Honey Bees Disappearing!

[InfiniteNow]

What would actually happen to humans if all the honey bees became extinct?

Hi Lambus,

 

I suggest you spend a few minutes looking over the rest of this thread, since this issue has been covered, but here's another summary to make it easier for you:

 

ecosystems: what would happen if bees disappeared?

The disappearance of bees: what are the consequences for the ecosystem?

Bees are honey producers as well as indispensable actors in the pollinisation of flowers and plants. Bees are an element in the interactive ecosystem chain. The bee’s role is very important in the various life cycles of different species. Without bees, there would be no honey, but more importantly, certain plants would not be able to reproduce and would thus become extinct. In turn, this would lead to the disappearance of certain animal species.

 

''If the bee became extinct, man would only survive a few years beyond it'', Einstein predicted…

 

The bee is part of mankind’s cultural heritage… Making its first appearance on earth 80 million years ago, the bee has accompanied the human journey. In the earliest cave paintings there are images of men harvesting honey. In hieroglyphics, representations of ancient Mesopotamia and China in the first centuries of recorded time, honey harvesting has been depicted. The Promised Land is the land of milk and honey. The bee’s product seems to have been the first sweetness in mankind’s tough early days. It seems that even now, in the early 21st century, mankind can’t do without the bee …

 

The issue basically is that bees keep plants alive. If plants die, we lose that source of food, as do the animals that eat those plants. Then those animals die, and we can't eat them either!

[quaien]

I still say good riddance. Apiarsts are criminals who should be arrested and have their deadly hives destroyed when one of the insects which they breeed kills someone in the area. Just as the owner of a vicious dog is held responsible when the animal attacks someone, and the dog is then destroyed. These apiarists profit from the deaths of innocent people, including kids.

[Queso]

How often?

[IMAMONKEY!]

I still say good riddance. Apiarsts are criminals who should be arrested and have their deadly hives destroyed when one of the insects which they breeed kills someone in the area. Just as the owner of a vicious dog is held responsible when the animal attacks someone, and the dog is then destroyed. These apiarists profit from the deaths of innocent people, including kids.

 

I don't know what you are talking about nor where this has happened... recently...

 

Bees can kill people but I doubt it happens often nor do I believe it's the fault of the beekeepers. ;)

 

I don't want the bees to die off... now wasps and hornets? :hihi: I hate them... :)

[Michaelangelica]

wasps eat spiders.

I don't like spiders

 

 

Online feature

Mystery of the dying bees

7 March 2007

by Benjamin Lester

Cosmos Online

Mystery of the dying bees

One of the most important crop pollinators in the world, honey bees in the United States have been decimated in recent months by a mysterious disease.

Image: Jon Sullivan/Wikipedia

 

Something mysterious is killing honey bees, and even as billions are dropping dead across North America, researchers are scrambling to find answers and save one of the most important crop pollinators on Earth.

 

The almond trees are blooming and the bees are dying, and nobody knows why. All up and down California's vast San Joaquin Valley, nearly 2,500 square kilometres of small nut trees arranged in laser-straight rows are shaking off the cobwebs of winter. They're gearing up once again to produce nearly half a billion kilograms of nuts, worth US$3 billion to the U.S. economy.

 

The trees cannot produce the bounty on their own, however. They need bees - a million hives worth - trucked in from nearly forty U.S. states to move pollen from one tree to another, fertilising the blooms in the largest managed pollination event on Earth.

 

But even as the beekeepers reap record fees for renting their hives, their livelihood is now threatened by the largest loss of honey bees in the history of the industry.

 

Since October 2006, 35 per cent or more of the United States' population of the Western honey bee (Apis mellifera) - billions of individual bees - simply flew from their hive homes and disappeared.

 

When the almonds were being plucked from the trees late last year, Gene Brandi of Los Banos, California had 2,000 hives, but by late February he had just 1,200 - a loss of 40 per cent.

 

And Brandi is one of the more fortunate. Across the 24 U.S. states affected by the mysterious phenomenon, losses have ranged up to 90 per cent. "I've had a couple of yards where I've had 200 hives and they're down to 10 hives that are alive," says David Bradshaw of Visalia, about 180 kilometres southeast of Los Banos along California's Route 99.

 

What's causing the carnage, however, is a total mystery; all that scientists have come up with so far is a new name for the phenomenon - Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) - and a list of symptoms.

 

In hives hit by CCD, adult workers simply fly away and disappear, leaving a small cluster of workers and the hive's young to fend for themselves. Adding to the mystery, nearby predators, such as the wax moth, are refraining from moving in to pilfer honey and other hive contents from the abandoned hives; in CCD-affected hives the honey remains untouched.

 

The symptoms are baffling, but one of the emerging hypotheses is that the scourge is underpinned by a collapse of the bees' immune systems. Stressed out by cross-country truck journeys and drought, attacked by viruses and introduced parasites, or whacked out by harmful new pesticides, some researchers believe the bees' natural defences may have simply given way. This opens the door to a host of problems that the bees can normally suppress.

 

What's surprising is that mysterious declines are nothing new. As far back as 1896, CCD has popped up again and again, only under the monikers: 'fall dwindle' disease, 'May dwindle', 'spring dwindle', 'disappearing disease', and 'autumn collapse'.

 

Even the current outbreak has possibly been going on undetected for two years, according to the CCD Working Group - a crack group of U.S. researchers from institutes including the Pennsylvania State University and University of Montana, who are trying to unravel the mystery.

 

What has made the members of the Working Group - as well as conservationists, beekeepers, and farmers - really sit up and notice is the scale of this year's decimation; something in the environment has allowed CCD to reach an unprecedented scale that threatens the very survival of the pollination industry.

 

"We have never seen a die-off of this magnitude with this weird symptomology," says Maryann Frazier, a bee researcher at Pennsylvania State University. "We've seen bees disappear over time and dwindle away, but not die-off so quickly."

 

Asian mites and latent viruses

 

A problem preventing clear identification of CCD is that honey bees are already under threat from manifold foes.

 

Even without CCD, the number of managed hives in the U.S. has dwindled by nearly 50 per cent since the industry's peak in the 1970s. The main culprit for the die-offs is a tiny Asian mite. Known as Varroa destructor to scientists and the 'vampire mite' to beekeepers, these tiny parasites - circular, crab-like arachnids about the size of a bee's eyeball - have been quietly parasitising the Asiatic honey bee (Apis cerana) in Southeast Asia for millennia.

<i>Varroa destructor</i>

Varroa destructor, a tiny tick-like arachnid, has been wreaking havoc on U.S. honey bees since it was inadvertently introduced from Asia in the 1980s.

Scott Bauer/Wikipedia

 

Some time in the early 1980s, though, the mites hitched a ride to America and hopped on new hosts - spreading like wildfire throughout the defenceless Western honey bee population with the help of migratory beekeepers who obligingly trucked them around the country. The mites suck the vital juices out of both developing and adult bees, and left unchecked can kill a hive within 12 months.

 

In addition to the damage that the mites do themselves, they also spread viruses. Furthermore, the mites appear to assist the viruses by somehow sabotaging the bees' immune system.

 

"There's something about a mite feeding on a bee that just knocks its immune system out. [Then] the viruses can take over," says Eric Mussen, a bee researcher at the University of California, Davis.

 

But mites and their viruses have been infecting U.S. honey bees for nearly 30 years. What has experts worried is that CCD kills bees even more efficiently than mites - destroying a healthy colony in a matter of weeks.

 

All stressed out

 

As if having its bodily fluids sucked out by a parasite wasn't enough to weaken a bee, some suspect its immune system is also under attack from plain old stress.

 

Just as humans fall ill more readily after draining tasks or emotional upheavals, Mussen says stress is a sure-fire way to compromise bee immunity too.

 

And the lives of commercial honey bees are filled with stress. A typical year for a hive might entail up to five cross-country truck trips, chasing crops to pollinate and clover fields to make honey in. Banging the bees around during cross-country journeys can take a heavy toll.

 

"Some of the beekeepers you talk to will tell you that they'll lose 10 per cent of their queens" on every trip, Mussen says. And besides transportation stress, many of the hardest-hit beekeepers have reported that their hives underwent extraordinary stresses like drought, overcrowding, or famine, in the months before die-offs occurred.

 

Stress alone won't kill a bee, but Mussen thinks that it's just one more factor conspiring against them. "It's the knocking down of the immune system, it's having mites around - everything is just piling up - they haven't got much of a chance."

 

Fly away and die

 

Pesticides are designed to kill bugs and other pests on crops without causing harm to humans or the environment. But in a never-ending biological arms race, miscreant insects develop resistance to new pesticides nearly as fast as chemists can create them. In this tit-for-tat exchange, scant attention is paid to effects that new pesticides have on beneficial insects like honey bees.

 

While many pesticides are downright lethal to bees, some new studies have pointed to other strange effects found at low doses. For example, low doses of new compounds called neonicotinoids might be interfering with bee minds. Potentially, this prevents them from remembering their colony's location and causes them to get lost and never return.

 

According to Pennsylvania State University entomologist Diane Cox-Foster, another possibility is that neonicotinoids are another factor impairing bee immunity.

 

Yet another hypothesis is that sick adult bees may be self-sacrificing: flying away to die in order to protect the hive from further infection.

 

When the Working Group first examined samples of CCD-killed bees from across the country, one factor they found in common was fungal growth in the bees' guts. The fungi may be from the genus Aspergillus, a group of fungi that produce toxins which can kill young adult bees. Studies published in the past have reported that bees infected with the fungus fly away from the colony to die.

 

Not that Aspergillus is the only possibility. "We're asking if there is anything new that may have been brought in accidentally," says Cox-Foster. "We know that there are a couple of potential routes for introduction of new pathogens."

 

Hands off the hive

 

When a colony is weakened other bees or insects usually move in to take advantage of the gap and score a free lunch in the form of honey. Not so in CCD-killed hives; wax moths and other predators stay away, at least for much longer than they would normally.

 

According to Cox-Foster, it could be that insects' keen sense of smell may be keeping them away from dangerous chemicals present in the dead hive. "We know that insects are very good at detecting chemicals in their environment. There are studies that have taken caterpillars and shown that they'll actually feed around a droplet of pesticide on a leaf because they can detect it"

 

"One of our hypotheses is that the fungus itself is producing toxins that are being detected by the other insects. Likewise, it could be one of these environmental contaminants [like pesticides]," she says.

 

That's as far as the research detectives have gotten to date. Are bees, under stress from many sources, succumbing to pressure from new pathogens or chemicals? Between mites, viruses, fungi, stress and new pesticides, the insects are under threat like never before.

 

Fully one-third of fruits, vegetables, and nuts consumed in America are dependent on pollinators - overwhelmingly honey bees. The net value of all this produce to the U.S. economy is roughly US$15 billion per year. And across America experts are scrambling to find answers to the mystery before it turns into an even bigger economic and agricultural disaster.

Benjamin Lester is an intern at COSMOS who pens stories for both the print magazine and Cosmos Online.

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Readers' comments

[Turtle]

I still say good riddance. Apiarsts are criminals who should be arrested and have their deadly hives destroyed when one of the insects which they breeed kills someone in the area. Just as the owner of a vicious dog is held responsible when the animal attacks someone, and the dog is then destroyed. These apiarists profit from the deaths of innocent people, including kids.

 

How often?

I don't know what you are talking about nor where this has happened... recently...

