Slashdot Mirror
Mystery of the Dying Bees Solved
jamie points out news of a study attempting to explain the decline of honeybee populations across the US. As it turns out, the fungus N. ceranae that was thought to be killing off bee colonies had a partner in crime — a DNA-based virus that worked in tandem with N. ceranae to compromise nutrition uptake. From the NY Times:
"Dr. Bromenshenk's team at the University of Montana and Montana State University in Bozeman, working with the Army's Edgewood Chemical Biological Center northeast of Baltimore, said in their jointly written paper that the virus-fungus one-two punch was found in every killed colony the group studied. Neither agent alone seems able to devastate; together, the research suggests, they are 100 percent fatal. 'It's chicken and egg in a sense — we don't know which came first,' Dr. Bromenshenk said of the virus-fungus combo — nor is it clear, he added, whether one malady weakens the bees enough to be finished off by the second, or whether they somehow compound the other's destructive power. 'They're co-factors, that's all we can say at the moment,' he said. 'They're both present in all these collapsed colonies.'"
Phrase of the year!
Any guidelines on how to help the bees return?
I like gardening a lot and put out a lot of ornamental flowers and vegetables to attract bees, but this year there have been very few.
At first they just mashed the bees, then used mortars and pestles, but they found the best bee puree for testing came from a coffee grinder.
So let me get this straight all the bees need is some athletes foot powder and some chicken soup?
I grow a lot of chile in my backyard garden, and I have a chamisa bush there as well. This year, again, I had a very large number of honeybees working the garden and the chamisa. Don't know where they hive, but their population appears to still be healthy.
This is why you have to keep people alive.
Anyone of us could hold the DNA to be resistant to anything. It doesn't matter what someone did or who they are*, you must keep everyone alive. Apparently there was a massive killing of humanity with a volcano, so we're not very versatile except for the different ethnic groups.
Clearly the bees that are alive were partly immune to at least one.
* People like Murderers, rapists. Then people who cannot take care of themselves like those with extreme learning difficulties. You have NO idea what the incapability of their genes could actually immune to. If they're too dangerous to keep around, stick em in a freezer.
Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
Buzz off
What the hell kind of virus isn't DNA-based?
It's always confirmation bias!
Oh, that's easy: the CIA. I have pro...
Wait, there's somebody at the door. Be right back.
Are bees an integral part of our society, and do they need to be present else we die off somehow....the impact of the species becoming extinct is not unimportant as let's say the platapus....I think if we can, we should help the species by giving them some sort of cure, if we can find it....else we might go without honey in our future.
Let's hope the scientists make a beeline for the cure. :P
So, the headline is: Mystery of the Dying Bees Solved.
The first sentence in the first paragraph says: jamie points out news of a study attempting to explain the decline of honeybee populations across the US.
I guess "attempting to explain" now means "solved". The English language sure is changing rapidly here on /..
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
Wait, so it isn't God's vengeance for Bee homosexuality?
Great! Now that we know what's wrong, all we have to do is develop a method of killing the fungus, and the problem is solved. (Not much you can do about the virus, but if it takes two...)
Meanwhile, I wonder if something similar is going on with those bats' white-nose syndrome (also caused by a fungus).
For example, the flu is an RNA based virus... ;^)
Perhaps you might want to stick to writing computer programs
After all, since He created the Earth in seven days, he figured why mess with biology and science and not do a little Divine Intervention to keep Bees from ruining his Picnic.
Every time He holds a picnic, after all, Jesus always complains about his dinosaurs getting stung by them.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
"They're co-factors, that's all we can say at the moment,' he said. 'They're both present in all these collapsed colonies.'"
I hope this helps the UNSCIENTIFIC editors with the news summary.
Yours In Edmonton,
Kilgore Trout
So it wasn't the Wi-Flys? Not the cell phones with their GBees?
It seems like there's a whole branch of CCD-related journalism evolving: Half claiming proclaiming the matter to be a mystery, and the other side which will highlight one of many factors as a "cause", thus declaring a solution. Both feed upon each other.
