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More Than 40% of US Honeybee Colonies Died In a 12-Month Period Ending In April

Posted by samzenpus on from the won't-somebody-please-think-of-the-flowers? dept.

walterbyrd writes: The Agriculture Department released its annual honeybee survey Wednesday and it doesn't look good. More than 40% of U.S. honeybee colonies died in a 12-month period ending in April. While the precise cause of the honeybee crisis is unknown, scientists generally blame a combination of factors, including poor diets and stress. Some bees die from infestations of the Varroa mite, a bloodsucking parasite that weakens bees and introduces diseases to the hive. Environmental groups also point to a class of pesticides known as neonicotinoids. In April, the Environmental Protection Agency said it would stop approving new outdoor uses for those types of chemicals until more studies on bee health are conducted.

15 of 220 comments (clear)

  1. It's not limited to the US by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Informative

    Same problem in Europe.

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    1. Re:It's not limited to the US by pastafazou · · Score: 4, Informative

      Complete bullshit is right! How is it that some regions that use neonics are not suffering any bee colony deaths at all? Australia is one of the heaviest users of neonics, yet their bee colonies are quite healthy. Canada's prairies also use neonics, yet their bees are doing absolutely fine. Neonics were in use for 15 years before these bee colony deaths began to appear. Certainly not very much correlation at all between usage of neonics and bee deaths. It's quite likely that the real culprit is the varroa mite, and the bee viruses it carries. The mite has become a serious problem in both the US and Europe, and the spread of the mite correlates much better with the spread of CCD.

    2. Re:It's not limited to the US by caseih · · Score: 4, Informative

      In Australia and western Canada, neonic-coated seads are typically placed in the ground via a gravity-fed metering system (box drill), or via an air drill that blows the seed into the ground behind shanks that open the soil. So dust particles laden with neonics get buried in the soil where bees won't be exposed directly to them. In the midwest US and eastern Canada, where the crops are predominantly things like soybeans or corn, they use vacuum planters which suck the seeds from storage one at time and drop them into the ground. Unfortunately the vacuum planters blow a lot of dust from the seeds into the air. So neonic-laden particles get blown everywhere and we know they affect bees and any other insect. So it could very well be that widespread use of vacuum planters is a part of the problem. Unfortunately air drills don't work very well for row crops that do best with rows of singulated seeds.

      The Alberta Bee Keepers Commission refuses to back any attempt to completely ban neonic use in Canada as it would decimate their industry. Fewer crops means fewer bees are required by farmers.

      The reason neonics are used is that when the plant is young, the neonics are taken up through the plant and make the plant toxic to pests that would eat the little leaves, killing the plant. On one of my dry bean fields last year was seeded without neonic seed treatment, and we did see some yield reduction from pests eating the plants at an early stage, including from works eating the shoots underground. If there's a chance neonics can be used safely, then for sure they are a huge benefit.

      There is the other issue of neonics present in the pollen, leading to bees getting a bit of a buzz. It's not clear to me how much neonic there is in the flower at that late stage of the plant's growth, or what the consequences of that are. Bees around here are heavily used to pollinate hybrid canola, all of which was treated with neonics. So it's really hard to say what the consequences are.

      It's true we can control the use of pesticides, and we should and do. This doesn't have to mean an outright ban. A complete ban would mean the return to more toxic insecticides being sprayed at more regular intervals on a crop, which none of us wants.

    3. Re: It's not limited to the US by Anguirel · · Score: 3, Informative

      Bee Keepers don't need to regulate temperature in any way. The bees do that for themselves (in the wild as well as in keeper's hives). They do need enough honey to make it through the winter, though.

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  2. Re:What is normal and how many were born? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Well, Mr Basic Reading Comprehension Failure, without even needing to read the article, the summary actually says colonies not bees.

