Mystery Killer Silencing Honeybees

[GliderGuider]

Mystery Killer Silencing Honeybees

Dave Hackenberg of central Pennsylvania had 3,000 hives and figures he has lost all but about 800 of them.

In labs at Pennsylvania State University, the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, and elsewhere in the nation, researchers have been stunned by the number of calls about the mysterious losses.

"Every day, you hear of another operator," said Dennis vanEngelsdorp, acting state apiarist with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture. "It's just causing so much death so quickly that it's startling."

At stake is the work the honeybees do, pollinating more than $15 billion worth of U.S. crops, including Pennsylvania's apple harvest, the fourth-largest in the nation, worth $45 million, and New Jersey's cranberries and blueberries.

While a few crops, such as corn and wheat, are pollinated by the wind, most need bees. Without these insects, crop yields would fall dramatically. Agronomists estimate Americans owe one in three bites of food to bees.

The problem caps 20 years of honeybee woes, including two mites that killed the valuable insect and a predatory beetle that attacked the honeycombs of weak or dead colonies.

"This is by far the most alarming," said Maryann Frazier, an apiculture - or beekeeping - expert at Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences.

Peak Oil, Climate Change and Food Scarcity. African famines, collapsing fish stocks, now the bees. The Hoofbeats of the Horsemen grow louder.

[phantom power]

1. negative feedback! we're sav-- oh, wait.

[acmavm]

2. Can't be Franken-Food seed related can it?????

[MuseRider]

3. I haven't seen honeybees

in a long time. We used to have tons of them around but the last 4 years I have only seen a few and that was last summer. Between the fewer birds and the fewer bees I think we need to be really concerned. Birds and bees? There has to be a song in this.

[GliderGuider]

4. a song for the grandkids

Let me tell you 'bout
the birds and the bees
and the flowers and the trees
and the moon up above
and a thing called love

and all those other things we used to have when I was a young whippersnapper.

[MuseRider]

5. God that scares me.

I know some people don't really care about nature or think about it much but I just can't imagine what it will be like as it all changes. It makes me so sad.

Who was Kermit the Frog and what exactly is a frog?

[IDemo]

6. Our garden has been pollinated almost exclusively by wasps

for the past several years. We coexist with them with only one or two stinging incidents per year. Only last year did we notice a big increase in honeybees after being almost completely absent. I'm sure this was an anomaly due to some local phenomenon, and they may disappear this spring again. The wasps cannot replace bees in widespread agriculture, however.

[kestrel91316]

7. Wild hives of honeybees are thriving here in the San Fernando Valley.

I have one in the apricot tree in my back yard. Two years ago there was one in an olive tree at my bank.

Local beekeepers have honey for sale every week at the farmer's market. It's pricey ($9 or $10 for 3 lb) but VERY good and mild-tasting. It is a precious thing which I do not waste.

I think it takes very small-scale, intense, hands-on management to keep the diseases at bay. So it doesn't surprise me that an industrial-scale honey production "factory" might be having problems.

[Dogmudgeon]

8. Another day, another die-off

When the varroa mites infested honeybee colonies a few years ago, it took a destructive toll, too. I think what we're starting to see is the accumulated stress of repeated bee diseases and, possibly, loss of genetic diversity, making apis mellifera weaker as a whole.

Then when you consider such oddities as the recent discovery of large super-colonies of yellow jackets, it additionally suggests something sinister (and/or "something wonderful") beginning to occur -- that we are in an era of widespread "punctuated equilibrium" driving novel, usually fatal, but occasionally monstrous, adaptations.

And what, or who, punctuated that equilibrium? Any guesses? (The first 6.5 billion don't count.)

Of course, it's only speculation. I don't have a grant I could lose. ("Strong Science," "Peer Review," assorted grumbles and all that.)

--p!