There is no mystery, other than the mystery of why people keep failing to acknowledge unsustainable and abusive beekeeping practices as a root cause.
- Metropropolis.
One mystery down, now let's tackle this one, this is while trying to get to the comments page of an account on /.:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Fri, 08 Oct 2010 21:00:38 GMT Server: Apache/1.3.41 (Unix) mod_perl/1.31-rc4 Connection: close Transfer-Encoding: chunked Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
OK
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, admin@slashdot.org and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.
More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
Apache/1.3.41 Server at slashdot.org Port 80
So, will fungicide be the answer? IANAbiologist, but fungi are easier to kill, right?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Not an answer to the problem (which is huge) but at least now people can target their efforts to make an impact on the core issues that are leading to this. Interesting that the Army seems to have been a big contributor -- GO ARMY! :)
I don't have time to check it out -- but just because two items are in ever failed colony doesn't mean that's the cause. I'm touchy on the use of corollary evidence used to claim causation which is the irresponsible route of the fame whores of science. If they were to introduce the two into a healthy colony together where it previously did not exist and they destroyed the colony near 100% of the time, it's causation. But the quoted statement doesn't say anything about these two not existing in thriving colonies. It might be there, and I might be a grouchy old man for this, but -- well I am a grouchy old man, so it would fit.
Antibiotics are what fungus uses to kill bacteria. Fatal to bacteria, safe for humans.
The problem is that anything that will kill a fungus will kill a human. Bees too, presumably, as being animals I would expect their chemistry to be roughly similar to humans.
(Evolution took hold with the discovery of antibiotics: with antibiotic-resistant bacteria, the bacteria are changing their chemistry and learning to fight back.)
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Does this mean I can start using my cell phone again?
You mean, I'm not killing baby bees every time I take a call or text? My, what a relief!
"Doubt your doubts and believe your beliefs." -- Switchfoot, Ode to Chin
As a practical beekeeper I feel it is my duty to take this one step further and speculate on how to apply this finding to saving my bees. Virus transmission should be kept to a minimum, I can't think of much else to do to keep a virus like this in check. The primary vector for honeybee viruses is the varroa mite and this pest continues to be the primary killer of honeybees despite all of the hubub about this "Colony Collapse Disorder". Finding that this mite has a hand in CCD is no surprise to me. Nosema is not new to the beekeeping world although N. ceranae is a bigger problem than the tamer N. apis that we're used to dealing with. The treatment is the same though, feed Fumidil B. The bad news is that there isn't much new here so there won't be a silver bullet cure. Keep the bees healthy as best we can, that's about all I can see here.
You can buy wild desert honey. The bees that make it feed on the various plants found in the desert. They are allowed to feed on whatever they can find. It isn't that common in stores nationally, but you see it in the desert states, since that's where it is made. At any rate, compare their health to the health of clover honey bees. If there is a significant difference, then maybe you are on to something.
Remember that not all honey is produced the same way. Clover honey is popular because it is easy to make and has a very uniform taste, however polyfloral honey is available. Personally I always buy wild desert honey because I appreciate the flavour. It isn't always the same bottle to bottle, but it has some complexity than regular clover honey. Little more expensive too but then it isn't like you go through a honey bottle a week or something.
From the beginning of this I have thought that genetically engineered crops must have something to do with this. In many cases the crops are "roundup resistant" which in practice means that lots and lots of roundup is sprayed on them. In other cases crops have been designed to excrete pesticides. Lots of toxic chemical and plants that are by nature insecticidal can't be healthy for pollinators. Hey but who's gonna believe little tin-foil hat wearing me when ADM, supermarket to the world, and Monsanto say otherwise.
-- QED
M Night Shyamalan killed the bees!
