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."

Comments

Can't be true

[Cytotoxic]

The New York Times told me that a A Sharp Spike in Honeybee Deaths Deepens a Worrisome Trend only two months ago.

So we have the Globe and Mail along with the UN and Stats Canada up against the NYT and the "Bee Informed Partnership". Meaning the old "consider the source" adage isn't really up to the challenge....

Re:Can't be true

[epine]

No, you have Margaret Wente of the Globe and Mail, so I think consider the source is alive and well.

She's the Alfred E. Neuman of why the bees collapsed in the first place. What, me worry?

In this very article, she's right up there with Ronald Reagan saying "Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do."

Do trees pollute the atmosphere?

In hot weather, trees release volatile organic hydrocarbons including terpenes and isoprenes - two molecules linked to photochemical smog. In very hot weather, the production of these begins to accelerate.

True, but it's all part of a long-term biological equilibrium that didn't seem horrible until after industrial-scale human pollution was added to the mix as a driving factor. I don't recall Cicero damning the trees.

Here's Wente:

The biggest threats to bees appear to be natural pathogens and varroa mites.

Once again, natural pathogens which the bees have presumably been contending with for thousands of years. I also don't recall Cicero orating on missing bees, or Shelley's ode to a collapsed colony.

If there was a forcing factor, it was probably the dang pesticide, which after all was explicitly designed to kill insects, selectively if possible, but that might be easier said that done.

Her entire piece is written in distractor mode, touching on who is cranky with whom laced with speculation about nefarious or misguided agendas, while she can't even bother herself to distinguish (possible) industrial forcing terms from established biological baselines.

Yes, indeed, consider the source.

Re:Can't be true

[Bongo]

Kinda, it sounds like the "fragility" issue. Exports aren't bad—you get more global diversity if you can exchange globally. We can't all grow coconuts even if coconut oil is really good food. The problem is the "efficiency" idea that each place should only do one thing, and then rely on that alone. That's kinda what people are trying to figure out when they say "local". It isn't about local, it is about more diverse systems. Same for any product. When Zambia decided to rely on copper, well what happens when copper prices plunge. It is just the "too big to fail" problem. Globally, we actually have some help in this in that, if one nation's food supply were to fail, it could buy food from elsewhere, so that is diversity and counters the too big to fail problem. It isn't about being local, it is about diverse systems which can adapt to change. Of course, big chem loves to sell to big customers and do big business with monocultures. But that big top down central planned one big scheme thinking is what has to go. That's what people are kinda trying to say when they say "local". What we need, can still be big, just more diverse, less of the "efficiency" thinking, and more of the diverse, integrating thinking, anti-fragility.

Re:Can't be true

[bluefoxlucid]

Not necessarily.

We believe now there's a new parasitic fly evolved to prey on honeybees. Honeybees are well-studied; it's unlikely we'd have missed this parasite in the past 5000 years, so it must be relatively new. The parasite is a tiny fly which injects eggs into the back of the bee's neck (roughly), which hatch into 8-12 new parasites. The bees typically fly toward light when infested; however, if one fails to leave the hive in this way, you have a dozen new parasites infecting a dozen bees and, should more than one of those bees stay in the hive, it propagates out at an alarming rate: the damn things reproduce like fruit flies, so in a few short week they infest the entire hive, and all the bees leave and die--which is the pattern behavior of CCD.

The bees that don't die have been swapping genetics around every time their queens die. Suddenly, with 60% of all bees gone, there's a lot of nectar. They fill up their hives and start packing nectar into brood comb; thus they start swarming, sometimes 3-5 swarms or more in the beginning of the year. That means 3-5 new queens per hive, each mating with 8-15 drones from multiple other hives. These are the bees that didn't die.

They trade genetics like crazy. Such extreme selection pressure would lead to rapidly filling queens with genetics to resist the new parasite. With multiple mating, the queen could produce 2/3 of her workers fatally susceptible to parasites, and 1/3 not. If the hive weakens, they'll decide they don't like the queen, kill her, and raise a new one--possibly from one of the 1/3 of eggs immune to parasites, meaning stronger genetics. The queen makes drones as clones of herself, so such a new queen would both produce more immune bees (and likely not get killed by a colony angry at its poor survival rates) and spread such stronger genetics all over the place.

Give it time and they'll proliferate their resistance. They always do. It's really fucking hard to extinct honeybees; you have to get them *all* in one pass.

Evolution in progress

[wvmarle]

How about: certain strains of bees happen to have natural resistance against the neonicotines.

The colonies that lacked this mutation have by now all died off (the exposure is so high that it takes just a few years for this to happen), leaving only those colonies with resistance, and those are now of course expanding rapidly: in part because there is more room, in part because people are helping them grow faster as there is a commercial need for it.

Chaos Theory

[Tokolosh]

Chaos theory and nonlinear systems should be mandatory in high school, together with statistics. Seriously.

(Did you know that global warming has taken over from smoking as the leading cause of statistics in America?}

Crown and Mail Lands Major Ad Campaign

[Required Snark]

In a first for a major Canadian urban newspaper, Monsanto plans to spend over $400,000 (US) over the next year in an image building campaign at the Globe and Mail. Monsanto usually applies it's promotional spending in more specialized media outlets, and when it does outreach outside the agricultural sector it sponsors programming at non-profits like PBS.

Monsanto has a low profile among the general public, because very little of it's business is visible at the mass market consumer level. Although other B2B vendors, such as BASF, have tried to extend their brand awareness using national broadcast media, it is very unusual to see this level of activity in print advertising.

In off the record remarks by a person not authorized to talk to the press, the possibility was raised that this would not be the last media purchase of this kind. In part, it was stated that "If Monsanto can find the right kind of media partnerships, they would very much like to extend their brand awareness in a major US market, like New York, Los Angeles, or Texas." The key, according to the source, was not just selecting a major market, but "building long term relationships with print media organizations that can help Monsanto bring it's message to a wider audience."

Re:The crisis was always over

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah sure. That's why there are no more wild honey bees in europe and the organic honeybee producers had lots of trouble recovering this winter. On top of the mites it was an unuasual mild winter with early up bees and not enough pollen to collect. There was a funny article cited on a speech last year which claimed that the wild population has finally stabilized and therefore all problems are over. Zero is a pretty stable population. The best you can get from a mathematicians point of view. If you don't catch a wild swarm of honeybees in europe it is estimated to be killed by mites in a few months as it needs to be treated.

Look who paid for the cited article and don't dip to deep into the health benefits of honey. Btw any saturated fluid helps with bee, wasps and moscito stings: Wet salt does the same. Nothing magic with honey.

No rebound here.

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in Ontario and own lands which are full of wild and domestic fruit trees, vines and canes all if which symbiotically support and rely upon wild bee populations. I can assure you that they have NOT rebounded here at ALL. This year in fact is the worst so far with the vast majority of everything remaining unpollenated and no bees, wasps or hornets to be found anywhere. Ten years ago my outbuildings had many mud and paper wasp nests every single year, it has been at least three years since I have seen even a single one.

You might label what I am saying as being purely anectodtal and dismiss it, I'm sure that Monsanto and their cronies & apologists will. On the other hand using StatsCan sales figures to measure the health and vitality of bee populations nationwide is something that I'm going to just go ahead and call moronic. What's next? A slow cycle of ice cream sales and they will claim the planet is cooling down?