 

Bees can kill people but I doubt it happens often nor do I believe it's the fault of the beekeepers. :hihi:

 

I don't want the bees to die off... now wasps and hornets? :) I hate them... :(

 

quainen's retort is a knee-jerk reaction without a scientific basis or justification. As I pointed out in post #47, more children die from nut poisoning than bee stings every year in the US, and that number of nut deaths is about 100/year. Shall we criminalize nuts and their producers!?:xx: Thousands of people (most children) drown every year, but we don't criminalize the water utilities or drain the lakes and rivers. (As if we could. :( )

 

PFD BITES AND STINGS!

However, there are some people who have allergic reactions to "normal" insect stings. Approximately 50 people die each year in the United States from insect stings. This is more than all other bites combined including snakebites. Thousands of people are allergic to bee, wasp, and hornet stings. Insect stings can be deadly for those people, on the average, within 10 minutes of the sting but almost always within the first hour.

 

The stinging insects that most commonly cause allergic reactions belong to a group of the hymenoptera, the insects with membranous wings. These include bees, wasps, hornets, and yellow jackets. Stings from wasps and bees are the most common....

 

:evil: :shrug:

[quaien]

Turtle wrote, "quainen's retort is a knee-jerk reaction without a scientific basis or justification. As I pointed out in post #47, more children die from nut poisoning than bee stings every year in the US, and that number of nut deaths is about 100/year. Shall we criminalize nuts and their producers!? Thousands of people (most children) drown every year, but we don't criminalize the water utilities or drain the lakes and rivers. (As if we could."

 

You have some good points, and certainly there are some gray areas. But surely you must admit some clear-cut differences among the instances your cite:

-Nuts do not fly off the trees and actively attack people. Will you not acknowledge that the actions of nuts are different, at least in some ways, from the behavior of bees?

 

-Apiarists and pit-bull breeders house and raise vicious animals in the hope and with the intentions of profit.

 

When the animals produced by apiarists intentionally attack and kill innocent men, women, and children (who have not eaten the bees - as have people who die from nuts - but rather have been attacked, even after taking reasonable precautions to avoid such attacks - can you honestly see no distinction here?) why should the bee-keepers not be held accountable, if the owners of other species of vicious animals are so held?

[Turtle]

Turtle wrote, "quainen's retort is a knee-jerk reaction without a scientific basis or justification. As I pointed out in post #47, more children die from nut poisoning than bee stings every year in the US, and that number of nut deaths is about 100/year. Shall we criminalize nuts and their producers!? Thousands of people (most children) drown every year, but we don't criminalize the water utilities or drain the lakes and rivers. (As if we could."

 

You have some good points, and certainly there are some gray areas. But surely you must admit some clear-cut differences among the instances your cite:

-Nuts do not fly off the trees and actively attack people. Will you not acknowledge that the actions of nuts are different, at least in some ways, from the behavior of bees?

 

-Apiarists and pit-bull breeders house and raise vicious animals in the hope and with the intentions of profit.

 

When the animals produced by apiarists intentionally attack and kill innocent men, women, and children (who have not eaten the bees - as have people who die from nuts - but rather have been attacked, even after taking reasonable precautions to avoid such attacks - can you honestly see no distinction here?) why should the bee-keepers not be held accountable, if the owners of other species of vicious animals are so held?

 

I fear we have drifted off topic, however I think it is largely due to a general poor understanding of just how important bees are to human culture, both now and historically.

 

I understand that many people fear bees, whether they are allergic or not; but first to the comparison to nut allergy. I can & do make the comparison of the fear and danger of death by nuts and bees because I live in constant fear of being poisoned to death by mislabled or mishandled food packaging. I haven't eaten a chocolate bar in 15 years because they don't clean the equipment after making the bars with nuts in them. I won't eat anything that I can't read the package, and I don't trust people's claims "oh, there's no nuts." That said, and given more innocents are killed by nuts than bees, it would be ridiculous of mean to insist nut farmers are criminals, just as your claim is ridiculous to criminalize apiarists.