Seriously, this argument is somewhat incoherent, I'm having trouble parsing it. If you are trying to argue we should make sure nobody dies, well that is rather silly. You do realize the death rate stands at 100% right? EVERYBODY dies, nobody has ever been saved from death in the long run. We have no technology that lets us prevent this, and nothing even highly experimental that shows signs of it. Everyone will die off at some point.
If this is supposed to be an argument against the death penalty then please leave off it because it is a very poor one. There are good arguments against capital punishment, that someone's DNA might be magic is not one of them. We do not test the DNA of most people, and we certainly don't to a complete sequence and diagnosis to see what it contains.
I mean, the common cold can kill someone whose immune system is compromised. Is there any indication that bees' immune systems are healthy to start with? Do we have any numbers on white blood cell counts in relation to these studies, or anything like that?
how wonderful, a fungus/virus combo. i was starting to think it had something to do with the elevated aluminum levels in the soil/plants and the way plants have been genetically modified to produce their own insecticides. glad we cleared this up before some sort of disaster happens.
I've been going for walks and seeing bees everywhere on flowers on stuff. This is dumb.
Eric
I first noticed a real decline in bee populations a couple of years ago.
It was late spring, there were wildflowers everywhere at the airfield where I work -- but not a single, solitary honey-bee.
Their absence was kind of scary (silent spring anyone?) and things have not improved in the years since.
It's now mid-spring here in the Southern Hemisphere and there are still no honey-bees to be seen in our gardens. The only bees buzzing around the flowers are bumble-bees and there are far too few of them to do a decent job of pollinating.
When you consider that honey-bees play an absolutely vital role in the food chain on which we depend, I really wonder if we're not taking this decline in bee populations seriously enough.
Combine the effects of low plant pollination with increases in extreme weather and sooner or later we're going to get a coincidence of events that produces some pretty drastic collapse of global food supplies.
By that time -- it might be a little too late to do anything -- or perhaps it already is.
As the climate changes, fungus and possibly virus infections will reach new populations that previously hadn't evolved immunities. The entire process will be evolution in action, with populations unfit to the new infectious agent footprints dying out, hopefully replaced by descendants of the fraction which randomly possess immunities. I hope species essential to human civilization like honeybees aren't destroyed faster than we can cope with losing them.
--
make install -not war
Quote myself
"it's really only an 93-94% mortality rate so far.. who knows what tomorrow will bring
I'm currently beating the odds......"
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
This is not a problem world wide, and it is only a problem for professional bee keepers and farmers in the US. Even farmers are able to compensate by keeping their own hives, as non-mobile colonies tend to fare better, or by providing habitat for native pollinators. All of the wild honey bees in the Americas are really feral bees, escaped domesticated bees. The interesting point here is that the decline of the honey bee, a European species, is allowing American native pollinators to return. This includes dozens of species of American bees that are not being killed off by this fungus/virus combination. Since the colony collapse disorder spread to my region, I have seen an explosion of bumble bees and other interesting native bee species now that they are not being out-competed by the feral honey bees. If we are lucky, this disease will continue to kill off feral honey bee hives, sparing native bees.
At Goldsboro's Honey, two beekeepers discuss the day.
Beekeeper 1: Well, sure is quiet in here today.
Beekeeper 2: Yes, a little too quiet, if you know what I mean.
Beekeeper 1: Hmm...I'm afraid I don't.
Beekeeper 2: You see, bees usually make a lot of noise. No noise --
suggests no bees!
Beekeeper 1: Oh, I understand now. Oh look, there goes one now.
Beekeeper 2: To the Beemobile!
Beekeeper 1: You mean your Chevy?
Beekeeper 2: Yes.
The beekeepers track their bees down to Homer's sugar pile.
Beekeeper 1: Well, very clever, Simpson, luring our bees to your sugar
pile and selling them back to us at an inflated price.
Homer: Bees are on the what now?
Beekeeper 2: Simpson, you diabolical...we're willing to pay you $2000
for the swarm. [starts counting money]
Homer: Deal!