  3. Re:What is normal and how many were born? by JSC · · Score: 4, Informative

    Reading the article reveals this... "In an annual survey released on Wednesday by the Bee Informed Partnership, a consortium of universities and research laboratories, about 5,000 beekeepers reported losing 42.1 percent of their colonies in the 12-month period that ended in April. That is well above the 34.2 percent loss reported for the same period in 2013 and 2014, and it is the second-highest loss recorded since year-round surveys began in 2010."

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  4. Paywalls? You amateurs by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Informative

    Slashdot must be getting kickbacks from the NYT because all the story links go to their paywall now. But a nerd would go right to the source because the NYT is a fat fucking waste of time any more. They're the next CNN or Faux News, they just sensationalize other people's news. Too bad this ain't News for Nerds any more.

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  5. Re: What is normal and how many were born? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I am a beekeeper. 30% of feral bee colonies do not survive naturally and is also the number I try to maintain to keep genetic diversity. With that said other beekeepers and myself do not report this as loss to the DOA and count this as the price of doing business. I am right in line with this number with 10% loss on top of what I dispatched.

  6. Re:What is normal and how many were born? by silentcoder · · Score: 3, Informative

    The normal lifespan of a bee colony is measured in decades or in rare cases even centuries.

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  7. Re:Holy Fuck by Carewolf · · Score: 5, Informative

    Take a bee colony and stick them in a deep freeze and see how many survive. In case anyone missed it, the U.S. and Europe experienced record cold this winter. How fucking stupid do you have to be to not put 2 and 2 together?

    Europe had an exceptionally warm and mild winter this year.

  8. Re:Indeed. by pastafazou · · Score: 3, Informative

    Actually, there's no carpet bombing of neonics, that's not how they're applied.

  9. Re:Take A Bow For Your Accomplishments by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Thank you Monsanto, DuPont, etc etc...

    You are right to thank them. Over the years they have helped to dramatically increase crop yields to keep the price of food down. The left is constantly yammering on about the plight of the poor out of one side of their mouth and then demonizing the people who make food affordable out of the other. Monsanto has probably done more to help the poor than all the give away programs combined.

  10. Re:Holy Fuck by gnaac · · Score: 4, Informative

    Not al of the US had record cold this winter either. Yes, the North East portions had a lot of cold and snow, but in the Pacific NW there was an exceptionally mild aka warm) winter with very little snow. Snowpack in the mountains is 25% of where they normally are this time of year. Lowest snowpack on record according to this article: http://www.wunderground.com/ne...

  11. Groups a bit slower than the others. by Trax3001BBS · · Score: 4, Informative

    Post to Submission that originally linked to paywall

    2009
    Scientists Isolate and Treat Parasite Causing Decline in Honey Bee Population
    http://science.slashdot.org/st...

    2010
    Mystery of the Dying Bees Solved
      "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" Note: (N. ceranae = Parasite)
      http://science.slashdot.org/st...

      2012
      Studies Link Pesticides To Bee Colony Collapse Disorder
      http://science.slashdot.org/st...

    2015
    It's the pesticides!

  12. Re:What is normal and how many were born? by vikingpower · · Score: 5, Informative
    Son of a former beekeeper speaking here.

    In summer, a typical worker bee lives for about 6 weeks. 8 weeks, maybe 10, if she has one of the rare posts of guardians at the bee colony's entry, or is one of the even fewer bees that feed the queen. Bees literally work themselves to death. The replenishment rate is, during summer, 100%; this is taken care of by the queen. A typical bee colony has between 10,000 and 40,000 bees in high summer, then goes into winter with about 1,000 bees, clumped around the queen to keep her warm, and comes out of winter with 400 to 600 bees. We are talking about apis mellifera carnica here, the so-called Italian bee, which is the variety most commonly used by beekeepers.

    An entire colony dying in spring or early summer is, normally, an extremely rare event, and indicates either an epidemy, or severe poisoning. Varroa mites are a known cause, but are a largely contained phenomenon now, at least in professional bee-keeping circles. What remains, is ... poisoning. Neonicotinoids or something else.

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