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Scientists Breeding Super Bees
Elliot Chang writes "Over the last five years the world's honey bee population has been steadily dwindling, with many beekeepers citing 2010 as the worst year yet. In order to save these extremely important insects, scientists are working on breeding a new super honey bee that they hope will be resistant to cold, disease, mites and pesticides. If all goes well, the new and improved insect will continue to pollinate our crops for years to come."
Isn't this how we got "killer bees" in the first place?
I write sci-fi for metalheads
...Honey!
Really?
Wasn't that how Africanized Bee's were created? Wikipedia thinks so.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I thought the problem was that they had to be resistant to cell phone signals? Has anyone considered tinfoil hats for bees? (because tinfoil bee hats, of course, would be ambiguous grammar.)
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
I don't see any way this could go wrong.
I for one welcome our industrious little overlords.
That will make incidents like this one more interesting: http://www.firerescue1.com/fire-products/cafs/articles/1077825-Semi-wreck-spilling-14M-honeybees-draws-Idaho-firefighters/
As long as they don't sound like a mass of Jerry Seinfeld we should be OK.
Have they figured out exactly why bee population is dwindling? It seems like they are just fixing the symptoms instead of the actual problem.
A unique way to learn a language: http://languageloom.com
Lest we forget the "Brazilian killer bee" problem, (which, I believe is still an issue), was the result of a good intention to improve the bee breed by increasing their active response via cross-breeding with more aggressive African strains. Then (as the story goes) someone (c1957) left off the queen excluder (grill that prevents from the queen from becoming a "free agent") and as a result dangerous bees escaped into the wild and several terrible horror films were born. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Africanized_bee
You forgot:
the Military-Industrial-Agricultural-Pharmaceutical Applications.
Yours In Novosibirsk,
K. Trout, C.I.O.
I welcome our new bee overlords!
I'm hoping they aren't stingy with the modifications.
Hone your puns, folks. Fi hive.
Get rid of pesticides that both kill bees outright and make them more vulnerable to mites, then see what happens. You know, pesticides which should have never been approved. See http://www.naturalnews.com/030921_EPA_pesticides.html for example.
...our new super honey bee overlords.
BuzzzzZZZzzzZZZzzzz
Since we don't know what's killing them, shouldn't we spend more resources figuring that out before trying to cure the symptom? If it eventually affects people, wouldn't more research on the cause be better than a band-aid fix for this one?
Scientist #2: Well, let's figure out why, and attempt to correct the cause...
Scientist #1: No, wait! We can use our powers of scientifity to create a new, ultraimpervious, megastrong bee...that way it'll survive anything we do to make it's natural habitat inhospitable...
Scientist #2: Hmmm, you might be on to something...but what if it's not just the environment? What if it's some other natural evolution of another species that is now a predator to the bee?
Scientist #1: Fuck that shit. It's gonna die up against our new SuperBee(R).
Scientist #2: I'm almost convinced. What if this strikes an unnatural balance across the continent? How can we be sure that we don't fuck shit up for everything else?
Scientist #1: Think of the money we're going to make once we patent the gene!
Scientist #2: Holy shit, your solution is perfect! Let's get our friends to write some endorsements, and we'll be golden.
Scientist #1: I'm glad we've come to an understanding.
I'm not a scientist in this field, but I'm curious (if anyone knows the actual reason) why we can't just figure out what is actually killing the bees?
I know they've been trying to figure it out for sometime now with no luck.. what the heck could it bee? (yes.... yes that was intentional... I'm sorry).
The real question is: have they also inhibited their ability to migrate to other planets using the Tandoka Scale?
and pretty soon you'll have Planet of the Bees instead of Planet of the Apes...
Didn't they do this a few years ago, when they created the Africanized bee or "killer bees"? Well, by all means keep it up, what could possibly go wrong?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Super Honey!!!
This reminds me of a cartoon that was circulating around Digital Equipment Co. in the 1970's. Written by a DEC employee the strip's hero was Digital Dog, a super K9 whose owner had feed him LSD to make him smart. Anyway it seems some scientists wanted to create a cure for some disease so they combined the DNA from Killer Bees with the DNA of "Tricky Dick" (don't ask!). Anyway they ended up with a huge bee with Nixon's face and appetite for cottage cheese and ketchup.