[thunder crashes, rain starts]
Beekeeper 1: Oh, wait a minute. The bees are leaving.
Homer: No! My sugar is melting. Melting! Oh, what a world.
[thief spits out his tea]
Homer: [weeps] My sugar's gone...
Marge: [walk out with umbrella] I'm sorry, Homey.
Homer: It's OK, Marge. I've learned my lesson. A mountain of
sugar is too much for one man. It's clear now why God
portions it out in those tiny packets, and why he lives on
a plantation in Hawaii.
They say they know the culpret but the don't know how it actually kills the bees. Think of a court room: "look your honor we know that this man here murdered John Doe, we just don't know what method was used to actually commit the murder and we have no murder weapon nor any evidence that supports our conclusion". If they think a fungus is killing bees wouldn't it make sense to first try putting some fungicide in a bee colony to see what happens. No fungus, no bee killing fungus. However: fungus dead, bees dead, then theory also dead. Talk about leaping to conclusions. This is as bad as the cell phone theory.
I am not worried about, since we all worship the god of evolution and self, we can just expect the bees to evolve into something that will not be affected by these issues. Problem solved.
That farmers have to pay to have hives driven round because they liberally spray insecticides which wipe out local populations of native insects, including bees.
Deleted
The only bees they studied were dead.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
Of course, the virus-fungus outbreak is the result of global warming.
Correlation is not causation. There is nothing in the article I read to demonstrate causality: that the combination of the specific virus and fungus caused the death of the bees. Organisms which are morbid or dying are likely to be the target of infections which they otherwise could fight off. The syndrome should be pursued and understood. Once the progression is understood adequately, only then can corrective measures be developed and applied to assured effect.
"Possibly"
While this may be good news if true, I recently read a news article that tests concluded that radiation from cell phone towers was the culprit: http://www.naturalnews.com/029958_mobile_phones_honeybees.html
I find it strange that there's more than one thing being blamed for this.
The "chicken and egg" dilemma is not a real mystery. It's simply a question of creationism vs. evolution. Either you believe a higher power created the chicken in its current form (and it then continued to reproduce by laying eggs) or you believe that something that wasn't quite a chicken laid an egg with a mutation that caused it to be what we now know as "chicken." The chicken comes first in creationism and the egg comes first in evolution.
I like gardening a lot and put out a lot of ornamental flowers and vegetables to attract bees, but this year there have been very few.
You don't need colonial bees for your garden. Take a block of hardwood, drill a bunch of holes in it (about 3/8" but look it up) and tack it up to a post or tree near your garden. Solitary bees will build homes in it.
Encourage your local wasp population too. I'll assume you don't spray bug killer on your garden, seeing as how you understand the need for bugs*.
* speaking as a normal human, not an entomologist.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
M. Night Shyamylan said it was the trees, and humans operating nuclear power plants near them would surely cause us to be next...
How does it feel to be a liar with pants constantly on fire?
The Next Star Trek Movie Plot...
Bee's on Earth are dying so we need to create a 2nd Earth to farm them... or flee to...
They have researchers at universities and the Army's CBC studying it. What the fuck more do you want? Id' say they have been taking it very seriously, and they've finally figured out what is happening. As for curing it, well in the real world we don't wave a magic wand and fix things. Developing a cure may be harder than finding the problem.
You seem to be of the opinion that either things can be fixed just by wanting to bad enough, and that we haven't done that, or that there should be a lot more running around and shouting that wouldn't accomplish anything but would at least be "doing something."
From my perspective, this has been taken rather seriously. Many hypothesis were studied, including hairbrained ones like the "Cellphone radiation is killing them," from the anti-technology crowd. The government cared enough to put one of their national security organizations, one of two possibly relevant ones (USAMRIID might be the other one) on the case.
What a magnificent example of both critical research failure and Godwin law, all rolled together in a single flamebait. Brilliant !
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
You are trying to make this a climate change issue? I've got three hints for you:
1) There's no evidence this has ANYTHING to do with climate change.
