The November meeting of the Moore County Beekeepers Association will be held on Tuesday, November 10th at 7pm at the Moore County Agricultural Center in Carthage.
Dr. David Tarpy will be the guest speaker and will provide an overview of recent research findings in honeybee science. Association will also elect new officers for 2010.
Showing posts with label colony collapse disorder. Show all posts
Showing posts with label colony collapse disorder. Show all posts
11/08/2009
6/14/2009
Pollinator Week, June 27, Pittsboro
Come join the Chatham County Center of North Carolina Cooperative Extension and the Chatham County Beekeepers’ Association for the third annual celebration of National Pollinator Week on Saturday, June 27, from 10:00 am til 2:00 pm on The Lawn at Chatham Mills in Pittsboro, NC.
The purpose of National Pollinator Week is to teach pollinator-friendly practices and raise public awareness of the importance of the bees, beetles, butterflies, moths, flies, birds, and bats that are needed to produce 80 percent of our flowering plants and one third of our human food crops. The National Academy of Sciences has reported that there is direct evidence of the decline of some pollinator species in North America. And, recently, Colony Collapse Disorder of honey bees has alarmed the agricultural industry.
We have a great program planned for folks of all ages at our local event here in Pittsboro:
You can hear presentations about beekeeping – how to get started, equipment needs, management tips – from local beekeepers.
Tour Cooperative Extension’s new Pollinator Garden at Chatham Mills and learn how to attract and protect pollinators.
Watch expert beekeepers work an actual hive inside a bee cage (bees inside, participants outside!), see honey bees up close and personal, and get your burning beekeeping questions answered.
Participate in a pollinator-themed Scavenger Hunt for kids!
Watch “Bee TV” - park yourself in front of an observation hive and watch the worker bees attending the queen. It’s mesmerizing!
Meet our local Chatham County beekeepers and learn all about what it takes to produce the nutritious and delicious local honey available at Chatham Marketplace. We will have beekeeping equipment and products from the hive for “show and tell”.
Visit Chatham Marketplace to learn which products depend on bees for pollination (hint: look for the bee signs!).
Pick up some educational literature to further your knowledge about honey bees, beekeeping, pollinators, and pollinator conservation.
Learn about the Chatham County Beekeepers’ Association and how you can get involved with this fabulously friendly group through monthly meetings and field days and even an email listserv – we welcome members of all skill levels: from never-tried-it (but always wanted to) to beginner to experienced!
Enjoy a pollinator-friendly local lunch at Chatham Marketplace during the program! (Did you know that worldwide, approximately 1,000 plants grown for food, beverages, spices, fiber, and medicine require pollination by animals?)
All Pollinator Week Events are free and open to the public. This event will be held rain or shine. For directions, go to http://www.chathammarketplace.coop/about/directions.shtml
This event is sponsored by Chatham Mills Development Corporation (see http://www.chathammills.com/) and hosted by Chatham Marketplace (http://www.chathammarketplace.coop/).
For more information about pollinator conservation, visit Cooperative Extension’s website at http://www.protectpollinators.org.
Visit the Chatham Beekeepers’ Association website at http://www.chathambeekeepers.org.
For more information about this event, contact Debbie Roos at 919-542-8202 or debbie_roos@ncsu.edu.
I hope to see you there!
Debbie Roos
Agricultural Extension Agent
Chatham County Center
North Carolina Cooperative Extension
919.542.8202
debbie_roos@ncsu.edu
www.growingsmallfarms.org
The purpose of National Pollinator Week is to teach pollinator-friendly practices and raise public awareness of the importance of the bees, beetles, butterflies, moths, flies, birds, and bats that are needed to produce 80 percent of our flowering plants and one third of our human food crops. The National Academy of Sciences has reported that there is direct evidence of the decline of some pollinator species in North America. And, recently, Colony Collapse Disorder of honey bees has alarmed the agricultural industry.
We have a great program planned for folks of all ages at our local event here in Pittsboro:
You can hear presentations about beekeeping – how to get started, equipment needs, management tips – from local beekeepers.
Tour Cooperative Extension’s new Pollinator Garden at Chatham Mills and learn how to attract and protect pollinators.
Watch expert beekeepers work an actual hive inside a bee cage (bees inside, participants outside!), see honey bees up close and personal, and get your burning beekeeping questions answered.
Participate in a pollinator-themed Scavenger Hunt for kids!
Watch “Bee TV” - park yourself in front of an observation hive and watch the worker bees attending the queen. It’s mesmerizing!
Meet our local Chatham County beekeepers and learn all about what it takes to produce the nutritious and delicious local honey available at Chatham Marketplace. We will have beekeeping equipment and products from the hive for “show and tell”.
Visit Chatham Marketplace to learn which products depend on bees for pollination (hint: look for the bee signs!).
Pick up some educational literature to further your knowledge about honey bees, beekeeping, pollinators, and pollinator conservation.
Learn about the Chatham County Beekeepers’ Association and how you can get involved with this fabulously friendly group through monthly meetings and field days and even an email listserv – we welcome members of all skill levels: from never-tried-it (but always wanted to) to beginner to experienced!
Enjoy a pollinator-friendly local lunch at Chatham Marketplace during the program! (Did you know that worldwide, approximately 1,000 plants grown for food, beverages, spices, fiber, and medicine require pollination by animals?)
All Pollinator Week Events are free and open to the public. This event will be held rain or shine. For directions, go to http://www.chathammarketplace.coop/about/directions.shtml
This event is sponsored by Chatham Mills Development Corporation (see http://www.chathammills.com/) and hosted by Chatham Marketplace (http://www.chathammarketplace.coop/).
For more information about pollinator conservation, visit Cooperative Extension’s website at http://www.protectpollinators.org.
Visit the Chatham Beekeepers’ Association website at http://www.chathambeekeepers.org.
For more information about this event, contact Debbie Roos at 919-542-8202 or debbie_roos@ncsu.edu.
I hope to see you there!
Debbie Roos
Agricultural Extension Agent
Chatham County Center
North Carolina Cooperative Extension
919.542.8202
debbie_roos@ncsu.edu
www.growingsmallfarms.org
12/31/2008
GM Bt Corn vs. Honey Bees
Bee Learning Behavior Affected by Eating Toxin from GE Corn
By Ken Roseboro, ed.
The Organic and Non-GMO Report, December 2008
A recent study found that honey bees fed on the active form of purified Cry1Ab protein, the genetically modified protein found in GM Bt corn, can be affected in the learning responses necessary to associate nectar sources with odorants.
The scientists wanted to determine if GM Bt is one of the causes for colony collapse disorder, a mysterious affliction that is killing honeybees worldwide.
In this study bees consuming artificial nectar containing 5000ppb of Cry1Ab continued to respond positively to a learned odor even in the absence of a food reward, while normal bee behavior is to become discouraged and seek more abundant food sources.
This learning response is important in bee foraging behavior and it has attracted the attention of CCD researchers since it is known to be inhibited by the insecticide imidacloprid.
The new finding is particularly interesting since it lends weight to a previous suggestion that Bt toxins may have other, non-lethal effects which become apparent only when the normal (i.e. lethal) effect is absent. If there were to be multiple modes of Bt action then many more non-target organisms would likely be at risk from GM Bt corn. Bt Researcher Angelika Hilbeck says that more research is needed that looks at the impacts of both the Bt toxin and imidaclopid on bee behavior.
From Bee Culture, The Magazine Of American Beekeeping
www.BeeCulture.com
By Ken Roseboro, ed.
The Organic and Non-GMO Report, December 2008
A recent study found that honey bees fed on the active form of purified Cry1Ab protein, the genetically modified protein found in GM Bt corn, can be affected in the learning responses necessary to associate nectar sources with odorants.
The scientists wanted to determine if GM Bt is one of the causes for colony collapse disorder, a mysterious affliction that is killing honeybees worldwide.
In this study bees consuming artificial nectar containing 5000ppb of Cry1Ab continued to respond positively to a learned odor even in the absence of a food reward, while normal bee behavior is to become discouraged and seek more abundant food sources.
This learning response is important in bee foraging behavior and it has attracted the attention of CCD researchers since it is known to be inhibited by the insecticide imidacloprid.
The new finding is particularly interesting since it lends weight to a previous suggestion that Bt toxins may have other, non-lethal effects which become apparent only when the normal (i.e. lethal) effect is absent. If there were to be multiple modes of Bt action then many more non-target organisms would likely be at risk from GM Bt corn. Bt Researcher Angelika Hilbeck says that more research is needed that looks at the impacts of both the Bt toxin and imidaclopid on bee behavior.
From Bee Culture, The Magazine Of American Beekeeping
www.BeeCulture.com
11/22/2008
8/19/2008
9/11/2007
Bees Could Disappear
Bernard Vaissière: "Yes, the Bees Could Disappear"
By Jean-Luc Goudet
Futura-Sciences
Friday 07 September 2007
Bee populations are declining all over the world. That fact has been known for a long time and the press has recently latched onto the subject. Bernard Vaissière, an Inra [French National Institute for Agricultural Research] researcher and one of very few French pollination specialists, evaluates this question for Futura-Sciences.
Bernard Vaissière is responsible for research at Inra [French National Institute for Agricultural Research] Avignon, and is the principal for the Laboratory of Entomophile Pollination.
His team's research concerns the interactions between pollen, its vectors (wind or insect) and the pistil, pollinating effectiveness, and the relationships between bees and landscapes and the impact of pollination on agriculture.
Futura-Sciences: What do we really know about the global decline of bee populations?
Bernard Vaissière: We don't know their numbers exactly. The statistics that have circulated in recent press articles are not correct. First of all, you must know that bees are not the only pollinating insects - although they are the main one - and that among bees, there is not only the domesticated bee, as many believe in France.... There are a thousand species of bees in our country and 20,000 in the world! What is certain is that we have clear evidence showing a reduction in populations. In July 2006, an article published in Science showed the decline of wild bee populations (not counting bumblebees) in the United Kingdom and Holland. At the end of 2006, the results of an American study indicated a comparable decline in the United States.
For domesticated bees, we have also observed in the United States a very strong winter mortality, from 30 to 50 percent of colonies at the end of this winter and the 2005-2006 winter, versus five to 10 percent in a normal situation. In France and in Belgium, that winter mortality had reached the same level in recent years; however, according to the CNDA (Centre national du développement apicole [National Center for Beekeeping Development]), mortality was reduced last winter to eight to 10 percent.
FS: Do we know the causes for this apparent return to normal?