Digital Dog had to trap him so NASA could get him strapped to rockets to blast him into space.
The same cartoonist latter wrote for Creative computing and a few other magazines a strip called "bit pit" which starred a VAX computer.
I for one welcome our winged yellow and black striped overlords, may your reign be terrible and ever-lasting.
And remember, as an anonymous poster I can assist in rounding up others to toil in your honey comb caves.
It's super KIller Bees!
No reason they can't get rid of the stinger and the hyperaggressive behaviors.
... I've seen enough movies to know lab created entities *never* turn on their creator.
This long after lunch stories like this give me a rumbly in my tumbly. Time for something sweet!
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
This is the last I read about it:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101007183018.htm
I for one welcome our new inect overlords!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Africanized_bee
what we need is our crops pollinated.
Got that? Honey=optional. Food=required.
Can we start breeding "super" humans that are immune to cancer, disease, cold, mites and pesticides?
That way we don't have to worry about what we put in our air, water and soil since we'll just be immune to it!
But they'll also need to create a breed of super dogs: the super dogs with super bees in their mouths, so that when they bark they shoot bees at you.
[obscure?]
Here some information from that article I posted:
Shan Bilimoria, a professor and molecular virologist, said the bees may be taking a one-two punch from both an insect virus and a fungus, which may be causing bees to die off by the billions...
"researchers discovered through spectroscopic analysis evidence of a moth virus called insect iridescent virus (IIV) 6 and a fungal parasite called Nosema."
Calling Andrew Wiggen...
So, if I get stung by an engineered bee, do I get to sue Monsanto (or whoever)?
Google Bee! Social Networking in a Hive!
Tao Pollinates this.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Would anyone be surprised if Monsanto created genetically modified bees, then sued farmers into oblivion because their fields were pollinated by them?
Bee Keeper #1:: "Sure is quiet here today."
Bee Keeper #2: "Yes, a little TOO quiet, if you know what I mean."
Bee Keeper #1:: "No, I'm afraid I don't."
Bee Keeper #2:"You see, bees usually make a lot of noise, NO NOISE, suggests no bees."
Bee Keeper #1::: "Oh, I understand now. Oh look, there goes one."
Bee Keeper #2: "To the bee-mobile!"
Bee Keeper #1: "You mean your Chevy?"
Bee Keeper #2: "Yes."
Not exactly.
Over in parts of Brazil, someone imported African honey bees to raise in CLOSED enclosures, and like all pets they escaped into the surrounding terrain when the colonies became large and their containment was challenged.
What I find odd is how quickly the African honey bees inter-bred with the native wild bee populations, and it didn't take long for the native bees to show traits that not even the original parent strains had shown. In my experience of managing several 40K hives with a single queen in them, the difference between a Africanized hive and a normal hive is 9 of 10 bees will attack you from an Africanized hive as opposed to a normal hive where 1 of 10 will only "investigate" and then 1 of 20 will actually try to sting you.
In contrast, Africanized honey bees produce less honey and are over-active in a schizzophrenic way, where when disturbed they will actually survey upto 2 miles around their hive to aggressively attack anything that moves and will remain this way notably longer than non-Africanized populations. In reality, all bees that have stingers are the females and they die after stinging once because they have a barbed stinger that rips their intestines and poison gland out of their abdomen (except the queen, she is barb-less). Why have Africanized bees not simply died-off from their suicidal attacks then? They key is cross-breeding, where only a fraction of thier genetics remains after a 50/50 mating of the original strain gets reduced to verry low genetic footprint after successive mating with other bees. Also of note, because the queen mates only once are rarely more in her life, her collection of male reproductive matterial is stored for her life inside her and it's as though it is preserved, and with successive matings that queen might lay eggs that hatch either pure non-Africanized bees or native bees: there is her genetic footprint, and then there is the share of potential offspring that are fertilized with a pre-stored African contribution.
In my opinion, scientists realy are the ones to blame: they are introducing unnatural successive genetic statistic into a genome that wasn't aquired through natural selection. With all the corruption of Monsanto Corporation, and the corruption of prior US Army partnerships to USDA to enrich and cross-breed dangerous animals and bacteria and fungus for warfare, you simply can't trust the scientists to ever having any wholesome ethics: the scientists themselves should be given the same suspicion as would when approaching a bee hive you suspect has lost it's native queen and could be turning into African bees with a new queen.
