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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."
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....
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.
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.
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...
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?}
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
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.
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."
Why is Snark Required?
The link represented as a UN FAO article is by syngenta. Pesticide manufacturer. just saying..l
Riiiiight... me and the anyone else that has ever had to grow anything. We're all stupid.
First, maintaining non-pest insect predators for every possible pest species is fucking difficult and very expensive.
Second, you do realize that insects will eat fucking anything right? I mean, are you claiming that garlic plants never get eaten by insects? Its fucking garlic. What about Peppers? The problem I was having was WITH pepper plants. And do you know where the insects were eating the peppers? From below. Their roots. I had insects eating the roots of my pepper plants.
To open your comment to me with "you're a moron" and then your solutions are this crap? Whatever, bro. You're clearly having anger issues and think misdirecting that at me is going to relieve some stress or something. Dumb comment on your part. But pretty typical for the internet.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Here is Germany 1992 to 2012, note German has suffered colony collapse disorder, but banned the Neonicotinoid pesticide in 2008 after it killed a lot of bees in an accident (which you can see in the numbers, as the sharp drop in the following years census).
1,170,000 1122000 1087000 1048600 1029200 953000 918100 900150 903230 951230 931540 968920 977885 985115 995425 954920 736589 737751 724341 733,952
Italy suffered colony collapse, so do the figures reflect it? :
1314000 1200000 1100000 1000000 1000000 1000000 1000000 900000 900000 900000 900000 900000 900000 950000 930000 940000 500000 500000 500000 500000
Yes, definitely.
Canada, mentioned in the article:
501259 502656 501250 520982 509648 519988 563614 588824 599863 602328 588485 563330 597890 615541 628401 589254 570070 592120 617264 637920
No colony collapse disorder, but then a search for papers suggests that CANADA DIDN"T HAVE A PROBLEM with CCD so I don't think its representative of the cause of it.
http://www.organicagcentre.ca/DOCs/Colony_collapse_bees.pdf
"In Canada, where winter losses are commonly problematic, *NO* instances of CCD have been confirmed, at least so far. " (paper up to 2007)
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.
If honey bees are thriving, then why is honey still so expensive?
Even if honey bees are now thriving, which may or may not be the case, honey tends to be harvested in batches that follow the year; so if there are plenty of honey bees this year, we wouldn't expect to see a lot of honey until near the end of the year. On top of that, producers and resellers have a profound interest in keeping the price high for as long as possible; which is why prices go up a lot faster than they come down.
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?
World honey prices, like world diamond prices, are kept artificially high by a South African monopoly. For diamonds, the monopoly company is called de Beers. For honey, the monopoly company is called de Bees.
Tip the veal, try the waitress . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
According to a Swiss urban beekeeper that was just recently on TV, her bee colonies -many dozens, settled on rooftops across the city- are struggling far less than the ones in the countryside.
She mentioned it's probably because of pesticides and agricultural monoculture in the countryside vs. urban plant diversity and little pesticides and it being ~2 degrees celsius warmer in the city.
The Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research also reported one month earlier that at least the diversity of bees is much better in cities.
I wonder if urban bees elsewhere also are doing much better than bees in the countryside (maybe actually: near agriculture in the same region)?
Source: The TV report in question is "Stadtbienen: Wie der Honig auf den Balkon kommt". Translated, "Urban bees: How honey comes to balconies". You can watch it online, but even with subtitles it will be german.
In a very rural area in a very Red, rectangular US state amidst fields of wheat, soybeans, and aquifer-draining corn... it is a rarity to see an actual bee, as it has been for decades.
My sister is a amateur beekeeper.
All 5 of her hives died last winter. Yes, it was a tough winter, but never before did every hive die. Usually less than half would die.
Something is still wrong.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
Environmental disturbances that rearrange the deck chairs and push evolution forward are as much a part of the "circle of life" as anything else. Doesn't matter if it's a natural cause or unnatural cause.
That's just the brutal reality out there in nature.
It's nothing like your cubicle or your sub/urban cage.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The REAL issue is how populations of non-cultivated bees are doing. Bumblebees and all the other sorts of bees that we don't use to commercially produce honey or pollinate farms are also important, even if no human is directly making a dollar from the bees' work.
That there is the real issue alright. And it actually supports your statement that the rebound here is most likely due to the efforts of keepers to keep hives afloat.
Wild bees, bumble bees, etc, even just pollinators in general (including non-bees) are all crashing too, right along side the honeybees kept by humans. They talk about how the honey bees matter because they pollinate a very significant portion of our agriculture. The flip side is that the wild pollinators do the rest of the job (as well as pollinating nature in general, not just human crops), and with them crashing too, it becomes even more important to find the cause and a solution.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
They'd be smart to reduce prices sooner unless they want people getting used to the taste of "honey sauce: 99% HFCS, flavored with real honey!"
Clearly, that's not what I said.
Random data point == random data point
not
Random data point == confirmation of "there's no problem" stance
Try for comprehension next time. You'd be amazed what you can learn if you actually, you know, understand what you read.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I hadn't realized how tasteless commercial honey had become until I sampled some at the local farmers' market. Surprise! It tasted like something! I don't think HFCS is going to taste any worse than what's in the aisles right now.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes