Honeybees may be wiped out in 10 years

[ms]

 
   Honeybees may be wiped out in 10 years

Jasper Copping
London Telegraph
Sunday January 20, 2008

Honeybees will die out in Britain within a decade as virulent diseases and parasites spread through the nation's hives, experts have warned.

Whole colonies of bees are already being wiped out, with current methods of pest control unable to stop the problem.

The British Beekeepers Association (BBKA) said that if the crisis continued, honeybees would disappear completely from Britain by 2018, causing "calamitous" economic and environmental problems.

It called on the Government to restart shelved research programmes and to fund new ones to try to save the insects.

(Article continues below)


Tim Lovett, the association's president, said: "The situation has become insupportable and the Government is unwilling to take steps to avoid disaster.

"We're increasingly unable to cope with threats as they arise. No bees means a huge cost to agriculture, without touching on the ecological and environmental issues. We're facing calamitous results."

Last year, more than 11 per cent of all beehives inspected were wiped out, although losses were higher in some areas.

In London, about 4,000 hives - two-thirds of the bee colonies in the capital - were estimated to have died over last winter. Of the eight colonies inspected so far this year, all have been wiped out.

Full article here.
 

[tn_junk]

Will surprise me if it takes that long for them to die out over here in the US.

alan

[magooch]

It's the end of the world.  First Algore warming and now the bee's. 

[rex6666]

Yea Al needs to be on this big time, probably getting to warm for bees
PLANT MORE FLOWERS!

[Graybeard]

I really don't think it's gonna be the big deal most seem to believe it will. Critters come and go on this earth and always have. So far the extinction of none has led to major problems and to me at least it's doubtful this one will either. If honeybees go something else will step in to fill the nitch left by its passing.

I raise blueberries and honeybees are not even considered to be a particularly effective pollinator of them. A very small honeybee look alike that as a boy I knew as a "sweat bee" and the huge bumble bees do most of my pollination and do it quite well. I've not noticed anything else hurting around here for lack of pollination either even tho I seldom see honeybees flying around them. Something is still doing a fine job of pollinating all the flowers and the fruit trees and berry bushes seem to do fine.

[rex6666]

Graybeard has hit the nail on the head. Since the beginning of time animals have
come and gone, some had to move over for others. It seems to be the way things work.
i feel sorry for the bee, but it has had a good run. maybe the honey bee just could not adapt.
I still say that little owl that could only nest in one tree would find a new nesting site if
it had too, and that little minnow would find another part of the river to swim in.
Comes a time when ALL things must change or go away.

[Chilachuck]

Hive die offs have happened before and will happen again.

It's like the snowshoe hare. Cycles. Except the bee population cycles take a longer time.

[beemanbeme]

In a worst case scenario of no honeybees, the impact in the east would not be felt to the extent that it would be in the west because of the much smaller fields and diverse flora and fauna altho large orchards and row crop operators would still suffer. The real "food basket" of America is not located in the east, however. The real problems would be in the west were vast fields of single types of crops are grown with no other source of nourishment available between bloomings of the principle crops.  The impact of a total loss of bees on the Food industry and the dietary habits of America and the world would be incalculable. 
As with most things of late, people seem to feel they must get shrill in order to be heard, the fact remains, no other pollinator lends itself to the husbandry that the honey bee does and mass starvation is quite the possibility while waiting for another insect to evolve to take it's place. Can you imagine the cost of your tomatoes if you had to pay a field full of union workers to hand poillinate the plants?   

[clodbuster]

Beeman has nailed it.  No tree fruits w/o bees and some veggies too.  the grain crops would be ok though.  Alffalfa seed producers use alkalai bees for pollenators.  The keel petal of alfalfa bloom gives the honey bee a kick in the butt when it is tripped.  he doesn't really like that so he leaves for other parts.  In China where bees have already dissapeared; the Asian pear crop is pollenated by tree climbing people with feather dusters who climb into the trees.  Sounds like work for illegals.

[rex6666]

Yea WE won't be needing those union polinators here in TX. we have plenty of ILLEGAL
ALIENS to do our pollinating, they say they came to do the cheap labor that Americans
won't
I don't mean to be smart, but i have not heard of one species going away that another
didn't take its place 10years is a good while. Maybe the honey bee is standing in the natural
progress of another pollinator as we speak.

[Questor]

I have only heard much fanfare about this on public radio, so already the source is suspect. Assuming there is a problem I wonder how much of it due to farming in places that are poor habitat for sustainable bee populations.

[Questor]

One reason I'm skeptical is that I have plum trees that flower relatively early. Too early to get reliable pollenation most years because it may be too early for insects to be available, or early insects may have been made dormant by a cold snap.

[Graybeard]

Again I say that the sight of a honeybee here is rare rare rare. But my fruit trees, my berries and all the various flowering plants we have are getting pollinated right along just as well as ever. There is no shortage of pollinators here only a shortage of honeybees. It's not gonna be the end of the world guys really it's not.

