Since April 2014, Bee Population Has Declined 40% – 60%

[polly7]

Claire Bernish, The Anti-Media

In the worst colony die-off in nine years, American beekeepers lost 42.1% of their hives since April 2014, with the heaviest loss occurring in summer — a fact that has alarmed entomologists. As part of an annual survey in partnership with the US Dept of Agriculture, beekeepers reported that over two in five of their colonies had died, and now the task of bringing numbers back, means they will have to divide the surviving hives.

According to study co-author Keith Delaplane, “What we’re seeing with this bee problem is just a loud signal that there’s some bad things happening with our agro-ecosystems. We just happen to notice it with the honeybee because they are so easy to count.”

Extremely heavy losses were seen in Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, where 60% of the bees were wiped out.

And though these figures are startlingly high, what really has entomologists’ attention, is that more loss occurred in summer than winter — for the first time. In the summer of the previous year’s survey, beekeepers lost 19.8% of their bees, but that number rose to 27.4% this time around. Jeff Pettis, a scientist with the USDA, who studies bees, said the unusual summertime deaths also featured heavy queen loss concentrated in more mobile colonies, in itself a noteworthy characteristic.

What happened?

Scientists who worked on the survey believe poor nutrition, mites, and pesticides are the likely culprits. Dick Rogers, chief beekeeper for Bayer — the pesticide manufacturer — downplayed the die-off as “not unusual at all”, adding that hives increased from 2.64 million for the survey period to 2.74 million in 2015.

Though a statistical improvement, this increase doesn’t indicate the overall health of the population. According to Delaplane, dividing the remaining hives to force population growth means the bees are pushed to their limit.

One of the possible culprits for such a decline has been gaining some attention — nicotine-derived, neonicotinoid pesticides, the vast majority of which are manufactured by Bayer. Neonics, as they’re known, are coated onto various crop seeds, so once planted, the crop grows with a built-in insecticide — but there is heated debate over whether neonics offer any benefit to crops at all, and their overuse appears to coincide with declining bee populations.

The European Union recognizes the connection and has placed restrictions on the use of neonics. In one study, the European Commission found indications that the pesticide could potentially be acting as a neurotoxin in humans. Bayer, of course, vehemently denies any connection to either the colony die-off or negative effects in humans.

Many campaigns seek to educate the public about bee health and why this is such an important issue. For more information, visit the #SaveOurBess Campaign or Friends of the Earth Bee Action Campaign and a petition and information is available from Save-Bees.org.

This article (Since April 2014, Bee Population Has Declined 40% – 60%) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author andTheAntiMedia.org.

[snagglepuss]

1. k and r

[RiverLover]

2. This is awful, I didn't know it's become THAT bad so quickly....& Bayer is suing "Europe" for

trying to save bees.

This petition, btw, is pretty darn close to reaching its goal of 1.2 million signatures. This is from an email 2 days ago~

Wow. Bayer, BASF and Syngenta are suing the European Commission to overturn a ban on the pesticides that are killing millions of bees around the world.

A huge public push won this landmark ban -- and we can't sit back and let Big Pesticide overturn it while the bees vanish.

Last summer, 37 million bees were discovered dead on a single Canadian farm. And unless we act now, the bees will keep dying. We have to show Bayer and Co. now that we won't tolerate them putting their profits ahead of our planet's health.

Sign the petition to tell Bayer, BASF and Syngenta to drop their bee-killing lawsuits now.

The dangerous chemicals Bayer and Co. make are neonicotinoids, or neonics. Neonics are soaked into seeds, spreading through the plant and killing insects stopping by for a snack. These pesticides can easily be replaced by other chemicals which don't have such a devastating effect on the food chain. But companies like Bayer, BASF and Syngenta make a fortune from selling neonics -- so they'll do everything they can to protect their profits.

The EU banned these bee-killers in May 2013, after a massive public campaign and a clear scientific finding from the European Food Safety Authority that neonics pose huge risks to bee populations. Let's defend this landmark ban for the bees and our food supply.

Sign the petition now to tell Bayer, BASF and Syngenta to drop their aggressive lawsuits!

Worse still, a EU report that could have banned dozens of pesticides has been buried -- due to industry's massive lobbying. We cannot allow Bayer and Co. to intimidate European authorities. The current ban on bee-killing pesticides is up for review soon, so let's make sure their lobby efforts aren't successful this time!

Bayer is an enormous company with a ton of public-facing brands. Neonics are a big part of its bottom line, but it can't afford poor publicity on a global scale. And if word gets out that Bayer is wrecking our ecosystem and threatening a creature responsible for pollinating a third of all our crops, the company will have to back down.

SumOfUs have been right at the front of the global campaign to save our bees. We came together to fight Bayer at a huge independent garden store show in Chicago, where the German chemical maker was out in force. Tens of thousands from the SumOfUs community took action and got Lowe's -- one of the biggest garden retailers in the world -- to stop selling bee-killing pesticides. The pressure on Bayer and Co. is mounting -- but we can only stop the mass bee die-off, if we keep standing up to them.

Sign the petition to tell Bayer, BASF and Syngenta to drop their bee-killing lawsuits now.

**********

http://action.sumofus.org/a/bayer-bees-lawsuit/

I wish Bayer had as bad of a reputation as Monsanto. They should!!!



Please anyone reading this, please take a sec to sign & share the petition!!

[polly7]

3. Thank you very much RiverLover. nt.