Bees in Trouble

Comments

• Lynny wrote on June 21, 2009, 08:00PM : Flag this comment as inappropriate

  I have been planting flowers for two years that are known to attract bees , and I have only seen a couple this year so far.
  I can't believe that more isn't being done by the EPA for bees.

• BestBeekeeping wrote on November 26, 2009, 09:16AM : Flag this comment as inappropriate

  The jury is still out on whether pesticides are the cause of CCD, but it does seem very likely that they are at least a major contributory factor. This is one of the reasons why urban beekeeping is so important - in built up areas bees are much less exposed to pesticides, so if more people keep bees in cities, more will hopefully survive CCD & at least give us a base to rebuild the bee population from.
  Learn how to do your bit for the honey bees at http://www.bestbeekeeping.com

• Steve wrote on December 14, 2009, 09:00AM : Flag this comment as inappropriate

  While it may seem reasonable to blame pesticides, the actual data from MaryAnn Fraizer of Penn State, the result of sampling thousands of hives for several years, do not show any crop pesticides correlating to "CCD", or colony dead-outs.

  The actual cause of CCD is as simple as it is obvious - invasive exotic species of pathogens, parasites, and diseases from Asian bee species, in combination, are killing hives. The higher losses and resulting drop-off in numbers of both managed and feral bee colonies directly correlates to the increases in "World Trade", and the specific diseases and pests found are the exact invasives that came over in all that uninspected world trade shipped under lax biosecurity constraints.

  People like Dave Mendez are looking for a deep-pockets defendant to sue for damages, but samples from his hives show that he has been his own worst enemy in his over-use of miticides in his attempts to control these invasive pests and parasites of bees. It is not really his fault, but all the finger-pointing is an embarrassment to the idea of evidence-based beekeeping and rational thought itself.

  Here's some reality-based coverage from the beekeepers:
  http://bee-quick.com/reprints

  Systemic pesticides? A big step forward. The poison you don't spray is a poison that does not drift and kill bees. The laws on the books about pesticide APPLICATION need to be enforced, specifically against state-level "mosquito control" and other activities currently considered "exempt" from most EPA regs.