Bernard Vaissière: No. Is it a simple respite, due, for example, to a milder winter? The prohibition on Gaucho and Regent [pesticides] is also a possible cause. But we have no proof of that.
FS: An American team has just published an article in Science that points to the responsibility of a virus for the collapse of domestic bee colonies. Do you think that's possible?
Bernard Vaissière: They're talking about the Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus. The Acute Paralysis Virus was already known, also in France, and it is certainly possible that it is the primary agent responsible. But the causes of the mortality for domesticated bees may be multiple, and it is always difficult to sort out potentially multi-factor phenomena. It is also very likely that their food, pesticides, and the Varroa destructor, an acarid parasite, play a big role. That acarid weakens the bees and makes them more sensitive to other factors, as, for example, viral infection.
FS: Are the bees really in danger?
Bernard Vaissière: Yes. I think that today the likelihood of a significant decline in bee populations, even the complete disappearance of certain species, is real. The domesticated bee is sort of a barometer for wild populations, the numbers of which we have not the means of knowing. In France especially, there are very few researchers working on pollinators and insect pollination. In my team, we are three scientists, including two teacher-researchers. We have not hired anyone new for eighteen years! And specialists in pollinating insects are mostly over 60 years old.... On the other hand, we know that bees are fragile and we know why: they feed almost exclusively on the nectar and pollen that plants produce for them. That's the fruit of a long co-evolution with flowering plants. Herbivorous insects that eat leaves, for example, ingest all kinds of poisons such as alkaloids and tannins and protect themselves with the help of detoxification enzymes. Bees are very poorly endowed with such enzymes.
FS: Pollen is not only transported by insects: there's also the wind ...
Bernard Vaissière: We have studied this question. Apart from insects, flowering plants have two other main pollination modes in Europe: passive self-pollination (pollination takes place within the center of the same flower by way of direct contact between the anthers and stigma or by gravity - which is the case of wheat, for example) and wind pollination. But insect (essentially bee) pollination is involved in 80 percent of flowering plant species. As Jean Louveaux, who was the Inra director at Bures-sur-Yvette, used to say, pollinating insects represent a slight biomass, but they are nonetheless very important: they act as catalysts.
FS: Are crops involved?
Bernard Vaissière: According to an international study covering 115 crops and conducted in 200 countries by teams from France, Germany, the United States and Australia, three-quarters of crops are for the most part pollinated by insects. That's the case for most fruit, vegetable, oil-producing and protein-producing crops, as well as for nuts, spices, coffee and cocoa. Only 25 percent of crops don't depend on pollinating insects at all (mainly cereals, such as wheat, corn and rice). Overall, 35 percent of global food production comes from crops that depend on insect pollination.
FS: Is there significant awareness of this phenomenon?
Bernard Vaissière: In 2004, Europe launched the program, Alarm (Assessing large-scale environmental risks for biodiversity with tested methods) which will terminate in 2008. There have already been advances, such as the article on the parallel decline of wild bees and plants pollinated by bees, which appeared in the July 2006 issue of Science. There are also several leads being explored to reverse the trend, such as, for example, fields set aside to flower, on which work is underway to measure their impact on the maintenance of pollinating populations. But some phytosanitary companies have seized on that lead and the statistics published are sometimes iffy.... The impact is probably beneficial only if one carefully chooses the species planted and their flowering schedule and we still lack the perspective to make precise recommendations on the impact and minimum surfaces necessary.
FS: Does the situation seem reversible to you?
Bernard Vaissière: As long as the species have not disappeared, it does ... although the bees' haplodiploid system does not encourage small populations. And there are positive signs, such as the Alarm program. These actions remain modest, but, like pollinating insects, they could act as a catalyst.
By Jean-Luc Goudet
Futura-Sciences
Friday 07 September 2007
Bee populations are declining all over the world. That fact has been known for a long time and the press has recently latched onto the subject. Bernard Vaissière, an Inra [French National Institute for Agricultural Research] researcher and one of very few French pollination specialists, evaluates this question for Futura-Sciences.
Bernard Vaissière is responsible for research at Inra [French National Institute for Agricultural Research] Avignon, and is the principal for the Laboratory of Entomophile Pollination.
His team's research concerns the interactions between pollen, its vectors (wind or insect) and the pistil, pollinating effectiveness, and the relationships between bees and landscapes and the impact of pollination on agriculture.
Futura-Sciences: What do we really know about the global decline of bee populations?
Bernard Vaissière: We don't know their numbers exactly. The statistics that have circulated in recent press articles are not correct. First of all, you must know that bees are not the only pollinating insects - although they are the main one - and that among bees, there is not only the domesticated bee, as many believe in France.... There are a thousand species of bees in our country and 20,000 in the world! What is certain is that we have clear evidence showing a reduction in populations. In July 2006, an article published in Science showed the decline of wild bee populations (not counting bumblebees) in the United Kingdom and Holland. At the end of 2006, the results of an American study indicated a comparable decline in the United States.
For domesticated bees, we have also observed in the United States a very strong winter mortality, from 30 to 50 percent of colonies at the end of this winter and the 2005-2006 winter, versus five to 10 percent in a normal situation. In France and in Belgium, that winter mortality had reached the same level in recent years; however, according to the CNDA (Centre national du développement apicole [National Center for Beekeeping Development]), mortality was reduced last winter to eight to 10 percent.
FS: Do we know the causes for this apparent return to normal?
