Vanishing Honeybees Mystify Scientists

[Kor37 9]

Vanishing Honeybees Mystify Scientists

By Deborah Zabarenko

Reuters

WASHINGTON (April 22) - Go to work, come home. Go to work, come home. Go to work -- and vanish without a trace.

 

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 also have 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.

 

"They're the heavy lifters of agriculture," Pettis said of honeybees. "And the reason they are is they're so mobile and we can rear them in large numbers and move them to a crop when it's blooming."

 

Honeybees are used to pollinate some of the tastiest parts of the American diet, Pettis said, including cherries, blueberries, apples, almonds, asparagus and macadamia nuts.

 

"It's not the staples," he said. "If you can imagine eating a bowl of oatmeal every day with no fruit on it, that's what it would be like" without honeybee pollination.

 

Pettis and other experts are gathering outside Washington for a two-day workshop starting on Monday to pool their knowledge and come up with a plan of action to combat what they call colony collapse disorder.

 

"What we're describing as colony collapse disorder is the rapid loss of adult worker bees from the colony over a very short period of time, at a time in the season when we wouldn't expect a rapid die-off of workers: late fall and early spring," Pettis said.

 

SMALL WORKERS IN A SUPERSIZE SOCIETY

 

The problem has prompted a congressional hearing, a report by the National Research Council and a National Pollinator Week set for June 24-30 in Washington, but so far no clear idea of what is causing it.

 

"The main hypotheses are based on the interpretation that the disappearances represent disruptions in orientation behavior and navigation," said May Berenbaum, an insect ecologist at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

 

There have been other fluctuations in the number of honeybees, going back to the 1880s, where there were "mysterious disappearances without bodies just as we're seeing now, but never at this magnitude," Berenbaum said in a telephone interview.

 

In some cases, beekeepers are losing 50 percent of their bees to the disorder, with some suffering even higher losses. One beekeeper alone lost 40,000 bees, Pettis said. Nationally, some 27 states have reported the disorder, with billions of bees simply gone.

 

Some beekeepers supplement their stocks with bees imported from Australia, said beekeeper Jeff Anderson, whose business keeps him and his bees traveling between Minnesota and California. Honeybee hives are rented out to growers to pollinate their crops, and beekeepers move around as the growing seasons change.

 

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.

 

"One reason we're in this situation is this is a supersize society -- we tend to equate small with insignificant," Berenbaum said. "I'm sorry but that's not true in biology. You have to be small to get into the flower and deliver the pollen.

 

"Without that critical act, there's no fruit. And no technology has been invented that equals, much less surpasses, insect pollinators."

 

 

 

Alien Abduction?..... :( :blink:

[Kor37 9]

Swarm of Bees Shuts Down Emergency Room

AP

LITTLE ROCK (May 5) - A swarm of bees clustered outside the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Medical Center shut down the emergency room Monday, as officials waited for a beekeeper to come vacuum up the 7,000 insects.

 

Although no one was stung, the Little Rock emergency room still decided to be closed for ambulance traffic.

 

"We'll take walk-ins, but ambulances are being diverted to other hospitals," UAMS spokeswoman Andrea Peel said.

 

Doctors did not see any patients with bee stings, but emergency room physician Dr. Delaney Kinchen said it was an important precaution to close the ER while clearing out the bees.

 

"I've been stung thousands of times and never had any problems, but I know people who've been stung twice and almost died," he said.

 

Beekeeper Harvey Johnston arrived Monday afternoon to remove the beehive.

 

"Somewhere around here was a beehive that got overcrowded," he said. "When bees get crowded, (the queen) leaves and takes a portion of the bees with her."

 

The emergency room reopened shortly after 2 p.m., Peel said.

 

 

 

Mystery solved!.....They all just moved to Arkansas.......

[Gummy 0]

Moved to Arkansas?

That's kinda like an alien abduction.

Isn't it?

[SomeGuy 0]

A friend of mine is an entomologist. She was telling me that a similar phenomenon occurred at the turn of the last century in the early 1890s. Newspaper accounts from then can be used to graph instances of bee vanishings from the midwest to the west coast over a period of around 3-years. She believes it may be cyclical in nature.

 

I personally haven't a clue why this is happening.

[jadziaezri 0]

Vanishing Honeybees Mystify Scientists

By Deborah Zabarenko

Reuters

WASHINGTON (April 22) - Go to work, come home. Go to work, come home. Go to work -- and vanish without a trace.

 

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 also have 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.

 

"They're the heavy lifters of agriculture," Pettis said of honeybees. "And the reason they are is they're so mobile and we can rear them in large numbers and move them to a crop when it's blooming."

 

Honeybees are used to pollinate some of the tastiest parts of the American diet, Pettis said, including cherries, blueberries, apples, almonds, asparagus and macadamia nuts.

 

"It's not the staples," he said. "If you can imagine eating a bowl of oatmeal every day with no fruit on it, that's what it would be like" without honeybee pollination.

 

Pettis and other experts are gathering outside Washington for a two-day workshop starting on Monday to pool their knowledge and come up with a plan of action to combat what they call colony collapse disorder.

 

"What we're describing as colony collapse disorder is the rapid loss of adult worker bees from the colony over a very short period of time, at a time in the season when we wouldn't expect a rapid die-off of workers: late fall and early spring," Pettis said.

 

SMALL WORKERS IN A SUPERSIZE SOCIETY

 

The problem has prompted a congressional hearing, a report by the National Research Council and a National Pollinator Week set for June 24-30 in Washington, but so far no clear idea of what is causing it.

 

"The main hypotheses are based on the interpretation that the disappearances represent disruptions in orientation behavior and navigation," said May Berenbaum, an insect ecologist at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

 

There have been other fluctuations in the number of honeybees, going back to the 1880s, where there were "mysterious disappearances without bodies just as we're seeing now, but never at this magnitude," Berenbaum said in a telephone interview.

 

In some cases, beekeepers are losing 50 percent of their bees to the disorder, with some suffering even higher losses. One beekeeper alone lost 40,000 bees, Pettis said. Nationally, some 27 states have reported the disorder, with billions of bees simply gone.

 

Some beekeepers supplement their stocks with bees imported from Australia, said beekeeper Jeff Anderson, whose business keeps him and his bees traveling between Minnesota and California. Honeybee hives are rented out to growers to pollinate their crops, and beekeepers move around as the growing seasons change.

 

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.

 

"One reason we're in this situation is this is a supersize society -- we tend to equate small with insignificant," Berenbaum said. "I'm sorry but that's not true in biology. You have to be small to get into the flower and deliver the pollen.

 

"Without that critical act, there's no fruit. And no technology has been invented that equals, much less surpasses, insect pollinators."

 

 

 

Alien Abduction?..... :)

 

And its all because they knew the secrets of aussie toilets

[trekz 7]

A friend of mine is an entomologist. She was telling me that a similar phenomenon occurred at the turn of the last century in the early 1890s. Newspaper accounts from then can be used to graph instances of bee vanishings from the midwest to the west coast over a period of around 3-years. She believes it may be cyclical in nature.

 

I personally haven't a clue why this is happening.

My uncle used to raise honeybees. Occasionally there could be diseases that hit a hive, but this certainly seems catastophic for some beekeepers and growers. Hopefully some answer can be found.

 

Your friend may be exactly right and it could be a cyclical occurance happening very occasionally.

 

Insects are important and can be helpful and this may help people realize that.

Edited May 2, 2007 by trekz

[Theunicornhunter 2]

This is really scary, the disappearing bees is only part of the problem - there is also a mite infestation killing many bees.

 

The bottom line is we could get very hungry in the next few years.