"Vanishing honeybees mystify scientists

April 22, 2007 - CNN

Billions of bees have mysteriously vanished since late last year in the U.S.
Disappearing bees have also been reported in Europe and Brazil
One-third of the U.S. diet depends on pollination, mostly by honeybees
Some beekeepers are losing 50 percent of their bees to the disorder

Billions of bees have done just that, leaving the crop fields they are supposed to pollinate, and scientists are mystified about why.

The phenomenon was first noticed late last year in the United States, where honeybees are used to pollinate $15 billion worth of fruits, nuts and other crops annually. Disappearing bees have also been reported in Europe and Brazil.

Commercial beekeepers would set their bees near a crop field as usual and come back in two or three weeks to find the hives bereft of foraging worker bees, with only the queen and the immature insects remaining. Whatever worker bees survived were often too weak to perform their tasks.

If the bees were dying of pesticide poisoning or freezing, their bodies would be expected to lie around the hive. And if they were absconding because of some threat -- which they have been known to do -- they wouldn't leave without the queen.

Since about one-third of the U.S. diet depends on pollination and most of that is performed by honeybees, this constitutes a serious problem, according to Jeff Pettis of the U.S. Agricultural Research Service...."

This is very SIRIOUS in Ag circles.

My grandparents used to have a farm and Apple orchard, and Bees are the real workers on any farm.

I have cousins who still have a farm, but apparently their bees are still ok.

Honeybees are not the only pollinators whose numbers are dropping. Other animals that do this essential job -- non-honeybees, wasps, flies, beetles, birds and bats -- have decreasing populations as well. But honeybees are the big actors in commercial pollination efforts.

If you think its funny - think about paying $10- for an apple.


R

I've been reading about this problem the last few weeks. And yes, if the bee pop dies out, we are in deep shit! It's important not to kill them, especially right now. If you threaten them, well naturally they're gonna defend themselves & sting ya. Read this article last week. Interesting possible problem:

Cell phones & declining bee population.

I have been hearing about this for the last three months on the radio program "Coast to Coast A.M." with George Noory. He was first to bring this to the national forefront.

The other working theory is that pesticides have finally caught up to the natural order of things and created an unnatural world order.

How eerie is this though?

The decline in honey bees is not new as in the past few months, although there seems to be a noticible increase in deaths recently. Honey bee populations have been in decline for over a decade. The National Academy of Sciences published a report last year on the topic entitled Status of Pollinators in North America.

I had read about this some time ago and saw a segment on 60 Minutes last Sunday. Tonight on PBS's Nature they ran "The Silence of the Bees," a special about how the world's honeybees have been suddenly and mysteriously disappearing. And scientists don't know why. Pesticides? An AIDS-like bee virus? We don't know.

One third of our nation's food supply is pollenated by honeybees. Three-fourths of the world's plants are pollenated by pollenating animals. While more than just honeybees have been affected, it is the honeybee that has caught the attention of the world's scientists.

What's even scarier is that most people probably don't give this much thought. But do people know how truly serious this is? As a Pennsylvania bee scientist said, "Unless we want to eat nothing but corn and wheat, we better find out what's killing the honeybees."

This Nature episode will rerun several times over the next few days, so check your local PBS station's listings for more info. I highly recommend watching it, and I'd urge everyone to somehow, in some way, get involved in this seemingly trivial but truly serious issue.

We better find out SOON what is killing the honeybees in such a large and rapid manner. Our very food supply depends on it!

I too saw this segment, and buy into the theory is complicated and a combination of factors. Sounds like the bees are being attacked and their immune systems are being depressed. Sound familiar?? Its rather scary.

Einstein said when the bees are gone the human race would only survive for about 4 years.

All right, which bee was the dumbass who didn't wear a condom?

I saw this article not too long ago. Hopefully they can say for sure that it is a mysterious virus and that they find a way to correct the issue. Seems this has been happening in Israel for a few years & now it's reached N. America & other parts of the world.

Scientist believe that they may have discovered the problem. Good news is that it appears that the worst may be over for them...Fingers crossed.

Most of the worry about bees is not about bees but about us: where will we get our honey?

Our real concern should be about whether our impact on the environment is making it uninhabitable by humans.

Bees like other creatures of nature will evolve, if necessary into something that doesn't resemble today's bee at all but containing much of the original genetic material.

But will we evolve fast enough to survive as something recognizably human in the world we are creating by our actions.