Researchers Find "Alarming" Decline in Bumblebees

[The Straight Story]

Researchers Find "Alarming" Decline in Bumblebees

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Four previously abundant species of bumblebee are close to disappearing in the United States, researchers reported Monday in a study confirming that the agriculturally important bees are being affected worldwide.

They documented a 96 percent decline in the numbers of the four species, and said their range had shrunk by as much as 87 percent. As with honeybees, a pathogen is partly involved, but the researchers also found evidence of inbreeding caused by habitat loss.

"We provide incontrovertible evidence that multiple Bombus species have experienced sharp population declines at the national level," the researchers reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, calling the findings "alarming."

"These are one of the most important pollinators of native plants," Sydney Cameron of the University of Illinois, Urbana, who led the study, said in a telephone interview.

In recent years, experts have documented a disappearance of bees in what is widely called colony collapse disorder, blamed on many factors including parasites, fungi, stress, pesticides and viruses. But most studies have focused on honeybees.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=12530614

[Parche]

1. we are also experiencing a large decline in the number of

Boo Bees........................
69% of them went 'tits up'
:woohoo::hi:

[The Straight Story]

2. I will investigate that claim personally, maybe we need a show of them here

A DU pic thread :)

[DrDan]

3. I have noticed a sharp decline in the past five years

used to have an abundance of bumble bees - used to scare the poop out of my granddaughter. That was 5 years ago when we bought our present house.

This past year - nearly none. And my wildflowers are more in abundance than 5 years ago.

[DainBramaged]

4. One day when the fruits and vegetables we love disappear due to lack of pollination

this subject will be taken seriously.

[no_hypocrisy]

5. + 1

[RKP5637]

6. +1, n/t

[dixiegrrrrl]

9. Not one of my cantaloupe plants went past flower stage all last summer.

They grew, looked healthy, had flowers for weeks, no fruits.
tomatoes and peppers did fine.

:shrug: :shrug:

[lovuian]

7. Extinction of the bumble bee coming to the US

its happening and Monsanto Genetic Modified food and pesticides are behind it

they lie they delayed they hide it

and soon it will be tooo late


and the nation will die

[valerief]

8. Bingo! They're the ones who profit from the diminishing populations of bees. nt

[Igel]

12. Precisely.

They're all set to roll out their GM robo-bees. You'll have to pay a fee to allow them to be programmed to fly over your property--and once the program's checked and, a fee per pistil.

[Gregorian]

10. Logging, paved roads, housing.

Things that were always obvious to me, from childhood on. We have turned forests into monoculture farms.

Demand is a direct result of modern living, and population.

We see it coming. It's wreckage now, and maybe far worse to come. I hope not. But 7 billion this year, and maybe no stopping until 10 or 12 billion. That's an impact the planet can't handle.

[catgirl]

11. Bayer and the EPA are to blame

Grist:

It's not just the State and Defense departments that are reeling this month from leaked documents. The Environmental Protection Agency now has some explaining to do, too. In place of dodgy dealings with foreign leaders, this case involves the German agrichemical giant Bayer; a pesticide with an unpronounceable name, clothianidin; and an insect species crucial to food production (as well as a food producer itself), the honeybee. And in lieu of a memo leaked to a globetrotting Australian, this one features a document delivered to a long-time Colorado beekeeper.

All of that, plus my favorite crop to fixate on: industrial corn, which blankets 88 million acres of farmland nationwide and produces a bounty of protein-rich pollen on which honeybees love to feast.

It's The Agency Who Kicked the Beehive, as written by Jonathan Franzen!

Hive talking

An internal EPA memo released Wednesday confirms that the very agency charged with protecting the environment is ignoring the warnings of its own scientists about clothianidin, a pesticide from which Bayer racked up €183 million (about $262 million) in sales in 2009.

Clothianidin has been widely used on corn, the largest U.S. crop, since 2003. Suppliers sell seeds pre-treated with it. Like other members of the neonicotinoid family of pesticides, clothianidin gets "taken up by a plant's vascular system and expressed through pollen and nectar," according to Pesticide Action Network of North America (PANNA), which leaked the document along with Beyond Pesticides. That effect makes it highly toxic to a crop's pests -- and also harmful to pollen-hoarding honeybees, which have experienced mysterious annual massive die-offs (known as "colony collapse disorder") here in the United States at least since 2006.

more: http://www.grist.org/article/food-2010-12-10-leaked-documents-show-epa-allowed-bee-toxic-pesticide-

[Igel]

13. Plant tomatillos, if you like humblebees.

Geesh, the bees come from all over in July and August in Houston.

And there are little black bees that like longbeans.

Went out to get some of the broccoli that was ready for picking last week--the flowers are starting to open. Couldn't get them. The two heads in that state were swarming with honeybees.

Neither's very significant as an indicator of a healthy population. Not just a lot of things are blooming at the height of the Houston summer heat, especially during a near drought, so the longbeans and tomatillos might have attracted them for a mile in any direction. Almost nothing's blooming now so if the honeybees are out they're hungry.

Meanwhile, I could swear there's a post in the Science forum discussing the transmission of viruses by pollen, a disease vector that would account not just for honeybees fed corn syrup in their off months and servicing food crops sprayed with specific pesticides but would also account for the problems with a wide range of other pollinators. It's handy to limit the possible causes to things that you want to be true, and sometimes politically productive; but it's not really a good practice because political reality can sometimes be rather different from the real world.