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Vanishing honeybees mystify scientists

quote:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Go to work, come home. Go to work, come home. Go to work -- and vanish without a trace. Billions of bees have done just that, leaving the crop fields they are supposed to pollinate, and scientists are mystified about why. The phenomenon was first noticed late last year in the United States, where honeybees are used to pollinate $15 billion worth of fruits, nuts and other crops annually. Disappearing bees have also been reported in Europe and Brazil. Commercial beekeepers would set their bees near a crop field as usual and come back in two or three weeks to find the hives bereft of foraging worker bees, with only the queen and the immature insects remaining. Whatever worker bees survived were often too weak to perform their tasks. If the bees were dying of pesticide poisoning or freezing, their bodies would be expected to lie around the hive. And if they were absconding because of some threat -- which they have been known to do -- they wouldn't leave without the queen. Since about one-third of the U.S. diet depends on pollination and most of that is performed by honeybees, this constitutes a serious problem, according to Jeff Pettis of the U.S. Agricultural Research Service. "They're the heavy lifters of agriculture," Pettis said of honeybees. "And the reason they are is they're so mobile and we can rear them in large numbers and move them to a crop when it's blooming." Honeybees are used to pollinate some of the tastiest parts of the American diet, Pettis said, including cherries, blueberries, apples, almonds, asparagus and macadamia nuts. "It's not the staples," he said. "If you can imagine eating a bowl of oatmeal every day with no fruit on it, that's what it would be like" without honeybee pollination. Pettis and other experts are gathering outside Washington for a two-day workshop starting on Monday to pool their knowledge and come up with a plan of action to combat what they call colony collapse disorder. "What we're describing as colony collapse disorder is the rapid loss of adult worker bees from the colony over a very short period of time, at a time in the season when we wouldn't expect a rapid die-off of workers: late fall and early spring," Pettis said. Small workers in a supersize society The problem has prompted a congressional hearing, a report by the National Research Council and a National Pollinator Week set for June 24-30 in Washington, but so far no clear idea of what is causing it. "The main hypotheses are based on the interpretation that the disappearances represent disruptions in orientation behavior and navigation," said May Berenbaum, an insect ecologist at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. There have been other fluctuations in the number of honeybees, going back to the 1880s, where there were "mysterious disappearances without bodies just as we're seeing now, but never at this magnitude," Berenbaum said in a telephone interview. In some cases, beekeepers are losing 50 percent of their bees to the disorder, with some suffering even higher losses. One beekeeper alone lost 40,000 bees, Pettis said. Nationally, some 27 states have reported the disorder, with billions of bees simply gone. Some beekeepers supplement their stocks with bees imported from Australia, said beekeeper Jeff Anderson, whose business keeps him and his bees traveling between Minnesota and California. Honeybee hives are rented out to growers to pollinate their crops, and beekeepers move around as the growing seasons change. Honeybees are not the only pollinators whose numbers are dropping. Other animals that do this essential job -- non-honeybees, wasps, flies, beetles, birds and bats -- have decreasing populations as well. But honeybees are the big actors in commercial pollination efforts. "One reason we're in this situation is this is a supersize society -- we tend to equate small with insignificant," Berenbaum said. "I'm sorry but that's not true in biology. You have to be small to get into the flower and deliver the pollen. "Without that critical act, there's no fruit. And no technology has been invented that equals, much less surpasses, insect pollinators."

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/ameri...reut/index.html

well theres the obvious, american answer when scientists cant explain something: god did it

Repost.

quote:

Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN well theres the obvious, american answer when scientists cant explain something: god did it

You read that in less than one minute?

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Originally posted by Demoted You read that in less than one minute?

i dont read entire articles unless theyre pasted in the PDD. skim read im pretty good at it

quote:

Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN well theres the obvious, american answer when scientists cant explain something: god did it

I didn't see anything about God.

god ain't 'round here. He's masturbating to oragami.

fight the future?

quote:

Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN well theres the obvious, american answer when scientists cant explain something: god did it

Holy fuck, get over it. Don't you have anything else in your repertoire to go on about? You're so one dimensional!

quote:

Originally posted by jennypie Holy fuck, get over it. Don't you have anything else in your repertoire to go on about? You're so one dimensional!

no.

quote:

Originally posted by jennypie Holy fuck, get over it. Don't you have anything else in your repertoire to go on about? You're so one dimensional!

oh sorry, i should've included some really important information like buttsechs or relationship advice or what food i like. my mistake.

quote:

Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN oh sorry, i should've included some really important information like buttsechs or relationship advice or what food i like. my mistake.

Well there's the obvious answer when pkc gets called out: an insult

lol that was lame

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Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN oh sorry, i should've included some really important information like buttsechs or relationship advice or what food i like. my mistake.

Stop being such a snore.

quote:

Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN oh sorry, i should've included some really important information like buttsechs or relationship advice or what food i like. my mistake.

you realize you're just as bad as the religious zealots, don't you?

talk about irony.

quote:

Originally posted by jennypie Stop being such a snore.

whatever. im not here to be entertaining. im here to be entertained. and bitching at ignorant americans keeps me entertained

quote:

Originally posted by bas an insult

um, where?

quote:

Originally posted by inconspicuous you realize you're just as bad as the religious zealots, don't you? talk about irony.

That's the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning?



Huh. I thought it was just douchebaggery.

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Originally posted by RJT That's the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning? Huh. I thought it was just douchebaggery.

the irony is in the fact that he's so determined to make his opinion about the evils of religion & religious people known that he winds up being just as fanatical and insulting and intolerant as he claims them to be.

Maybe someone sprayed them with poisen. Thats what I do.. fucking bees

quote:

Originally posted by inconspicuous the irony is in the fact that he's so determined to make his opinion about the evils of religion & religious people known that he winds up being just as fanatical and insulting and intolerant as he claims them to be.

Oh, so you were using the literary definition. Now it's all so clear to me.

But it's still also kind of a douchey thing to do. You have to give me that!

quote:

Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN whatever. im not here to be entertaining. im here to be entertained. and bitching at ignorant americans keeps me entertained

Well you're laming up this thread with your sour, boring, predictable nonsense. It wouldn't kill you to stray from your tired old arguments once in a while, would it?

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Originally posted by RJT Oh, so you were using the literary definition. Now it's all so clear to me. But it's still also kind of a douchey thing to do. You have to give me that!

it most definitely is.

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Originally posted by jennypie Well you're laming up this thread with your sour, boring, predictable nonsense. It wouldn't kill you to stray from your tired old arguments once in a while, would it?

God would smite him for his disloyalty to The Cause.

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Originally posted by inconspicuous God would smite him for his disloyalty to The Cause.

Exactly. He needs to find another cause.

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Originally posted by inconspicuous you realize you're just as bad as the religious zealots, don't you? talk about irony.

hey, someone's gotta fight the good fight

quote:

Originally posted by inconspicuous the irony is in the fact that he's so determined to make his opinion about the evils of religion & religious people known that he winds up being just as fanatical and insulting and intolerant as he claims them to be.

wrong!! but thankyou for playing. the main difference being that how i conduct myself on a forum cannot be compared to dictating to the masses how they should behave. plus, its so fun to go fishing with some of you people.

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