Bee die off threatens 2008 US Ag disaster

billg

Maybe, the bees know something we don't...

News dated Feb 25, 2008:

billg

List of crops pollinated by bees
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Second Attention

canis_lupus

There's two kinds of AG disasters, one that hurts the agricultural economy and one that one that hurts the people who depend on the food. Almond trees still produce almonds with less bees pollenating the blossoms, the trees just produce less.

It's a mild distinction -- if the corn or wheat crops were threatened with disaster it would be a different story. It's strange, as a business owner I find myself not caring about the almond crop, or the water-intensive crops grown in the ASW that never should have been used for farming anyway (like corn being grown in the rain shadow of the Rockies in CO).

Tough nuts.

Further, the bee problem doesn't affect local hives nearly as much as it does the big apiaries that truck bees to the crops -- "chasing the bloom". On the other hand, it's hard to find feral honey bees anymore as the wild colonies have all been decimated.

smallpoxgirl · Moderator Joined: Nov 08, 2004 Posts: 5707

Yeah. Clearly we're not going to starve to death from lack of almonds. OTOH, bees are a very cool thing and it's pretty worrisome that they're dying off. Even more so in that we have only guesses at what's causing it and no plan to fix it. Crying or Very sad

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jupiters_release · Intermediate Crude Joined: Oct 10, 2005 Posts: 748

60 minutes reported last year on a beekeeper, David Hackenberg, whose bee colonies collapsed. They updated this week saying he had another die-off this year of over half his bees.

link

RIP

Lore

Of course the point here is that we're just not talking about almond trees. A vast proportion of the abundant food we eat and some of what we wear are supported by the agro-bee business. A loss of this pollination along with drought, floods, pollution and just plain extreme weather can all of a sudden reach a crisis state no one was prepared for.

I've always said, that it's the thing you least suspect that always gets you.
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FoxV

The_Toecutter · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Jun 18, 2005 Posts: 1736

Certain types of flies can be used to pollinate crops as well. Possible short-term solution?

Probably not...

"The hungry sheep look up and are not fed... But swollen with wind and the rank mist they draw. Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread." ~Milton
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TheDude

There are farms in China where they pollinate by hand. Not that this is a scalable solution.
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Fiddlerdave · Heavy Crude Joined: Mar 18, 2007 Posts: 273

anagami

what we need is more bats? ...we're so doomed.
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catbox

Thanks for the pollination list link!

cb
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manu · Intermediate Crude Joined: Jul 26, 2006 Posts: 752

The American dream is fast turning into the American nightmare. The
karma is catching up.

DomusAlbion

This problem is with the European honey bee. There are various other bees that pollinate and are not experiencing any problems.

We've got a colony of wild honey bees somewhere nearby but I'm planning to put a small hive in our orchard. However, I'm thinking of using what's called a mason bee. Much less likely to sting than the honey bee.
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