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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.'"

3 of 347 comments (clear)

  1. I've been seeing bees all over the place. by egibster · · Score: 0, Troll

    I've been going for walks and seeing bees everywhere on flowers on stuff. This is dumb.

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    Eric
  2. Re:Now to bring them back by Creepy+Crawler · · Score: 0, Troll

    All I have to say is...

    Reduce, Reuse, Reanimate
    Support your local necromancer.

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  3. Re:Seriously by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 0, Troll

    Ahh so I was right. You don't know shit, you are just in to scare tactics. Someone dares to question even the smallest part of what is claimed (notice I never said anything about not believing in climate change) and they are immediately a "denialist" a flat earther, someone just to be shouted down and ridiculed.

    Guess what? That's not science, that is purely the stuff of con men and religion. If someone doesn't accept EVERYTHING you claim to be true at face value, you shout them down, claim they are an idiot, a heretic, working against you, whatever. Religions have used that shit to try and maintain their status for centuries and con men have been doing it likely since humans developed communication.

    That you use tactics like that tells me you don't understand your position, you believe in it blindly. You cannot tolerate an attack of any kind, at all, on any piece. EVERYTHING must be evidence towards your One True Belief(tm) because your belief requires it to be so. Thus anyone who questions it is fit only for ridicule.

    Sad, but unsurprising. I find this all too often. Well you have fun with that, but don't expect to persuade anyone, me in particular. I like my science done right, which is to say evidence, solid predictive theories, and continual testing and questioning.

    Oh by the way your Google search? A horrible argument. The first link is to a credible site, though not a journal, but an article about toadstools, not fungus like you are talking about (there's a difference between a yeast, a mold, a mushroom, and so on). The second one is a typical news story that talks about a spreading fungus (one of the kind we are talking about) but that is just asking the sensationalistic question "Symptom Of Climate Change?" not a research paper showing any proof. The third is to a site that is selling fear on a massive scale (if you can navigate the disaster of a front page it is all speculative scare stories, most not climate related at all) as well as herbal cures and the like. The fourth is to a site claiming that climate change linked to fungal growth is lies.

    Not very persuasive evidence there.