Bernard Vaissière: No. Is it a simple respite, due, for example, to a milder winter? The prohibition on Gaucho and Regent [pesticides] is also a possible cause. But we have no proof of that.
FS: An American team has just published an article in Science that points to the responsibility of a virus for the collapse of domestic bee colonies. Do you think that's possible?
Bernard Vaissière: They're talking about the Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus. The Acute Paralysis Virus was already known, also in France, and it is certainly possible that it is the primary agent responsible. But the causes of the mortality for domesticated bees may be multiple, and it is always difficult to sort out potentially multi-factor phenomena. It is also very likely that their food, pesticides, and the Varroa destructor, an acarid parasite, play a big role. That acarid weakens the bees and makes them more sensitive to other factors, as, for example, viral infection.
FS: Are the bees really in danger?
Bernard Vaissière: Yes. I think that today the likelihood of a significant decline in bee populations, even the complete disappearance of certain species, is real. The domesticated bee is sort of a barometer for wild populations, the numbers of which we have not the means of knowing. In France especially, there are very few researchers working on pollinators and insect pollination. In my team, we are three scientists, including two teacher-researchers. We have not hired anyone new for eighteen years! And specialists in pollinating insects are mostly over 60 years old.... On the other hand, we know that bees are fragile and we know why: they feed almost exclusively on the nectar and pollen that plants produce for them. That's the fruit of a long co-evolution with flowering plants. Herbivorous insects that eat leaves, for example, ingest all kinds of poisons such as alkaloids and tannins and protect themselves with the help of detoxification enzymes. Bees are very poorly endowed with such enzymes.
FS: Pollen is not only transported by insects: there's also the wind ...
Bernard Vaissière: We have studied this question. Apart from insects, flowering plants have two other main pollination modes in Europe: passive self-pollination (pollination takes place within the center of the same flower by way of direct contact between the anthers and stigma or by gravity - which is the case of wheat, for example) and wind pollination. But insect (essentially bee) pollination is involved in 80 percent of flowering plant species. As Jean Louveaux, who was the Inra director at Bures-sur-Yvette, used to say, pollinating insects represent a slight biomass, but they are nonetheless very important: they act as catalysts.
FS: Are crops involved?
Bernard Vaissière: According to an international study covering 115 crops and conducted in 200 countries by teams from France, Germany, the United States and Australia, three-quarters of crops are for the most part pollinated by insects. That's the case for most fruit, vegetable, oil-producing and protein-producing crops, as well as for nuts, spices, coffee and cocoa. Only 25 percent of crops don't depend on pollinating insects at all (mainly cereals, such as wheat, corn and rice). Overall, 35 percent of global food production comes from crops that depend on insect pollination.
FS: Is there significant awareness of this phenomenon?
Bernard Vaissière: In 2004, Europe launched the program, Alarm (Assessing large-scale environmental risks for biodiversity with tested methods) which will terminate in 2008. There have already been advances, such as the article on the parallel decline of wild bees and plants pollinated by bees, which appeared in the July 2006 issue of Science. There are also several leads being explored to reverse the trend, such as, for example, fields set aside to flower, on which work is underway to measure their impact on the maintenance of pollinating populations. But some phytosanitary companies have seized on that lead and the statistics published are sometimes iffy.... The impact is probably beneficial only if one carefully chooses the species planted and their flowering schedule and we still lack the perspective to make precise recommendations on the impact and minimum surfaces necessary.
FS: Does the situation seem reversible to you?
Bernard Vaissière: As long as the species have not disappeared, it does ... although the bees' haplodiploid system does not encourage small populations. And there are positive signs, such as the Alarm program. These actions remain modest, but, like pollinating insects, they could act as a catalyst.
6/17/2007
Probable Cause of Bee Drop?
[entire article at http://www.hyperstealth.com/haarp/index.htm]
e-address for Sutton suttonmaureen@hotmail.com
HAARP Transmissions May Accidentally be Jamming Bees Homing Ability, June 1, 2007
By Guy Cramer
Beginning in the Summer of 2006, bee hives in more than half the U.S. States, four Canadian Provinces and a number of countries in Europe have mysteriously been losing billions of bees in what is now being termed Colony Collapse Disorder. Canadian officials have yet to declare their bee losses are due to this disorder.
Mature worker bees leave the hive and do not return, leaving the queen and immature workers unable to sustain the hive. Due to the recent outbreak and distances involved in the regions affected, most researchers are unable to explain why this is occurring.
Currently one theory suggests that electromagnetic waves may be causing interference with bees’ navigation, as previous small scale research showed that 70% of the bees did not return to the hive when cordless phone transmitters were placed within the colonies. Here we show that a U.S. military radio transmitter (ionospheric heater) array, the most powerful in the world, transitioned to full power in 2006 and reception of signals transmitted cover the same region as the Colony Collapse Disorder.
The High-frequency Active Auroral Research Project is an antenna array located in Alaska. It a congressionally initiated program jointly managed by the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy. The Array has been used to conduct numerous ionospheric and radio wave propagation research studies over the past decade. One project study conducted in 1997 showed the radio transmission range was only received in North America and Europe. This Array transitioned to full power and military use just prior to the summer of 2006 with an increase in output from 9.6 kilowatts to 3.6 megawatts. The corresponding timing and range with the Colony Collapse Disorder suggests recent transmissions from the array could be the most likely cause of the bee problem.
e-address for Sutton suttonmaureen@hotmail.com
HAARP Transmissions May Accidentally be Jamming Bees Homing Ability, June 1, 2007
By Guy Cramer
Beginning in the Summer of 2006, bee hives in more than half the U.S. States, four Canadian Provinces and a number of countries in Europe have mysteriously been losing billions of bees in what is now being termed Colony Collapse Disorder. Canadian officials have yet to declare their bee losses are due to this disorder.
