There is a good article in the August 6th New Yorker Magazine Stung: Where have all the bees gone?.The article states:
In Britain, where better records have been kept, more than half the native bumblebee species either have become extinct or are facing extinction in the next few decades. Among the many possible contributing factors that the report cited are habitat loss, pesticide use, climate change, and introduced pathogens. May Berenbaum, a professor of entomology at the University of Illinois, chaired the National Research Council panel; she recently characterized C.C.D. as “a crisis on top of a crisis.”
“We can’t count on wild pollinators, because we’ve so altered the landscape that many are no longer viable,” she said.
As the National Research Council report noted, invertebrate extinctions don’t tend to have much “marquee appeal.” Yet if it’s a bad sign when an ecosystem loses its large mammals, it is probably an even worse sign when it can no longer support its insects. The report put it this way:
“Pollinator decline is one form of global change that actually does have credible potential to alter the shape and structure of the terrestrial world.”
Type the rest of the post here
6 comments:
This bee thing is very disturbing and no one is really concerned. I like the part where these say it is a bad sign when an ecosystem can no longer support its insects. Wake up everyone!
I saw a newsletter this week where an upstate bee keeper was notifying folks that they no longer could depend on him to move his hives to their groves. Apparently , the state of Florida is about the spread of africanized bees.
OK my brilliant friends. What the hell do we do to stop the extinction of our bees? I for one do not know although I do my part by allowing all
the bees in my back yard full freedom and even save the occasional idiot who thinks he can swim.
Botany of Desire…
“Stung” was a good article and funny. Two of my cousins keep/kept bees. So far Robert’s in central Florida, with his 20 acres of scrub and tortoises, are unaffected by the collapse. Like the author, Kate, in Montana, too had problems with bears – electric fences not withstanding. I think they learned to turn them off. She lives in Seattle now after having learned to shoot straight.
For the bees there are two problems: Apiculture is not profitable. Robert gives his honey away. Maybe the reason his bees are still okay is that he doesn’t take them to California. What do we do for “sweet?” All of our food is enhanced with corn syrup. Corn has a lobby and a destination: your car tank. Florida is surely a study of lobby + sugar = environmental degradation.
Pollination as the “business” is the only way bee keepers can make it but in the process they expose whatever diseases bees have to each other by trucking their hives from orchard to orchard. They effectively create a “monocrop.”
Some protection for bees/guarantee for pollination would be for orchard areas to keep their own bees local. Pesticides would still be an issue but bees could perhaps be placed in special areas. In the off season they will find other sources.
Unfortunately it’s either beekeepers or bees who take a hit. Perhaps we could redefine our palate from refined to natural sugars, restore Everglades, drive corn…and did I mention candles?
For more on the development of our sense of “sweet” and other cultivation choices see: The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan. Pollan is quite an analyst of the “agro-industrial complex.”
S
thanks for that thoughtful reply "S"
Bees Do It… cont.
On my shelf in anticipation of hurricane downtime: by Tammy Horn, “Bees In America (How the Honey Bee Shaped a Nation), gift from cousin Robert; and by Holly Bishop, “Robbing the Bees (A Biography of Honey. The Sweet Liquid gold that Seduced the World), on sale at books and Books.
S
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