 

I encourage thread readers to read entire threads, as well as the linked articles as they often answer the questions posed. That is after all the whole point of this forum.

 

Hypography = hyperlink+biography

:hihi: :shrug:

[quaien]

I fear we have drifted off topic, however I think it is largely due to a general poor understanding of just how important bees are to human culture, both now and historically.

 

I understand that many people fear bees, whether they are allergic or not; but first to the comparison to nut allergy. I can & do make the comparison of the fear and danger of death by nuts and bees because I live in constant fear of being poisoned to death by mislabled or mishandled food packaging. I haven't eaten a chocolate bar in 15 years because they don't clean the equipment after making the bars with nuts in them. I won't eat anything that I can't read the package, and I don't trust people's claims "oh, there's no nuts." That said, and given more innocents are killed by nuts than bees, it would be ridiculous of mean to insist nut farmers are criminals, just as your claim is ridiculous to criminalize apiarists.

 

I encourage thread readers to read entire threads, as well as the linked articles as they often answer the questions posed. That is after all the whole point of this forum.

 

Hypography = hyperlink+biography

:hihi: :shrug:

 

May I say that I honestly sympathize with your fears and suffering from your food allergy? The son of a very good friend of mine is allergic to nuts, and I know the lengths they must go to to assure that he avoids an accidental exposure and consequent life-threatening allergic reaction.

 

Also, I worked in the candy industry for many years, and I can assure you that your fears that they don't always completely remove the remnants of one batch before running another are not without foundation. If you really like and miss chocolate, I suggest that you go to a local candy shop where they hand-dip chocolates (most towns have such a mom and pop operation) and buy a slab of the chocolate they use. It will have come from a factory where they make nothing but chocolate, such as Blommers, in Chicago. Best of luck to you!

[Michaelangelica]

Einstein was born before tissue culture.

We could keep some plants going without bees;

by vegetative propagation and tissue culture.

We might have to learn to live with-out a few things though, like bread and maybe even beer and whiskey

Einstein should have said man wouldn't want to live for more than a few years without those staples. :)

[CraigD]

Nuts do not fly off the trees and actively attack people. Will you not acknowledge that the actions of nuts are different, at least in some ways, from the behavior of bees?

Clearly bees, which are in the animal kingdom, and nut trees, which are plants, behave differently. This difference is irrelevant, I think, to the question of the relative danger posed the practice of cultivating nut trees and keeping bees.

 

The greatest danger to people allergic to nuts is not that they will intentionally pick and eat nuts from trees, but accidentally eat foods containing them. Despite a focused effort by government to require the clear labeling of foods containing nuts, nut flour, butter or oil, accidental ingestion occurs frequently enough to result in many ER visits and, according the article turtle cited, about 100 deaths/year in the US (compared to 50 deaths from insect stings)

 

Banning all common food allergens is impractical and legally problematic. Good food labeling and emergency treatment for anaphylaxis (eg: epinephrine autoinjectors) appear to be the most effective approach to reducing injury and death due to food allergies.

 

Good emergency anaphylaxis treatment is also key in reducing injury and death due to insect stings. Note that, as with food allergies, almost all people seriously injured or killed by insect stings are unusually allergic to insect venoms.

Apiarists and pit-bull breeders house and raise vicious animals in the hope and with the intentions of profit.

I believe the use of the term “vicious” is incorrectly applied here to both bees and the Pit Bull terrier breed of dogs. Quaien’s post is the first serious (I presume) claim that the kind of bees kept by apiarists are vicious I have encountered. The term “vicious”, which shares its word root with “vice”, implies moral corruption and malicious intent, something that I believe most biologists and ethicists would agree is beyond the cognitive capability of most insects, bees included.

 

Common honey bees are not unusually aggressive, and will usually sting only when crushed, or in defense of their hive. With wild bees, being aware and maintaining ones distance from a hive is almost always sufficient to prevent being stung.

