What's up with global bee population decline?

Chemicals and pesticides..I had 10 hives down to one. Agriculture is heavy around me. We have become dependent on pesticides and it's killing the bees. And we all know what happens when the bees are all gone...
 
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simtech said:
Chemicals and pesticides..I had 10 hives down to one. Agriculture is heavy around me. We have become dependent on pesticides and it's killing the bees. And we all know what happens when the bees are all gone...
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It really is a triple edged sword. In order to maintain production as well as topsoil and moisture through No Till farming, you have to replace the tilling function with something.

For out door agriculture all we have is chemical means, and these chemical and biological control processes are causing an issue with the pollenators as well as the rest of the targeted insects.

In order to maintain the topsoil and the insects, you have to accept a decrease in procutivity per acre, and that is tough to do with a growing population.

The only answer I see to the problem is to accept the loss of farmland production and augment it with production from Urban Agriculture. If we do that as I suggest here: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/urban-agriculture-and-energy/x/10003213 , we get a bunch of extra benefits as well.
 
simtech said:
Chemicals and pesticides..I had 10 hives down to one. Agriculture is heavy around me. We have become dependent on pesticides and it's killing the bees. And we all know what happens when the bees are all gone...
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I'm inclined to agree, especially with regard to the overuse of imidacloprid and fipronil. They're both slow-acting, non-repellent, persistent insecticides that were well-suited for targeted application as baits and as soil treatments for termites. But they have been approved for far too many other types of applications where bees and other non-target insects can contact them.

Both chemicals are especially lethal to social insect populations because their slow action and lack of repellency allow the active ingredients to be carried back to the nests where they most likely will wipe out the entire colonies.

Rich
 
Its not only the chemicals, but large single plant agriculture. There used to be quite a bit of diversity in what was grown and the plants that grew along the sides of farms. Not so much anymore. Anything that is not a income producing crop is killed off.
 
UngaWunga said:
Its not only the chemicals, but large single plant agriculture. There used to be quite a bit of diversity in what was grown and the plants that grew along the sides of farms. Not so much anymore. Anything that is not a income producing crop is killed off.
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Its not just the chemicals, and it is not just the parasites, and it is not just the removal of various types of vegetation...
Here is an interesting article on the subject:
http://www.vox.com/2015/3/9/8174949/bee-decline-parasites-pesticides-flowers
 
Mites, foul brood, have increased to decimate wild honey bees. Commercial keepers seem to be doing okay.
 
UngaWunga said:
Its not only the chemicals, but large single plant agriculture. There used to be quite a bit of diversity in what was grown and the plants that grew along the sides of farms. Not so much anymore. Anything that is not a income producing crop is killed off.
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This is also decimating the Monarch Butterfly population, no more milkweed along the edges. But, really, this too is driven by chemicals, specifically, "round-up ready" seeds/plants.
 
timwinters said:
This is also decimating the Monarch Butterfly population, no more milkweed along the edges. But, really, this too is driven by chemicals, specifically, "round-up ready" seeds/plants.
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:yes:

24d kills anything broadleaf in pastures. Animals don't eat milkweed so it gets wiped out of many areas.
 
I'm waiting for my annuals to come back. They are bee friendly.

When does bee season begin?
 
I became a 'beek' last year. Of course, there is plenty of talk on the beekeeping forums regarding what is causing the problem. And, so far, there has been no definitive and scientific answer as to the cause.
There has been, as posted above and described in the first linked article ("theory", "mysterious"), plenty of speculation on causes; all reasonable possibilities.
But we just don't know yet.
 
timwinters said:
This is also decimating the Monarch Butterfly population, no more milkweed along the edges. But, really, this too is driven by chemicals, specifically, "round-up ready" seeds/plants.
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I live in one of the northern DFW suburbs.

Just a few short years ago I could easily count 100 Monarchs in a few minutes on a September afternoon during the migration.

Now I only see four or five all day. News reports indicate the population has dropped 90% due to the loss of milkweed along the migration route.
 
There's fair evidence that this is due to a virus and that man has nothing to do with it. Since nobody knows for certain what causes it we can't be sure but the fact that it spreads contradicts an environmental factor which is present pretty much everywhere. Bees around farms that use pesticides have healthy colonies for years, nothing changes but suddenly the colony dies.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140121093042.htm
 
bflynn said:
There's fair evidence that this is due to a virus and that man has nothing to do with it. Since nobody knows for certain what causes it we can't be sure but the fact that it spreads contradicts an environmental factor which is present pretty much everywhere. Bees around farms that use pesticides have healthy colonies for years, nothing changes but suddenly the colony dies.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140121093042.htm
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Thanks, more data points. I was wondering about pandemic nature of the decline. It doesn't seem to follow a good modality for just pesticides or loss of habitat, or a combination. Seems to be genus related, or given the data on butterflies, maybe phylum taxonomy.

Weird...
 
Just mother nature doing her thing again. From time to time she mutates a virus or makes a volcano erupt or plucks an asteroid/comet out of orbit and destroys a bunch of species so others can replace them.

We're on her calendar book somewhere.
 
Oh, we've been on it for a while now..

 
I have 8 hives remaining from 11 last fall. This is typical nowadays. 30% losses or more. The commercial farmers are not just poisoning our pollinators, they are poisoning US! Roundup is found in 65% of US honey. Neonicotinoids are found in all rivers/streams in the US. Once in water they break down very slowly and then we drink that poison water. Don't let anyone tell you it is because we will starve if we don't produce more food. That is BS! It is all about seed/chemical companies/farmer's profits. In addition to HVAC and honey bees, I grow vegetables to sell at our local farmers market. I used liquid sevin once last year on about 30 cabbage plants. It should be a last resort. I use cover crops, composted manure, crop rotation, manual pest removal, bug juice spray, pepper/garlic spray, insecticidal soap, diatomacious earth, wood ashes, etc. Seed companies coat commercial seeds with up to five different chemicals which remain in the plant as well as the pollen and nectar. They dump synthetic fertilizers on their crops instead of sowing cover crops to naturally improve the soil.

