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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
Have they figured out exactly why bee population is dwindling? It seems like they are just fixing the symptoms instead of the actual problem.
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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
I'm hoping they aren't stingy with the modifications.
Hone your puns, folks. Fi hive.
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.
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.
This is the last I read about it:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101007183018.htm
No reason they can't get rid of the stinger
Then the bears (etc) will eat them all and we'll have no wild population left. Probably not a good idea, long term.
For safetys sake, I advise experimenting by killing all the mosquitos first, then once you know what made mosquitos extinct, try not doing that to the bees.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
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.
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
That's not how the New World Order works, citizen 1327877: get stung by engineered bee and Monsanto sues your ass for having their patented bee DNA stuck in your skin
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.
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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.
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