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The Science and Politics Behind Colony Collapse Disorder; Is the Crisis Over?
iONiUM writes: An article at the Globe and Mail claims that there is no longer any Honeybee crises, and that the deaths of the Honeybees previously was a one-off, or possibly non-cyclical occurrence (caused by neonics or nature — the debate is still out). The data used is that from Stats Canada which claims "the number of honeybee colonies is at a record high [in Canada]." Globally, the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization says that "worldwide bee populations have rebounded to a record high." The story reports: "I have great news for honey lovers everywhere. The Canadian honeybee industry is thriving. Despite those headlines about mass die-offs and and killer pesticides, the number of honeybee colonies is at a record high. Last year, according to Statistics Canada, nearly 700,000 honeybee colonies produced $200-million worth of honey. Bee survival rates have rebounded even in Ontario, which was hard hit by unusually high winter die-offs."
I would have a hard time calling anything written by Margaret Wente 'an article'; she writes for clicks and shock value. We'd be better off calling it an editorial.
lol sure it is http://dailycaller.com/2015/07...
If you look at the hard data, this whole bee thing is overblown. The groups that said there was a bee problem said cell phones were the problem for the longest time, and lo and behold they were wrong (I swear they had something before that). Europe has put in a ban on the 'dangerous' neonicotinoids for the past couple years. There hasn't been any change in bee populations as a result of the ban. That is how you do a controlled experiment, and so far the data isn't looking like it is a problem (and there is a problem with us not using that pesticide). If you look at bee stocks, many bee farmers didn't see any problems. Some did, and there could be some problems there, but what isn't be told is how these bees are used and bred. Due to the queen hive structure, they are generally very genetically similar, this is a bad thing in general as it means the populations lacks robustness. Now consider that most of these farmers use queens from a central industrial bee farm, further limiting the genetic pool. This is not a recipe for success. Now, take this genetically crappy bee hive and now truck it all around the country to pollinate at different times of the year. Now, remove more honey and give them sugar water instead over the winter. Put this all together and there may be other reasons why there is a population problem...
The government says the crisis worsens (http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/2015/150513.htm) ... is written by Syngenta ...
And there is more numbers http://ecowatch.com/2015/05/14/honeybee-population-plummets/
While at least the second quoted article claiming all is well
And the Canada link is only listing colonies, but not if they are actually honey producers (that includes sick colonies are barely alive colonies too). Just because they increase the number of hives doesn't mean the number of active bees is larger. To the contrary it can mean that they try desperately to bring the population up by seeding more hives.
The link represented as a UN FAO article is by syngenta. Pesticide manufacturer. just saying..l
My cousin and her C/L partner run a bee "farm" here in Ontario, over the last 4 years they lost 60% of their hives. This year they had a massive rebound in the numbers of bees, and have been hive splitting like crazy. In nearly all the hives that were wiped out it was either parasites, fungus, or a combination of the two. Their theory? Honey Bee monoculture, and that's a serious problem.
Om, nomnomnom...
I had the same reaction as epine: "Margaret Wente, really? People still pay attention to her"?
If you did go to the Stats Can link that Wente provided, you should have noticed that the link only shows stats for the years 2010 to 2014, a very short period of time. Now, Statistics Canada is a very good, reputable government agency, so I didn't dismiss their stats out of hand, but still... What was going on?
Do as I did and as iONiUM should have done before posting this article here: Click on the Add/Remove Data tab, right next to the default-selected Data Table tab. You can change the range of years reported. At Step 3 - select the time frame I selected a range from 1984 to 2014. Lo and behold!: the bee population nowadays is less than half of what it was in the mid--eighties - from 20,810 in 1984 to 8,777 in 2014, the year of Wente's purported rebound...
Frackin' info-cherry-picking Margaret Wente! She's one of the reasons I stopped reading the Globe and Mail.
Not sure monoculture is the problem since honeybees weren't the only bees collapsing.
Wild bees, bumble bees, and non-social bees have also been collapsing.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Actually You are twice an idiot. Somebody who complains about bad environmental information when you have that as sig
About that "CO2 is good for plants" theory: NOPE. [bit.ly]
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...
[1] Satellite observations reveal a greening of the globe over recent decades. The role in this greening of the “CO2 fertilization” effect—the enhancement of photosynthesis due to rising CO2 levels—is yet to be established. The direct CO2 effect on vegetation should be most clearly expressed in warm, arid environments where water is the dominant limit to vegetation growth. Using gas exchange theory, we predict that the 14% increase in atmospheric CO2 (1982–2010) led to a 5 to 10% increase in green foliage cover in warm, arid environments. Satellite observations, analyzed to remove the effect of variations in precipitation, show that cover across these environments has increased by 11%. Our results confirm that the anticipated CO2 fertilization effect is occurring alongside ongoing anthropogenic perturbations to the carbon cycle and that the fertilization effect is now a significant land surface process.
Seriously you aren't just a propagandist you're a bad one.