Mature worker bees leave the hive and do not return, leaving the queen and immature workers unable to sustain the hive. Due to the recent outbreak and distances involved in the regions affected, most researchers are unable to explain why this is occurring.
Currently one theory suggests that electromagnetic waves may be causing interference with bees’ navigation, as previous small scale research showed that 70% of the bees did not return to the hive when cordless phone transmitters were placed within the colonies. Here we show that a U.S. military radio transmitter (ionospheric heater) array, the most powerful in the world, transitioned to full power in 2006 and reception of signals transmitted cover the same region as the Colony Collapse Disorder.
The High-frequency Active Auroral Research Project is an antenna array located in Alaska. It a congressionally initiated program jointly managed by the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy. The Array has been used to conduct numerous ionospheric and radio wave propagation research studies over the past decade. One project study conducted in 1997 showed the radio transmission range was only received in North America and Europe. This Array transitioned to full power and military use just prior to the summer of 2006 with an increase in output from 9.6 kilowatts to 3.6 megawatts. The corresponding timing and range with the Colony Collapse Disorder suggests recent transmissions from the array could be the most likely cause of the bee problem.
6/02/2007
5/15/2007
5/04/2007
Natural Hives Less Vulnerable
"Natural" beehives appear less affected by the strange new plague dubbed colony collapse disorder.
Colony Collapse Disorder in domestic honey bees is all the buzz lately, mostly because honey bees pollinate food crops for humans.
However, we would not be so dependent on commercial non-native factory farmed honey bees if we were not killing off native pollinators. Organic agriculture does not use chemicals or crops toxic to bees and, done properly, preserves wildlife habitat in the vicinity, recognizing the intimate relationship between cultivated fields and natural areas.
While no one is certain why honey bee colonies are collapsing, factory farmed honey bees are more susceptible to stress from environmental sources than organic or feral honey bees. Most people think beekeeping is all natural but in commercial operations the bees are treated much like livestock on factory farms.
I’m on an organic beekeeping email list of about 1,000 people, mostly Americans, and no one in the organic beekeeping world, including commercial beekeepers, is reporting colony collapse on this list. The problem with commercial operations is pesticides used in hives to fumigate for varroa mites and antibiotics are fed to the bees to prevent disease. Hives are hauled long distances by truck, often several times during the growing season, to provide pollination services to industrial agriculture crops, which further stresses the colonies and exposes them to agricultural pesticides and GMOs.
Bees have been bred for the past 100 years to be much larger than they would be if left to their own devices. If you find a feral honeybee colony in a tree, for example, the cells bees use for egg-laying will be about 4.9 mm wide. This is the size they want to build – the natural size.
The foundation wax that beekeepers buy have cells that are 5.4 mm wide so eggs laid in these cells produce much bigger bees. It’s the same factory farm mentality we’ve used to produce other livestock – bigger is better. But the bigger bees do not fare as well as natural-size bees.
Varroa mites, a relatively new problem in North America, will multiply and gradually weaken a colony of large bees so that it dies within a few years. Mites enter a cell containing larvae just before the cell is capped over with wax. While the cell is capped, the bee transforms into an adult and varroa mites breed and multiply while feeding on the larvae.
The larvae of natural bees spend less time in this capped over stage, resulting in a significant decrease in the number of varroa mites produced. In fact, very low levels of mites are tolerated by the bees and do not affect the health of the colony. Natural-size bees, unlike large bees, detect the presence of varroa mites in capped over cells and can be observed chewing off the wax cap and killing the mites. Colonies of natural-size bees are healthier in the absence mites, which are vectors for many diseases.
It’s now possible to buy small cell foundation from US suppliers, but most beekeepers in Canada have either never heard of small cell beekeeping, aren’t willing to put the effort into changing or are skeptical of the benefits. This alternative is not promoted at all by the Canadian Honey Council, an organization representing the beekeeping industry, which even tells its members on their website that, “The limitations to disease control mean that losses can be high for organic beekeepers.” [ref link]
Organic beekeeping, as defined by certification agencies, allows the use of less toxic chemicals. It’s more an IPM approach to beekeeping than organic.
Commercial beekeeping today is just another cog in the wheel of industrial agriculture – necessary because pesticides and habitat loss are killing native pollinators, and vast tracks of monoculture crops aren’t integrated into the natural landscape.
In an organic Canada, native pollinators would flourish and small diversified farms would keep their own natural bees for pollination and local honey sales.
The factory farm aspects of beekeeping, combined with an onslaught of negative environmental factors, puts enough stress on the colonies that they are more susceptible to dying out.
Some small cell beekeeping resources:
Organic Beekeeper list http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/Organicbeekeepers/
Michael Bush’s site: http://www.bushfarms.com/bees.htm
BeeSource: http://www.beesource.com/pov/lusby/index.htm
Sharon Labchuk Earth Action (and organic beekeeper) Sharon Labchuk is a longtime environmental activist and part-time organic beekeeper from Prince Edward Island. She has twice run for national Parliament, making a strong showings around 5% for Canada’s fledgling Green Party. She is leader of the provincial wing of the party.