In reality, there are higher-quality bees that produce more honey, not as destructive when agitated, have better social customs, and are more patient in their lifestyle. The average European Honey Bee lives anywhere from 2 to 4 months, but a Africanized bee lives less than 3 weeks. That alone is proof that the Africanized strain is destructive to itself if not just a bastard to it's surroundings. By far in yield and quality of honey, the greatest replacement to the Africanized bees, as well as to phase-out all Honey Bees due to the recent contamination, I would choose the Denmark Black Bee. Like the Denmark red cow, the Black Bee is endangered. I find that quite saddening how such a higher-quality animal is always the one on the bench.
"If all goes well, the new and improved insect will continue to pollinate our crops for years to come."
Wow, that's going to be one super busy bee.
But isn't that putting all our gets in one basket? I mean, maybe we want *two* of them just in case one dies?
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
Bee colony confirmed as first round pick in next years NHL draft by Chicago Blackhawks.
I for one welcome our new honey bee overlords.
The widely-quoted "90% of the world's crops depend on bees" is simply wrong.
The vast majority of the world's caloric intake comes from grains, legumes, and tubers, the vast majority of which require do not bee pollination.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_crop_plants_pollinated_by_bees
Hey, Monsanto effectively owns the US soy industry by patenting soy DNA; couldn't these bees' get DNA get patented, in turn making their breeding (even unintentional) a licensing violation?
mov ah, 4ch
int 21h
The next step is easy to guess, Monsanto will fund scientists so they engineer genetically modified humans that are resistant to Monsanto corruption awareness.
Super Bee
No sig? Sigh...
I for one welcome our new Super Bee overlords!
Insert Generic Sig Here:
All hail king stingy.
Why not just stop killing the bees we have?
http://wemustknow.net/2010/12/wikileaks-reveals-to-world-that-epa-allowed-the-killing-of-honey-bees/
Especially if they pay us in sweet sweet honey!
It's AFAIK almost certainly a particular pesticide called [clothianidin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clothianidin#Environmental_impact) \(and probably several other chemically similar [neonicotinoid](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neonicotinoid) pesticides like [imidacloprid](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imidacloprid)\).
http://www.google.com/search?q=clothianidin+bee
In the USA with its even-more-than-usually-corporate-controlled news sources and government agencies, the especially bee-damaging effects of these pesticides is less well-known or discussed.
Many reasons for the bee decline.
One huge factor is our industrialized approach to both pollination and production of honey.
1. Hives are constantly moved from place to place to pollinate different crops in different seasons. Trucking them across the country causes undue stress.
2. Bees are fed sugar water that has no nutritional content, causing a boost in numbers but leading to unhealthy broods.
3. Hives are designed to be stacked and transported, not for the wellbeeing of the bees. In nature they have unique structures which have been developed through the evolutionary ages. I believe a natural (honey) beehive is larger at the top than at the bottom. It allows them to overwinter better as it captures heat in the upper portion.
4. The combs that people design and insert into the hive and which form the foundations of the combs that the bee's will build are of a uniform size and shape. Bees naturally have varying sizes... the chambers which house larvae are smaller which allow the workers to actually hear (or somehow sense) when they become infested with mites. They can then tear it open and throw the larvae and mites out of the hive.
5. Breeding. Just like any other domesticated animal, many bees are no longer suitable to thrive in the wild. I read about some Russian bees that can take a Russian winter and are non aggressive compared to the african bees, which by the way are the ancestors of our domesticated bees.
6. Pet honeybadgers.
http://inhabitat.com/its-official-cell-phones-are-killing-bees/
And I, for one, welcome our new honeybee overlords.
Probably for the same reason we can't figure out what is causing the rise in Autism: $$$
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Yea but if we don't figure out Autism, it sucks, but only for the Autistic.
If we don't figure out this, millions of people may die from lack of crops. So it sucks for everyone.
This is a Great idea! That is, until the new super bees decide humans taste better than pollen and nectar.
...they're huge and they're sting crazy. Your firearms are useless against them.
As someone who is allergic to bees, I'd greatly appreciate it if they could also remove the ability of these bees to sting, or perhaps remove the venom/poison. Then I wouldn't care if they made the things indestructible and faster than a cheetah.