[Questor]

GB:

Obviously you'll never make it as a reporter. Try to foment a little crisis and hysteria once in a while. It may not feel good but you can make money at it if you're consistent.

[Chilachuck]

If, and that's a real big little word -- IF the honey bees disappear, the huge, monoculture fields in the US west will have to be broken up. I saw mile square fields of different crops next to each other down in California, maybe farmers would have to plant 50 yard wide by mile long strips of crops with different blooming times next to each other, instead, or islands of some sort of long blooming plant (something that makes blossoms but does not develop viable seed).

[OR-E-Gun Bill]

I've found the little Orchard Mason Bees to be a great benefit to my fruit trees. Granted, there is no honey but still getting plenty of fruit.
Drill some holes in a piece of wood and they will make their nests creating next years pollinators

[Sourdough]

We don't have bees naturally occurring here in Alaska.  The few Honeybees are imported every year, down in the Matanuska Valley and some here in North Pole.  But the flowers and plants here get pollinated just fine.  Even the Agriculture crops down in Delta.  Don't think it will affect us at all.  Even if they do disappear something will take their place.  It's called Evolution.   

[beemanbeme]

Those of you that think evolution is a nice, tidy, harmless process are sadly misinformed.

[Chilachuck]

People are finding million year old chunks of amber with bugs in them, and the bugs are the same as the ones we have around now. I wouldn't look for anything to take the honeybee's place very soon. Bugs don't change fast.

However, I doubt if the honeybee is in danger. I remember people were saying the bee was going to go extinct when I was a kid. Never happened.

[rex6666]

Chlichuck
Not trying to be a SM but if the honey bee shoots craps what difference will it make what size the fields are?
About 25-30 years ago the Africanized bee was going to kill out the honey bee, all
gone, no more, kaput, guess what,  didn't happen they just stood up and said to the Africans
we are not playing that game. Now i hardly ever hear about the little African boogers here
in TX.

[Chilachuck]

Rex, honey bees are good for block fields because the hives can be moved to where they are needed and pollinate everything available all around the new hive location, then put somewhere else when those plants quit flowering.

The other pollinators are mostly solitaries, so there's no hive to move. They live where they pollinate.

So, they need to have food inside flying distance of where they hang out, and there has to be a steady supply of food over the part of their working life spans.

Strips of different crops could allow that.

[beemanbeme]

Uhhhh, Rex, let me be the first to tell you that the Africanized honey bee is alive, well and thriving in Texas. And has been for quite a while.
Each year the Texas Bee Industry and the Texas AG Dept spend lotsa money trying to control the Aftricanized honey bee and trying to keep them from dominating domestic hives.  Give them a call and I am sure they, like I, can give you more information about honey bees than you would ever want to know.
To compare a block of a dozen or so carpenter bees, under the eaves of a house, pollinating a couple of fruit trees in the yard to 50 hives of honey bees, each containing upwards to 75,000 worker bees, in the middle of an orchard that stretches 5 miles by 5 miles that is located in what is otherwise a desert, doesn't really compute does it.  Without the bees, the orchard wouldn't/couldn't exist.
 Fresh fruits and vegtables would again become seasonal, available only a few weeks out of the year.If then.
I am not necessarily buying into the info that started this thread. I think it may be some sort of shrill, tabloid attempt for some more grant money. One of these days, some one is gonna come along with a real "cry wolf" and we are gonna be so jaded with the scare of the day, that we aren't gonna even notice and will all die.  And I really hate it when that happens. 

[rex6666]

I am not disagreeing with what either of you say, all i know about honey bees is we al ways had 2-3 hives behind the barn and my dad would rob them and we would eat the honey.
I am saying that years ago the African bees were moving in and the honey bees would all
be killed, if that had happened like we were told the honey bees would have been gone 20 years ago, looks  like
someone or some thing stopped that or at least slowed it down. Maybe the honey bees will be come extinct, maybe
no other insect can take its place, maybe that will cause a lot of people to become extinct,
maybe that will happen maybe it won't. The world is a little over populated maybe this will help thin it out.
Do the African bees not polinate, i heard some where their honey does not taste as good or some thing to that efect

[beemanbeme]

 Rex. As far as a layman (that includes me) is concerned, the only difference between an africanized honeybee and a european (domestic) honeybee is a matter of temperament.  They are mean and very defensive of their hive.  They can't be kept in an urban or suburban environment. Once aroused they tend to make a much more concerted, sustained assault on their target and pursue it to a much greater distance. There have been documented cases of them killing stock.
The peril from the africanized honeybee wasn't that they were going to kill the domestic bees but rather they were going to interbreed with or supersede the domestic stock making a very hard to handle bee. 

[rex6666]

OK now i understand
we will work(polinate) and make honey, but we are not going lay down and let you take
it without a fight (seems logical to me) and by the way we will defend our home against
all agressors, to what ever lengths