 

Due to many generations of culling the offspring of queens who’s daughters exhibit aggression, domestic honey bees even less aggressive than their wild relatives, to the extent that, unlike a wild one, you can usually approach and touch a commercial bee hive without being stung. Many bee keepers tend, transport, and remove honey comb from their hives without wearing protective clothing for years without suffering a single sting.

 

An unintended consequence of commercial bee keeping has been the near extinction of wild honey bees in North America. Because of this, the chance of being stung by a honey bee in North America is now lower than it was prior to widespread use of domestic bees. The refilling of this ecological niche by other stinging insects, such as wasps and hornets, however, may, I suspect, offset this unintentional safety improvement, and the damage to plant species due to pollination loss and change by far, IMHO, outweighs any benefit derived from the near extinction of wild bees.

 

Despite numerous media claims and legal ordinances based on claims that Pit Bulls are innately dangerous, and a high relative incidence fatal attacks by them (28% of Dog Bite Related Fatalities from 1979-1998), responsible breeders and owners of the breed claim that it is a good-natured breed well suited as a pet. From 1975 to 1980, German Shepherds accounted for the majority of DBRFs (20%), twice the incidence of “bull terriers”. From 1979 to 1980, Great Danes accounted did (3 of 10, vs 2 by Pit Bulls) (source: http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/duip/dogbreeds.pdf). Evidence indicates that DBRF are more a reflection of irresponsible behavior by dog owners than innate qualities of particular breeds.

… why should the bee-keepers not be held accountable, if the owners of other species of vicious animals are so held?

As with everyone, bee keepers are held responsible for any injuries incurred due to willful malice or negligence, through their countries’ criminal and civil court systems. Although historically bee keepers in the US have been little subject to lawsuits from people stung by bees (in large part due to the difficulty of proving that a particular bee belongs to particular keeper), such lawsuits have increased, so that now most large bee keepers carry special liability insurance. A few years ago, a friend of mine who keeps a few hives had to purchases such insurance, when his insurance company informed him that damage due to his bees could no longer be covered under his homeowners insurance policy. In the past and to date, he’s never had to file a claim due to bee-related injury or death.

Apiarsts are criminals who should be arrested and have their deadly hives destroyed when one of the insects which they breeed kills someone in the area.

:) This is a strange claim. A criminal is, by definition, one who commits a crime. A crime is by definition a violation of law. Can you present any evidence backing up your claim, such as a reference to public law banning bee keeping, or declaring ownership of a bee that fatally stings someone a crime?

[Jay-qu]

urr what happened? now this is on the front page?

[Turtle]

urr what happened? now this is on the front page?

 

So important are bees to our very way of life, and so severe is their recent decline, that after some consultation, the bee problem seemed to merit some front page exposure. :cup:

 

The newest article I found today is a bee problem now in Hawaii, long considered bee-pest free. It seems however, that rather than Colony Collapse Disorder, it is a well known bee-attacking mite that is now in the bee colonies on Oahu.

Hawaii Bees Infested by Destructive Varroa Mites

Hawaii bees infested by destructive varroa mites - Environment Blog

[C1ay]

urr what happened? now this is on the front page?

 

Don't know but I moved it to News In Brief since that seemed to me where it should be.

[C1ay]

In recent news...

Experts may have found what's bugging the bees

A fungus that hit hives in Europe and Asia may be partly to blame for wiping out colonies across the U.S.

 

A fungus that caused widespread loss of bee colonies in Europe and Asia may be playing a crucial role in the mysterious phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder that is wiping out bees across the United States, UC San Francisco researchers said Wednesday.

 

Researchers have been struggling for months to explain the disorder, and the new findings provide the first solid evidence pointing to a potential cause.

 

More...

[Jay-qu]

Don't know but I moved it to News In Brief since that seemed to me where it should be.

Its hardly brief :)

 

I was reading in a local newspaper and GM crops and they had attributed CCD to be the fault of the man-altered crops..

[Queso]

Did Einstein really say that quote?