Yes, but most of them are poor people. Look how much everyone cared when Goldman Sachs speculation on food futures caused them to starve and see how much they'll care when lack of bees makes the same demographic starve for another reason. Turns out, you don't get to control a lot of capital as a result of empathy or compassion (well, except by exploiting them in the non-sociopath segment of the population).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Only the '80s version had loud guitars and were called Stryper. They pollinated with Bibles, which might have helped churches but didn't do much for crops....
I for one welcome our new super honey bee overlords
... what superpowers will I get?
http://www.fastcompany.com/1766379/can-breeding-a-better-honey-bee-save-us-from-the-food-crisis
You're welcome. ;)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Just feed some bee colonies with straight Roundup and house them in giant cell phones. The survivors will be Super Bees for sure.
Everything and its opposite is true. Get used to it.
Hmm. Maybe if you stop spraying all that shit on out food we (and the bees) wouldn't be in such a mess.
bees pollinate 90% of the world’s food crops
Bullshit. The most important staple crops like rice and wheat are wind pollinated, at most 30% of world food output depends on bees (the highest figure I could find, the lowest was 6%)
The main effect that losing bees would have is that a lot of fruits, such as apples, would die out.
If you're that paranoid that every article about biological research makes you worry about "I am legend" scenarios or clouds of murderous insects, I don't know what you're doing typing on a computer. Skynet and the matrix people! What could possibly go wrong?!?
Yes what could go wrong if you create a new bee strain that out competes all natural bees, becomes a monoculture and then becomes susceptible to a newly evolved disease that it has no resistance to?
NEWS FLASH!
Transgenic bees found able to crossbreed with dragonflies!
The resulting insects have five to six inch wingspans, stingers able to pierce Kevlar and really nasty dispositions.
Scientists have dubbed them "dragonbees" and are said to be feverishly at work on a transgenic predator to combat the problem.
More at 6:00PM
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
Scientists have never, in the history of mankind, ever contributed anything in terms of progress other than to synthesize and industrialize a solution derived from their allopathic lineage. When you refer to "medicine", you are ignoring the fact that your modern "medicine" has nothing to do with remedy and more to tamper the metabolic and neurologic balances rather than heal the source of the problem: take for instance Aspirin is derived from the bark of a Willow Tree and completely non-harmful in it's natural dosage of soaking the bark into a hot tea, and how the only thing that scientists have contributed is their kind of synthetic Aspirin that kills your liver. The internet likewise is nothing more than an abridged mail route of Post letters-close and letters-open, computers have historically been the mathematicians that resolved personal accounting in contrast to the rate of taxation (criminals^ahhem government demands money and normal people try to remove the threats using efficient calculations in terms of measured productivity and cost of living). You should know that in-between bee keeping I was a cattle rancher and horticultural plantation owner, so your caustic notion to avoid all "domestic" animals and such is nothing more than your political ranting in favor of non-productive "government" regulations. Synthetic fibers are the cause of much skin allergies, as opposed to natural hemp, flying is something birds have done without government intervention for untold years perhaps even older than God made the Earth, and then your suggestion that I should not drive my cattle is proof enough that you have neglected to read your State legislature concerning the definition of "driving" to be a regulation of the appearance of Commerce of compensation and profit and hire for any movements of unpaid property down Federal and private roads (it's not lawful to sell unpaid property from the street, per regulation).
Quite a broad brush to paint everyone you have there, if you don't trust scientists or do not like things that are unnatural then may I suggest that you stop,using any medicine, using the Internet and computers in general, eating any domesticated animal(they are all selectively bred after all), using synthetic fibers or plastic, flying , driving..........
