermagazine.com/2009/oct/19-wh...oneybees-we-did

[almaty 19]

terrible..i like bees and have seen fewer each year...

[one...two...tree 2,762]

terrible..i like bees and have seen fewer each year...

I wonder what Pat Buchanan thinks about the idea of genetic diversity?

[almaty 19]

he hates bees..pulled their wings off..and got an erection..in his new book page 332

[natty bumppo 297]

he hates bees..pulled their wings off..and got an erection..in his new book page 332

please don't tell us this page is sticky in your copy of the book ...

[HAL 9000 96]

terrible..i like bees and have seen fewer each year...

I wonder what Pat Buchanan thinks about the idea of genetic diversity?

He thinks such things as genes exist?

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

terrible..i like bees and have seen fewer each year...

I wonder what Pat Buchanan thinks about the idea of genetic diversity?

He thinks such things as genes exist?

I sense a newspaper column in the works where he claims that there is no proof whatsoever that the decline of the honeybee population has anything whatsoever to do with agricultural practices and how regulating intensive farming is not in the spirit of America's founding fathers.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

he hates bees..pulled their wings off..and got an erection..in his new book page 332

[one...two...tree 2,762]

terrible..i like bees and have seen fewer each year...

I wonder what Pat Buchanan thinks about the idea of genetic diversity?

He thinks such things as genes exist?

You just can't appreciate the quality of traditional honeybees.

[Mags 112]

he hates bees..pulled their wings off..and got an erection..in his new book page 332

please don't tell us this page is sticky in your copy of the book ...

It's just "honey".

[HAL 9000 96]

Why do I hate honeybees?

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Why do I hate honeybees?

Can you spot the genetically impure honeybee?

[HAL 9000 96]

Or the illegal bees?

You know you were thinking it...

[Kevin and 10]

Scientist may have found another link to the disappearing bees, its HFCS used to feed them.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/...90826110118.htm

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Or the illegal bees?

You know you were thinking it...

Scientist may have found another link to the disappearing bees, its HFCS used to feed them.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/...90826110118.htm

Son of a...