austin, sounds like your bees defenses are low, is there something you can give them that will strengthen them,beet juice,o.j. ? what does your bee doctor say?
my understanding of the problem is that it is totally inexplicable in nature. Bee keepers, vets, specialists etc can find no explanation for the hives dying off. I'm sorry i can't find the link to the articles I read about it, they were much better in explaining the phenomenon than I. I'll do a bit more digging, maybe i'll get lucky.
http://www.alternet.org/environment/53491/ http://www.alternet.org/environment/53491/ http://www.alternet.org/environment/65289/ Try these, they may help explain things.
Hmm, how will this effect the illegal immigrant situation? Will we need more workers to do the work that bees will not, or can not do? Actually, this is a serious question. Bottom line is, some how, someone or some thing has to do the pollination.
Or maybe we need to rethink how our agricultural system has functioned. Somehow, the mental image of migrant farm workers hand pollinating millions of blossoms is a sad commentary on how people simply refuse to acknowledge when change is necessary. We can apply this irony to a multitude of situations, our current financial predicament for one. Welcome to America, home of bigger, better, faster, more. How very sad.
<i>"austin, sounds like your bees defenses are low, is there something you can give them that will strengthen them,beet juice,o.j. ? what does your bee doctor say?"</i> This year our bees mostly died from sudden influx of a new nosema disorder... it causes dysentary and fatal dehydration in the bees while they cluster in winter. To be blunt, the bees come down with a case of screaming diarrhea they cannot survive. The hives looked great in December. By January there were two inches of dead bees on bottom boards with remaining cluster frozen dead on honey reserves. That's the specific issue this time. The major problem is a confluence of crisis for bees. Tracheal mites and varroa mites are two imported parasites that decimated domestic and feral bee populations. Then two strains of nosema, the latest much worse than the previous strain are now an issue. Add to that a growing array of low-grade pesticides designed to protect people and pets. These chemicals are sold thru the retail chain and heavily applied to every other lawn & garden. "Safe" for people and pets... but cumulative buildup in the honey stores and/or wax comb kills bees sooner or later if not on initial contact. All those housing tracts, super WalMarts and virtual seas of mono-crop planting like corn, wheat and soybeans replace and erase the usual varied food crop of bees. A 2,000 acre soybean field produces a bonanza of blooms for bees to thrive on... in a ten-day span. But an idle field of native weeds and grasses produces 100 times the comparable food mass for bees from early spring thru late fall. Intensive logging and firewood harvest (along with land clearing) has eliminated many hollow trees, traditional housing for feral bees (tame bees gone wild). That critical base of free pollinators dies with the destruction of hollow trees, or get forced to live in closer quarters which hastens the spread of bee disease. * Bee hive rental as BrandonF noted is very big business. Almond groves in California currently have 1/2 to 2/3 of all existing bee hives in the U.S. right now for pollination. Guys like Hackenberg from PA in the 60min piece with 2,000 hives can sign rental contracts for $150 to $200 <b>per healthy hive</b> to pollinate those groves. A big pollinator renting out hives shipped around the country used to make $200 ~ $500 per hive annual, with residual income from selling bees, queens, etc to retail keepers like me. Now the big pollinators are dropping dead along with their hives. Big nut groves, fruit orchards and farms are left with too few pollinators at any price... a dearth of bees exists. Therein lies the problem. There is not one particular issue stressing bees. It is a combination of environmental, chemical and parasitic = disease issues all impacting bees at once. They can deal with a dose of trach mites along with mild nosema and still suvive. That actually breeds a stronger bee. But, a high case of varroa mites, cumulative pesticides in their winter honey stores, lack of variety in pollen (proteins, fats, vitamins, minerals)stored from different sources and then new nosema outbreak is simply too much. Hobbyists like me are working on breeding resistant strains of bees that will hopefully pull out of the overall population nosedive. We'll see what happens, all hope is far from lost. The crisis honeybees face is real, it's significant and it impacts the economy from a producer and consumer standpoint across every link of the food chain.
Well said austin, you obviously KNOW your stuff. So, in a nutshell, for those ETers who are more inclined to skim than to read and analyze We are poisoning ourselves, our children, our environment, and our bees. Think about that next time you break out the agent orange to keep your yards green and pest free..LOL i'm laughing, but i'm only laughing at the irony.