Colony Collapse Disorder in domestic honey bees is all the buzz lately, mostly because honey bees pollinate food crops for humans.
However, we would not be so dependent on commercial non-native factory farmed honey bees if we were not killing off native pollinators. Organic agriculture does not use chemicals or crops toxic to bees and, done properly, preserves wildlife habitat in the vicinity, recognizing the intimate relationship between cultivated fields and natural areas.
While no one is certain why honey bee colonies are collapsing, factory farmed honey bees are more susceptible to stress from environmental sources than organic or feral honey bees. Most people think beekeeping is all natural but in commercial operations the bees are treated much like livestock on factory farms.
I’m on an organic beekeeping email list of about 1,000 people, mostly Americans, and no one in the organic beekeeping world, including commercial beekeepers, is reporting colony collapse on this list. The problem with commercial operations is pesticides used in hives to fumigate for varroa mites and antibiotics are fed to the bees to prevent disease. Hives are hauled long distances by truck, often several times during the growing season, to provide pollination services to industrial agriculture crops, which further stresses the colonies and exposes them to agricultural pesticides and GMOs.
Bees have been bred for the past 100 years to be much larger than they would be if left to their own devices. If you find a feral honeybee colony in a tree, for example, the cells bees use for egg-laying will be about 4.9 mm wide. This is the size they want to build – the natural size.
The foundation wax that beekeepers buy have cells that are 5.4 mm wide so eggs laid in these cells produce much bigger bees. It’s the same factory farm mentality we’ve used to produce other livestock – bigger is better. But the bigger bees do not fare as well as natural-size bees.
Varroa mites, a relatively new problem in North America, will multiply and gradually weaken a colony of large bees so that it dies within a few years. Mites enter a cell containing larvae just before the cell is capped over with wax. While the cell is capped, the bee transforms into an adult and varroa mites breed and multiply while feeding on the larvae.
The larvae of natural bees spend less time in this capped over stage, resulting in a significant decrease in the number of varroa mites produced. In fact, very low levels of mites are tolerated by the bees and do not affect the health of the colony. Natural-size bees, unlike large bees, detect the presence of varroa mites in capped over cells and can be observed chewing off the wax cap and killing the mites. Colonies of natural-size bees are healthier in the absence mites, which are vectors for many diseases.
It’s now possible to buy small cell foundation from US suppliers, but most beekeepers in Canada have either never heard of small cell beekeeping, aren’t willing to put the effort into changing or are skeptical of the benefits. This alternative is not promoted at all by the Canadian Honey Council, an organization representing the beekeeping industry, which even tells its members on their website that, “The limitations to disease control mean that losses can be high for organic beekeepers.” [ref link]
Organic beekeeping, as defined by certification agencies, allows the use of less toxic chemicals. It’s more an IPM approach to beekeeping than organic.
Commercial beekeeping today is just another cog in the wheel of industrial agriculture – necessary because pesticides and habitat loss are killing native pollinators, and vast tracks of monoculture crops aren’t integrated into the natural landscape.
In an organic Canada, native pollinators would flourish and small diversified farms would keep their own natural bees for pollination and local honey sales.
The factory farm aspects of beekeeping, combined with an onslaught of negative environmental factors, puts enough stress on the colonies that they are more susceptible to dying out.
Some small cell beekeeping resources:
Organic Beekeeper list http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/Organicbeekeepers/
Michael Bush’s site: http://www.bushfarms.com/bees.htm
BeeSource: http://www.beesource.com/pov/lusby/index.htm
Sharon Labchuk Earth Action (and organic beekeeper) Sharon Labchuk is a longtime environmental activist and part-time organic beekeeper from Prince Edward Island. She has twice run for national Parliament, making a strong showings around 5% for Canada’s fledgling Green Party. She is leader of the provincial wing of the party.
Honey Bees Equal Food Supply
Published on Thursday, May 3, 2007 by Associated Press
Honeybee Die-Off Threatens Food Supply
by Seth Borenstein
BELTSVILLE, Md. - Unless someone or something stops it soon, the mysterious killer that is wiping out many of the nation’s honeybees could have a devastating effect on America’s dinner plate, perhaps even reducing us to a glorified bread-and-water diet.
Honeybees don’t just make honey; they pollinate more than 90 of the tastiest flowering crops we have. Among them: apples, nuts, avocados, soybeans, asparagus, broccoli, celery, squash and cucumbers. And lots of the really sweet and tart stuff, too, including citrus fruit, peaches, kiwi, cherries, blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, cantaloupe and other melons.
In fact, about one-third of the human diet comes from insect-pollinated plants, and the honeybee is responsible for 80 percent of that pollination, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Even cattle, which feed on alfalfa, depend on bees. So if the collapse worsens, we could end up being “stuck with grains and water,” said Kevin Hackett, the national program leader for USDA’s bee and pollination program.
“This is the biggest general threat to our food supply,” Hackett said.
While not all scientists foresee a food crisis, noting that large-scale bee die-offs have happened before, this one seems particularly baffling and alarming.
U.S. beekeepers in the past few months have lost one-quarter of their colonies - or about five times the normal winter losses - because of what scientists have dubbed Colony Collapse Disorder. The problem started in November and seems to have spread to 27 states, with similar collapses reported in Brazil, Canada and parts of Europe.