2) Not everything has to do with climate change. There is change all the time, much of it intendant form other change. The idea that "Climate is changing, this changed, thus climate changed this," is pseudoscience at the worst. Bad shit happened long before the last 100 years.
3) Arguments like this make people distrust climate change. When you try and tie every random ass thing in, it makes people wonder why. It makes it seem as though you don't have any real solid evidence, and thus are just going for mountains of flimsy shit and scare tactics.
So either find evidence, or leave off it please.
What is the root cause for new maladies eradicating bees?
The design of domestic (artificial) bee hives make bees vulnerable to bacteria, pests and viruses (for an illustration see http://vandermerwe.co.nz/?p=8 )
There is quite a lot of evidence of climate change increasing fungal disease reach in areas where organisms haven't evolved to cope with new fungus that are fit to survive in the new climate. Climate has changed before, and bad shit has happened before. All of which is evidence for the threats from climate change, not some fallacious argument against it.
Look, you probably spent a lot of time denying that the climate was changing, before that went the way of the flat earth. Now you'll spend a lot of time denying each specific effect of climate change. Why don't you channel your energy into helping understand what we've got to cope with, instead of obnoxious attacks you make from ignorance as if you're some kind of expert? Or at least take your own advice and leave off it, please.
--
make install -not war
Bees part of Monarchic Social System in which they are inferior will be born with a barb on their stinger that causes their lower intestine and bladder and glands to be physically ripped out of the abdomen to result in death when the Bee crawls away after stinging whomever it fought against. The Royals can kill many times without threat of theirselves dying, mainly because their stinger lacks the barb. As well, the Royals release a perfume in the hive that causes all other inferior Bees to have no fertilitiy, and it is debatable whether an experiment of removing a barb from a stinger and isolating the Royals out of the hive would result in a Socialist Commune style of environment.
Bees in the higher order of cast that are Royal will be born with a barb-less stinger.
And here is the trippy side to the matter: in Mammals it is the male that has an ovipossitor, meanwhile in Insects it is the female that has a ovipossitor that can sting or lay eggs yet the male Insect has no ovipossitor and can't sting.
So let me ask you, if you are like the Human governments that when innoculating your HOSTS with a questionable medicine that could result in their death, are you going to give the un-vaccinated people a chance to die naturally in the wild or are you going to force them to be innoculated with the chance of killing them yourself? I got Herpes virus from a Vaccine like many others, and whenever I get an outbreak it causes me to suffer secondary infections of bacteria that otherwise would have no occasion had I not been forced to be vaccinated.
I swear, employees of U.S. Government and USDA are trolling everyone by telling us Bee keepers what we already know. In my experiences of bee-keeping, it was EVERYTHING causing the colony to weaken. You really need to baby everything today because there is so much universal unknown incidents that induce things like The Butterfly Effect. It's just like ADD/ADHD; just get out a Checklist and enumerate all the bad things that have been exposed and keep testing the non-domestic and try the same with domestics in closed-environment. I've always known of virus and fungus in bees, but that's not the case because like all organic Immune Systems they have natural immunity as long as they have no contact with materials that diminishes their Immune Systems long enough that their body is compromised. People are the same way with Virus, yet when we eat bad food it quickly changes the Blood content and slows the Lympnodes and Immune System to allow such infection; even Vaccinations have chemicals in them that intentionally diminish the Immune System of the host just to allow the Immune System to get exposure to the Virus in the Vaccine that it can develop a natural response.
The article quote:
I buy Mrs. Crocketts Natural Wild Desert Honey. Produced by Crockett Honey, Tempe Arizona. http://www.crocketthoney.com/
The one I like does appear to be on their site, though you have to buy it in a pack of 12 24 ounce bottles. They sell other stuff as well, such as darker honeys, but I've not tried those. This particular one I get is apparently pretty popular and is just sold in Safeway and thus easy for me to get.