I use Foreflight's aerial view and distance measuring to position my hives in areas at least 1 nm from commercial farms. I have one of my bee yards in the middle of 450 acres of forest and another in the middle of 775 acres(not my properties). This cannot be done in many areas of our country.

Things you can do to help are...plant a pollinator garden, sow white dutch clover back into your yards like your grandparents did(grass seed mixes used to contain it), grow some of your own food or buy it at a local farmer's market, quit killing dandelions, quit spraying Roundup on fence rows, complain to road departments/power companies on the excessive use of herbicides, become a beekeeper, buy local honey from a beekeeper, buy a bag of white or yellow sweet clover for a beekeeper, or offer property for a beekeeper to utilize. I am very thankful for the two property owners that allow me to put hives on their land. One buys the lime, fertilize and sweet clover. The other installed a chain link fence around the hives.
 
RV10flyer said:
I have 8 hives remaining from 11 last fall. This is typical nowadays. 30% losses or more. The commercial farmers are not just poisoning our pollinators, they are poisoning US! Roundup is found in 65% of US honey. Neonicotinoids are found in all rivers/streams in the US. Once in water they break down very slowly and then we drink that poison water. Don't let anyone tell you it is because we will starve if we don't produce more food. That is BS! It is all about seed/chemical companies/farmer's profits. In addition to HVAC and honey bees, I grow vegetables to sell at our local farmers market. I used liquid sevin once last year on about 30 cabbage plants. It should be a last resort. I use cover crops, composted manure, crop rotation, manual pest removal, bug juice spray, pepper/garlic spray, insecticidal soap, diatomacious earth, wood ashes, etc. Seed companies coat commercial seeds with up to five different chemicals which remain in the plant as well as the pollen and nectar. They dump synthetic fertilizers on their crops instead of sowing cover crops to naturally improve the soil.

I use Foreflight's aerial view and distance measuring to position my hives in areas at least 1 nm from commercial farms. I have one of my bee yards in the middle of 450 acres of forest and another in the middle of 775 acres(not my properties). This cannot be done in many areas of our country.

Things you can do to help are...plant a pollinator garden, sow white dutch clover back into your yards like your grandparents did(grass seed mixes used to contain it), grow some of your own food or buy it at a local farmer's market, quit killing dandelions, quit spraying Roundup on fence rows, complain to road departments/power companies on the excessive use of herbicides, become a beekeeper, buy local honey from a beekeeper, buy a bag of white or yellow sweet clover for a beekeeper, or offer property for a beekeeper to utilize. I am very thankful for the two property owners that allow me to put hives on their land. One buys the lime, fertilize and sweet clover. The other installed a chain link fence around the hives.
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I knew we had an expert on here, and thanks for your thoughts. I wish I liked honey, but I don't. However, I know that there's some serious things going wrong in our Ag system, and the margins are just too thin to do anything but pesticides and for-profit crop yield. I'm going to plant something bee-friendly this spring, hope it does a bit of good. Urge everyone else to do the same.
 
Honey bees are an export from tasmania to north america to try and replace hives lost to CCD. They package up a queen and some other bees in some sort of contraption and fedex it to someone in canada who distributes them. Bees are thick down here.
 
docmirror said:
I knew we had an expert on here, and thanks for your thoughts. I wish I liked honey, but I don't. However, I know that there's some serious things going wrong in our Ag system, and the margins are just too thin to do anything but pesticides and for-profit crop yield. I'm going to plant something bee-friendly this spring, hope it does a bit of good. Urge everyone else to do the same.
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Agriculture has the same problem that the rest of human society does. The intent we have for agriculture is to grow the greatest crop of money, not a sustainable supply of food. If the intent was to optimize for a sustainable supply of food that can increase to match the population growth, we would be doing things considerably differently. It would still make a good, healthy profit, just not quite as much on the food, the energy and water make far more than the difference though since we get 3 products for the same dime, food being the cheapest.
 
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JHW said:
Honey bees are an export from tasmania to north america to try and replace hives lost to CCD. They package up a queen and some other bees in some sort of contraption and fedex it to someone in canada who distributes them. Bees are thick down here.
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Hopefully you guys don't see Varroa destructor for a long time. That is one of our biggest problems here.
 
docmirror said:
I knew we had an expert on here, and thanks for your thoughts. I wish I liked honey, but I don't. However, I know that there's some serious things going wrong in our Ag system, and the margins are just too thin to do anything but pesticides and for-profit crop yield. I'm going to plant something bee-friendly this spring, hope it does a bit of good. Urge everyone else to do the same.
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This is just one of many companies selling a pollinator mix...

http://www.edenbrothers.com/store/p...tV3JgQTExfXyoSHP8z4LwRFxu7ZVXj12dMaApBP8P8HAQ

Don't waste your money on those bags of soil/seed mixes from the big box stores. You get less than ONE ounce of seed in a 2 lb $8 bag. Just amend your soil good, buy a lb of pure seed mix, find a good sunny, mostly weed/grass free spot, sow it, keep it moist until germination then occassionally afterward. Enjoy watching our wonderful pollinators while drinking something cold this summer. Thank you!
 
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