Scientists are struggling to figure out what is killing the honeybees, and early results of a key study this week point to some kind of disease or parasite.
Even before this disorder struck, America’s honeybees were in trouble. Their numbers were steadily shrinking, because their genes do not equip them to fight poisons and disease very well, and because their gregarious nature exposes them to ailments that afflict thousands of their close cousins.
“Quite frankly, the question is whether the bees can weather this perfect storm,” Hackett said. “Do they have the resilience to bounce back? We’ll know probably by the end of the summer.”
Experts from Brazil and Europe have joined in the detective work at USDA’s bee lab in suburban Washington. In recent weeks, Hackett briefed Vice President Cheney’s office on the problem. Congress has held hearings on the matter.
“This crisis threatens to wipe out production of crops dependent on bees for pollination,” Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said in a statement.
A congressional study said honeybees add about $15 billion a year in value to our food supply.
Of the 17,000 species of bees that scientists know about, “honeybees are, for many reasons, the pollinator of choice for most North American crops,” a National Academy of Sciences study said last year. They pollinate many types of plants, repeatedly visit the same plant, and recruit other honeybees to visit, too.
Pulitzer Prize-winning insect biologist E.O. Wilson of Harvard said the honeybee is nature’s “workhorse - and we took it for granted.”
“We’ve hung our own future on a thread,” Wilson, author of the book “The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth,” told The Associated Press on Monday.
Beginning this past fall, beekeepers would open up their hives and find no workers, just newborn bees and the queen. Unlike past bee die-offs, where dead bees would be found near the hive, this time they just disappeared. The die-off takes just one to three weeks.
USDA’s top bee scientist, Jeff Pettis, who is coordinating the detective work on this die-off, has more suspected causes than time, people and money to look into them.
The top suspects are a parasite, an unknown virus, some kind of bacteria, pesticides, or a one-two combination of the top four, with one weakening the honeybee and the second killing it.
A quick experiment with some of the devastated hives makes pesticides seem less likely. In the recent experiment, Pettis and colleagues irradiated some hard-hit hives and reintroduced new bee colonies. More bees thrived in the irradiated hives than in the non-irradiated ones, pointing toward some kind of disease or parasite that was killed by radiation.
The parasite hypothesis has history and some new findings to give it a boost: A mite practically wiped out the wild honeybee in the U.S. in the 1990s. And another new one-celled parasitic fungus was found last week in a tiny sample of dead bees by University of California San Francisco molecular biologist Joe DeRisi, who isolated the human SARS virus.
However, Pettis and others said while the parasite nosema ceranae may be a factor, it cannot be the sole cause. The fungus has been seen before, sometimes in colonies that were healthy.
Recently, scientists have begun to wonder if mankind is too dependent on honeybees. The scientific warning signs came in two reports last October.
First, the National Academy of Sciences said pollinators, especially America’s honeybee, were under threat of collapse because of a variety of factors. Captive colonies in the United States shrank from 5.9 million in 1947 to 2.4 million in 2005.
Then, scientists finished mapping the honeybee genome and found that the insect did not have the normal complement of genes that take poisons out of their systems or many immune-disease-fighting genes. A fruitfly or a mosquito has twice the number of genes to fight toxins, University of Illinois entomologist May Berenbaum.
What the genome mapping revealed was “that honeybees may be peculiarly vulnerable to disease and toxins,” Berenbaum said.
University of Montana bee expert Jerry Bromenshenk has surveyed more than 500 beekeepers and found that 38 percent of them had losses of 75 percent or more. A few weeks back, Bromenshenk was visiting California beekeepers and saw a hive that was thriving. Two days later, it had completely collapsed.
Yet Bromenshenk said, “I’m not ready to panic yet.” He said he doesn’t think a food crisis is looming.
Even though experts this year gave what’s happening a new name and think this is a new type of die-off, it may have happened before.
Bromenshenk said cited die-offs in the 1960s and 1970s that sound somewhat the same. There were reports of something like this in the United States in spots in 2004, Pettis said. And Germany had something similar in 2004, said Peter Neumann, co-chairman of a 17-country European research group studying the problem.
“The problem is that everyone wants a simple answer,” Pettis said. “And it may not be a simple answer.”
Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press.
Honeybee Die-Off Threatens Food Supply
by Seth Borenstein
BELTSVILLE, Md. - Unless someone or something stops it soon, the mysterious killer that is wiping out many of the nation’s honeybees could have a devastating effect on America’s dinner plate, perhaps even reducing us to a glorified bread-and-water diet.
Honeybees don’t just make honey; they pollinate more than 90 of the tastiest flowering crops we have. Among them: apples, nuts, avocados, soybeans, asparagus, broccoli, celery, squash and cucumbers. And lots of the really sweet and tart stuff, too, including citrus fruit, peaches, kiwi, cherries, blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, cantaloupe and other melons.
In fact, about one-third of the human diet comes from insect-pollinated plants, and the honeybee is responsible for 80 percent of that pollination, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Even cattle, which feed on alfalfa, depend on bees. So if the collapse worsens, we could end up being “stuck with grains and water,” said Kevin Hackett, the national program leader for USDA’s bee and pollination program.
“This is the biggest general threat to our food supply,” Hackett said.