Now that a virus, fungus or other microorganism has been found, people has someone to blame. But the only thing the research has proved is that the microorganisms are present in the sick bees; it does not mean that they are the cause. Another day someone discovered that the people that have best sense of humour had stronger hearts. But why not the contrary? Maybe the people with stronger hearts have better sense of humour! Or maybe some other unknown cause was the reason that made people have both stronger hearts and better sense of humour. Maybe they had a better way of life! But is so easy to tell, just smile and your heart will be stronger. Cause and effect are always connected in a long series of relationships.
You heard me.
Do not think of bees as just for honey.
They are crucial for many commercial crops to produce anything substantial, by pollination.
There was a program on TV recently (PBS Nova, or The Nature of Things on CBC), and the numbers are staggering. Those who practice apiculture have been transporting hives near flowering trees and being paid by orchard owners so they get a proper crop. If they don't get the bees to do it, the crop yields fall by orders of magnitude.
And that is the commercial part. The natural part can be equally important for wild plants, and all the other creatures in the ecosystem that depend on their seeds and fruits.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
Everyone who repeats this non-sense phrase, is a complete moron, it's like asking which came first the woman or the child. Of course the chicken came first, it evolved from another creature, unless you can imagine the egg suddenly appearing out of nowhere, like the monolith for example.
TOP DSLR Cameras Reviews of the top DSLRs
beware - the researcher was funded by big pharma - no see, it wasn't pesticides! right
I've always said I'm going to live forever or die trying.
An average hive has more than 10 female bees for every male - what did God think was going to happen?
It's because (some of) the bees are aliens.
They are fleeing Earth prior to its attempted use as part of the reality bomb. (Dr Who refresh season 4 finale)
Polio was "solved" by Salk and Sabin, and not until. Similarly, the third of world agriculture that depends on non-feral honeybee pollination remains at risk until there's a working solution to CCD.
And why are "military scientists" working this problem? Because CCD is a threat to Homeland Security? Back in the old days, the USDA's ARS division in Beltsville, MD would get that job.
Or is it because CCD, like anthrax, is a potential weapon?
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
Hasn't the question of the dying bees already been answered by Doctor Who? ;)
How about we stop using the tired "chicken and the egg" metaphor as we now know which came first.
After all, it doesn't explain how global warming cause CCD!
Mod parent up; There are vast monocultures all over e.g. californian almonds. The bees are basically taken there, pollinate the crops and die of starvation after a few weeks. They probably meet more types of flower in one day in their natural environment than they meet in their lifetime working for agriculture.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
The doctor already figured this one out! Melissa Majoria was the homeworld of Bees, some of which made their way to Earth. In early 2009, the Bees sensed that a catastrophe was about to befall the Earth, and began to make their way back to Melissa Majoria. Donna Noble noticed this several times, and remarked on it to the Doctor, who also found it odd. (DW: Partners in Crime, Planet of the Ood) The catastrophe was Davros moving the Earth to the Medusa Cascade. The bees' movement created a disturbance on the Tandocca Scale, which allowed the Doctor and Donna to trace their path towards the Earth. (DW: The Stolen Earth) http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Melissa_Majoria
...is that he's connected to Bayer, maker of pesticides, whose confirmed bee-killing effects were notably absent from this study. It's described in detail here (CNN.com).
It's a bit more serious than the loss of Cutey Honey. Crops all around the world will perish. Bees are the CAT5 cable that keep it all together.
This research is extremely important.
Well, I too had hope this study would lead to a resolution. Alas, looks like the researcher was at least partially funded by Bayer AG, maker of another possible cause of CCD -- pesticides. Hard to tell these days what is or is not relevant research. Sad. Here's an article about it :: http://money.cnn.com/2010/10/08/news/honey_bees_ny_times.fortune/index.htm
Is that you?
So now we have identified a parasite, a virus, and a fungus. Maybe the solution is a bacteria.
Naturopathic Medicine for Holistic Health and Wellness