Scientists and government are to explicitly blame for non-native INVASIVE species spreading across the continent: I grow natural organic heirloom tomato TREES, they are 5 years old and each 20-feet tall and bare 50lbs of tomatoes 4 times per year, and the reason I always get half of them these ugly mis-formed shit-tasting tomatoes is because government approved HYBRID tomatoes are planted by some idiots a mile away in their "topsy-turvy" that spread pollen from wind or bees. The same happens to organic soy farmers when some idiot plants GMO-soy from Monsanto, and if you actually read into the documentation then you will discover that there are entire Counties filled with organic soy farmers out in the mid-west where Monsanta was caught intentionally driving a truck through the farm roads and paths to use dispensers to inject their GMO'd soy pollen into surrounding organic soy crops and then Monsanto would hire investigators to file lawsuits that farmers planted illegally-obtained soy when it was EVIDENCE MANUFACTURING and THEFT by Monsantoa. Lots of luck trying to protect these bastards, pal. The difference between a RESEARCHER that you describe as opposed to a farmer, is a RESEARCHER has no experience running a farm to make a living because they are too busy studying to invent ways to make the world more dependent on their research, while the poor farmer has to be his own meterologist and soil tactician to know when is good to plant or lay fallow and how to get most yield and quality while balancing his budget and puting his kids through their studies and lifestyle. A researcher is in worse shape because their debt is foreign, while a farmer is most-likely a religious man that wouldn't dare demand payment for k
I, for one, welcome our new super bee overlords
Not with a bang but a BZZZZZZZ.
Let's face it we as primates are in a symbiotic relationship with our food crops and well the bees too. We have evolved together in a symbiotic triangle. To the point that to insure future generation of species of plants that ensure life as we know it; we will go to almost godlike lengths to preserve the bees that insure the next generation of flowering food plants. This means that we cant get along without them;but if we did not pollute the environment,and put bees in numbers to insure cross-infections of hives the plants would get along fine without us. Making them the top of the triangle.
Then I, I shall be the first to bow to our new bee overlords.
From TFA:
In order to save these extremely important insects, scientists are working on breeding a new super honey bee that they hope will be resistant to cold, disease, mites and pesticides.
Resistant to cold? But, but, but... anybody hear of Global Warming???
Maybe they should be looking into farming techniques that use less pesticides. It's well known that increased usage of pesticides (such as Bayers' brews) has been killing off bees and making the mites that prey on bees tougher. Idiots.
KILL THEM WITH FIRE O.O
I don't understand this fetishism with "natural selection" by salt of the earth types every time genetic engineering comes up. Natural selection is random, meaning you can equally get "desirable" traits as well as "undesirable" traits (from the point of view of humans). Genetic engineering increases the chances that you can produce "desirable" traits and with proper precautions, reduce the chances of undesirable traits. With Africanised bees, it is not even the fault of modern genetic engineering. It was the fault of "traditional" breeding of two bee strains. That's right. The same acceptable and ancient method used to breed modern cows,bananas, carrots etc. is also capable of creating Frankensteins. The fear of genetic engineering has been drummed into the public by certain Greenie groups with their own agenda. It is unwarranted. When you put safeties in place to prevent accidental cross breeding of GM animals/plants and wild animals/plants by making them infertile, you are accused of money grabbing and playing God. If you don't do it, then you are accused of endangering "natural" genetic populations.
I'm the one that you wanted. Hey yeah, I'm your super bees.
I for one welcome our new bee overlords ....
Didn't Frank Herbert write something about this?
most of the issues with honeybee susceptibility to mites, etc. comes from the desire to turn beehives into reproducible factories. much like antibiotic resistant bacteria, we are developing insecticide resistant mites. how about a return to more traditional beekeeping methods, which would result in jobs being created as more care is needed to manage the hives?
The honey bee is invasive it originated in Europe and has been spread around the world by man. I did a report on this in my environmental science class in college last year. Where I live we have natural bees that do more pollination than any small collection of honey bees in hives. SCCD or Sudden colony collapse disorder when the queen leave the nest for no apparent reason is not going to affect us at all. Maybe the American Indians couldn't grow corn before the European honey bee was introduced in america. There are plenty of healthy native bees out there doing the job. But I would lie about some garbage to get scientific funding too..... The whole Idea is insane.
When you start doing biological gene modification to the plants that bees go to pollinate, so that farmers will have to purchase seed, because the one they have is sterile, or genetically modified to be toxic to insects and bees, then this is the price we pay. In other words, get back to regular seeds that were in use before the modified ones were forced on the cultivators of flowers, grain, vegetables, fruits.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
welcome our super bee overlords!
welcome our new bee overlords.
Guys, many of you would say the same about a Rose Tree, but what none of you realize about Tomatoe bushes is that after 1 year their stem becomes woody.