While not all scientists foresee a food crisis, noting that large-scale bee die-offs have happened before, this one seems particularly baffling and alarming.
U.S. beekeepers in the past few months have lost one-quarter of their colonies - or about five times the normal winter losses - because of what scientists have dubbed Colony Collapse Disorder. The problem started in November and seems to have spread to 27 states, with similar collapses reported in Brazil, Canada and parts of Europe.
Scientists are struggling to figure out what is killing the honeybees, and early results of a key study this week point to some kind of disease or parasite.
Even before this disorder struck, America’s honeybees were in trouble. Their numbers were steadily shrinking, because their genes do not equip them to fight poisons and disease very well, and because their gregarious nature exposes them to ailments that afflict thousands of their close cousins.
“Quite frankly, the question is whether the bees can weather this perfect storm,” Hackett said. “Do they have the resilience to bounce back? We’ll know probably by the end of the summer.”
Experts from Brazil and Europe have joined in the detective work at USDA’s bee lab in suburban Washington. In recent weeks, Hackett briefed Vice President Cheney’s office on the problem. Congress has held hearings on the matter.
“This crisis threatens to wipe out production of crops dependent on bees for pollination,” Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said in a statement.
A congressional study said honeybees add about $15 billion a year in value to our food supply.
Of the 17,000 species of bees that scientists know about, “honeybees are, for many reasons, the pollinator of choice for most North American crops,” a National Academy of Sciences study said last year. They pollinate many types of plants, repeatedly visit the same plant, and recruit other honeybees to visit, too.
Pulitzer Prize-winning insect biologist E.O. Wilson of Harvard said the honeybee is nature’s “workhorse - and we took it for granted.”
“We’ve hung our own future on a thread,” Wilson, author of the book “The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth,” told The Associated Press on Monday.
Beginning this past fall, beekeepers would open up their hives and find no workers, just newborn bees and the queen. Unlike past bee die-offs, where dead bees would be found near the hive, this time they just disappeared. The die-off takes just one to three weeks.
USDA’s top bee scientist, Jeff Pettis, who is coordinating the detective work on this die-off, has more suspected causes than time, people and money to look into them.
The top suspects are a parasite, an unknown virus, some kind of bacteria, pesticides, or a one-two combination of the top four, with one weakening the honeybee and the second killing it.
A quick experiment with some of the devastated hives makes pesticides seem less likely. In the recent experiment, Pettis and colleagues irradiated some hard-hit hives and reintroduced new bee colonies. More bees thrived in the irradiated hives than in the non-irradiated ones, pointing toward some kind of disease or parasite that was killed by radiation.
The parasite hypothesis has history and some new findings to give it a boost: A mite practically wiped out the wild honeybee in the U.S. in the 1990s. And another new one-celled parasitic fungus was found last week in a tiny sample of dead bees by University of California San Francisco molecular biologist Joe DeRisi, who isolated the human SARS virus.
However, Pettis and others said while the parasite nosema ceranae may be a factor, it cannot be the sole cause. The fungus has been seen before, sometimes in colonies that were healthy.
Recently, scientists have begun to wonder if mankind is too dependent on honeybees. The scientific warning signs came in two reports last October.
First, the National Academy of Sciences said pollinators, especially America’s honeybee, were under threat of collapse because of a variety of factors. Captive colonies in the United States shrank from 5.9 million in 1947 to 2.4 million in 2005.
Then, scientists finished mapping the honeybee genome and found that the insect did not have the normal complement of genes that take poisons out of their systems or many immune-disease-fighting genes. A fruitfly or a mosquito has twice the number of genes to fight toxins, University of Illinois entomologist May Berenbaum.
What the genome mapping revealed was “that honeybees may be peculiarly vulnerable to disease and toxins,” Berenbaum said.
University of Montana bee expert Jerry Bromenshenk has surveyed more than 500 beekeepers and found that 38 percent of them had losses of 75 percent or more. A few weeks back, Bromenshenk was visiting California beekeepers and saw a hive that was thriving. Two days later, it had completely collapsed.
Yet Bromenshenk said, “I’m not ready to panic yet.” He said he doesn’t think a food crisis is looming.
Even though experts this year gave what’s happening a new name and think this is a new type of die-off, it may have happened before.
Bromenshenk said cited die-offs in the 1960s and 1970s that sound somewhat the same. There were reports of something like this in the United States in spots in 2004, Pettis said. And Germany had something similar in 2004, said Peter Neumann, co-chairman of a 17-country European research group studying the problem.
“The problem is that everyone wants a simple answer,” Pettis said. “And it may not be a simple answer.”
Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press.
4/16/2007
4/07/2007
Bee Colony Collapse Disorder
What's Happening to the Bees?
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/040507ED.shtml
Beekeeper James Doan first began finding empty hives last fall. Entire bee colonies seemed to have up and vanished, leaving their honey behind. Noting the unusually wet fall in Hamlin, New York, he blamed the weather. Unable to forage in the rain, the bees probably starved, he reasoned. But when deserted hives began appearing daily, "we knew it was something different," he says.
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/040507ED.shtml
Beekeeper James Doan first began finding empty hives last fall. Entire bee colonies seemed to have up and vanished, leaving their honey behind. Noting the unusually wet fall in Hamlin, New York, he blamed the weather. Unable to forage in the rain, the bees probably starved, he reasoned. But when deserted hives began appearing daily, "we knew it was something different," he says.
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