Mystery Ailment Strikes Honeybees — No honeybees and we don’t eat. The chain reaction goes right up and down the food chain. I’m guessing this has something to do with that mite which the big commercial beekeepers have been killing with bug poison not noticing that bees are bugs too!
A mysterious illness is killing tens of thousands of honeybee colonies across the country, threatening honey production, the livelihood of beekeepers and possibly crops that need bees for pollination.
Researchers are scrambling to find the cause of the ailment, called Colony Collapse Disorder.
Reports of unusual colony deaths have come from at least 22 states. Some affected commercial beekeepers — who often keep thousands of colonies — have reported losing more than 50 percent of their bees. A colony can have roughly 20,000 bees in the winter, and up to 60,000 in the summer.
“We have seen a lot of things happen in 40 years, but this is the epitome of it all,” Dave Hackenberg, of Lewisburg-based Hackenberg Apiaries, said by phone from Fort Meade, Fla., where he was working with his bees.
The country’s bee population had already been shocked in recent years by a tiny, parasitic bug called the varroa mite, which has destroyed more than half of some beekeepers’ hives and devastated most wild honeybee populations.
uh. ok. Read the article again and tell me how you correlate the latest article with the mite issue that happened in the past.
You journalists do this crap all the time and I just can’t stand it. 10 americans dead, must have been as a result of the 10 extremists dead the day before…UGH…Why not just say they ran over an IED and forgot their military training for a sec and it had absolutely nothing to do with what happened the day before.
Bee problem ? Must be global warming !!! That’s it !!! Maybe Al Gore poisoned the bees so he could drum up more lobby support from the UK to make a sequel to his Global Warming BS. Give me a break. All you have to do is say, bees are dead. That’s it… END OF STORY !!!
#1, what the eff are you ranting about???
John referred to an article written by someone else for our comment. He didn’t editorialize about it except to add the comment bees are necessary to food production and to guess a possible cause.
How do you make the connection to 10 dead from an IED??? Are you suggesting the military is to blame for this??? If that is your comment, fine, but don’t blame John because you have such a weird, out of touch, paranoid, tin hat warped, twisted, concept of an idea.
I understand the correlation/causation argument do are trying to make, but seriously – try decaf
#1. “bees are dead. That’s it… END OF STORY !!!”
wow, so much for inquiry as to why things happen …
u really have no idea how serious that is..if u wipe out the bees then we get wiped out ..true story, not fiction,will happen, not a book with a happy ending,,real..stop saying that the scientists will solve the problem,,not happening now,,,too late,,,
You journalists do this crap all the time…Bee problem ? Must be global warming !!! That’s it !!!
Jeez, some people are smoking something weird today. The only thing missing from #1 was a hateful comment about Mr. or Mrs. Clinton.
Tim — Are you high?? Cripes. What a lunatic. As for global warming I’d think bees would applaud it.
If you think this is trivial, then you’re in for a big surprise. Study biology. Pollination is not something that happens by religious magic.
#1 – Even if the mite issue was “in the past”, that doesn’t mean that what was used to kill the mite doesn’t persist in the environment. Many of these strong chemicals can hang around a long time.
The timing is impeccable since the Apprentice is pushing Sue Bee Honey on NBC tonight.
The only thing Global Warming can be blamed for, with a shortened winter, is that the small insects like the mites aren’t killed by the cold, they only go dormant.
Or the opposite, longer summer allows an extra generation of pests to breed.
We’ll know for sure in twenty years, and by that time we should be able to bioengineer just about anything.
People like Harris are finding it difficult now that it’s becoming clear even to them that they were treated like rubes at a midway for 2 elections.
Tim’s all wound up like me because the Dixie Chicks won some Grammys. Personally, I think the bee problem is the Dixie Chicks fault.
Best quote on dvorak.org EVER:
“Pollination is not something that happens by religious magic.”
John, you managed to wrap into that retort the pablum puking, USA Today reading automatons who…well, you know….and they hadn’t even commented yet! I love it!
Thanks!
To those who make light of this information let me tell you as an older beekeeper and a part time farmer. NOTHING is more important to the cubit crops than a honeybee. It at least triples the crop by pollinating the blooms of these crops in particular and to all crops in somewhat lesser degree. I was commercially involved in bee raising a few years ago and only last year became a hobbyist and I lost some hives of bees to a mystery illness I couldn’t determine. I passed it off as bad queens but since reading this I will concentrate more on the merits of this article. Better pray this is not as suspected.
Isn’t all the West Nile Virus control spraying likely to have a negative effect on insects other than mosquitoes? Honeybees etc….
This Bee die off is critical. It is like the Canary in the mines. It is a warning for the health of our society. Wake up you people out there that are making negative comments.
I truly believe that this is caused by Collembola. These are Microscopic organisms that have decided to infest humans and other organisms. People are trying to call it Morgellon’s but that is just a name of a Dr. that died in the 17th century.
Collembola are Microscopic insects that have been around since the world was born. They have many forms and they are related to the Arachnid family. Arthropod.
If you have a creepy feeling that things are crawling under your skin, chances they really are bugs, but Microscopic ones and the name is Collembola not Morgellon’s.
Most of the wild hives where I am have died — either mites or this thing. All the bee keepers I know have had problems.
The loss of bees is terrifying. It’s not about HONEY, it’s about pollination. Without bees our food production drops, and if our food production drops…we starve.
Be kind to bees. Some large scale research should go into this. It’s really NOT a good sign. We need bees.
What they should be looking at as the cause is Genetically Modified Foods. When GM Food were more heavily introduced about 6 years ago there was an article similar to this about butterflies (http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/gmfood/overview.php). By changing the biology of the plants that the bees (and butterflies) feed on you disrupt their biology. It has just taken longer because the bees are a more substantial insect then the butterfly and because more and more farmers are turning to GM crops. Garbage in garbage out. Thank the FDA, the Government and Big Pharma for their thirst for the almighty dollar no matter what the cost, which ultimately, if you haven’t caught on yet, is our lives. Our Government is allowing this stuff to be stocked in our grocery stores without any warning to the consumer, including our baby food and formulas! This is a shame, expect to see more sickness, especially in children because the food we are eating has no nutritional value. Blaming pesticides is just another excuse for them to push the GM food but in reality pesticides have been used since 1939, that’s 48 years, GM foods 7-8 years… it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to put 2 + 2 together…
Don’t let the rants and raves of one loony (Comment by Tim Harris — 2/11/2007 @ 4:25 pm) distract you from what this article is telling us. Do yourself and your family a favor, find a plot of land and plant some seeds, (just make sure they are not GM). You will be amazed at the flavor and how your body craves fresh grown fruits and vegetables.
Be well.
The honey bee problem could be caused by the spread of the African bee variety which is much more aggressive to humans and may be infiltrating the regular honey bee hives. The experts have a hard time distinguishing them just by casual examination.