All you need to do is use a juicer on sea kelp, save the juice for your own diluted beverages, and throw the pulp into the mulch that you used to grow the Tomato bush in; then use a pole to tie the apical stem of that future Tomato Tree onto and simply don't allow any lateral branches and fruiting flowers to happen. After 1st year you will have a oddball 5-foot tall Tomato Tree with ugly zig-zag pruning, but as long as you protect that primary apical stem and bud from damage then it will continue growing upwards.
While you prune later apical stems and buds, you can replant those in the ground, so in-effect you can ungraft/layer an acre of Tomato bushes into the ground just as you work your Tomato Tree to grow straight upwards. The Tomato Tree will never be able to support itself in the 1st year and maybe even the 2nd because it grows too fast and it's base trunk is simpyl not "woody" enough yet, and like a Rose Tree it simply takes time. Hybrid Tomato bushes can't realy be relied upon to be pruned because all in their lifestyle they over-produce fruits that simply over-weight the plant regardless of the orientation, whereas heirloom Tomato bushes grow at their own pace and capacity.
Just keep it pruned, or better yet after 3 years allow the Hornworms to do the pruning for you and they'll never be top-heavy.
When the same species of bees are localized and prevented from inter-breeding, then they "speciate" into divergent trees of genome. It usually takes untold years, where going back to the fossil record on general animals it could be either as early as a couple hundred years of hyber-breeding behavior as soon as they are mature and the parents are isolated from ever contributing any further to the genetic make-up. In the wild, this could be as early as a thousand years of regular competition, but for farmers this would take only a little longer than a bio-tech.
Denmark Black Bee might be just that in terms of difference to the Nordic Black Bee. Likewise, African honey bees are nearly physically the same as European honey bees in that they only have slightly different wing veins and are measureably smaller in average size only due to their quicker growth. The African honey bees don't have any winter period in which they sit in their hives to sustain for months on their honey reserves or die, whereas European honey bees must do just that in many of their climates throughout those regions, and that is the primary genome selection that drove these two genomes to speciate divergent from eachother; sure they are compatible for cross-breeding, but the Africanized are simply mis-placed and destructive in the wrong habitat but they don't know that other than live and die trying no matter what.
There is no tolerance here. Both of the European and African honey bees have social customs of replacing the queens of competing hives, and raping eachother, but the African and Africanized hone bees are simply the most aggressive short-lived tactical retards of the entire sub-species that their soul-less expansion is against their own nature and against all that is purposed for anti-social social insects. It's not getting any better, and there is no way to breed them back into a better lineage: and every fraction of their DNA into neighboring non-Africanized down to the last drop will always result in a hive that is destructive to it's own end. African honey bee genome is as though they are terminator genes.
It's as thouhg Loki put them there just to test the faith of bee keepers.
Yea, the execs are the one's doing it, but remember that much of the research work is always sub-managed by someone that is more in tune with their CEO and the disclosed goals while the others are compartmentalized to never see much of the motivation to persue their work.
Consider that USDA shared Plumb Island with US Army engineers and they worked together to experiment on animals and be the ones that first imported former NAZI scientists to continue enriching the US bio-warfare projects and the initial blame for Lime disease harmonized onto mites. Really bad, that even a compartmentalized project has full disclosure yet everyone just continues knowing full-well what they are doing and why. Yea sure, everyone is innocent until proven guilty, and I use a Katana to cut butter onto my toasted bread.
Any poison focused on one insect group is simply bad ethics, imo. Have you ever tried a Dial liquid soap in a squirt bottle? It knocks all winged insects out of the air in 5 to 10 seconds after use, and kills them within 90 seconds regardless of race. Whatever is in Dial liquid soap is a worse neuro toxin and killer. The way it works is flying insects inhale and exhale their lungs on every cycle they beat their wings, and so that means they have no choice but breathe as they fly: bam, they are gone.
Sure it kills everything, but you only want to kill the ones that are trying to actively fly at to sting you alone: you'ld only be killing the African and Africanized ones.
"scientists are working on breeding a new super honey bee that they hope will be resistant to cold, disease, mites and pesticides"
And what about all the reports of bees dying from cell phone radiation? Is that just another joke, or are bees dying from that as well? And if they are, what's the point of even making these super bees if they are gonna get fried by all our chatter?