Open Source Beehives Designed To Help Save Honeybee Colonies 172
Lemeowski writes "Honeybees are disappearing at an alarming rate, with a third of U.S. honeybees vanishing last year. Since bees pollinate many fruits and vegetables, the disappearance of honeybees could cause the United States to lose $15 billion worth of crops, and even change the American diet. The honey bee disappearance is called Colony Collapse Disorder, a serious problem of bees abruptly leaving their hives. A new open source effort called the Open Source Beehives project hopes to help by creating "a mesh network of data-generating honey bee colonies for local, national, and international study of the causes and effects of Colony Collapse Disorder." Collaborators have created two beehive designs that can be downloaded for free and milled using a CNC machine, then filled with sensors to track bee colony health."
It won't do any good. (Score:1)
The bees are following the dolphins back to their home planet. They don't like what we're doing here.
"Thanks for all the pollen."
-The Bees.
The salmon are getting pissed too, btw.
Do be a Do Bee (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
A Romper Room reference?
Is the Bayer company killing the bees? (Score:3, Interesting)
http://action.sumofus.org/a/bayer-bees-lawsuit/ [sumofus.org]
http://globalnews.ca/news/903394/the-plight-of-the-bees/ [globalnews.ca]
http://corporateeurope.org/pressreleases/2013/private-letters-reveal-syngenta-and-bayers-furious-lobbying-against-bee-pesticide [corporateeurope.org]
Re: (Score:2)
The AC above hit the nail on the head, although I doubt it's just Bayer. My guess, though, living in the middle of a farming state is that Bayer will be selling a lot less of the pesticides thought to cause this. More study is nice, but we know these chemicals fuck bees up. While they're studying (and they should continue) they should stop using these insecticides.
I wonder if Monsanto is working on a patented, genetically engineered bee that's resistant to this stuff?
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, Bayer has a large tradition of such issues... now it's neonitcotinoids and in the past it was Zyklon-B.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer)
CNC ?? (Score:4, Informative)
Collaborators have created two beehive designs that can be downloaded for free and milled using a CNC machine, then filled with sensors to track bee colony health.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=How+to+build+a+beehive%3F [lmgtfy.com]
No CNC machine. Just some wood and glue. Want sensors? Add them. I'm actually surprised this didn't ask for 3D printers!
Perhaps, if you want to stop bees from dying, perhaps, just perhaps, ban systemic pesticides. Ban nicotinoids. Don't want to? Well, then don't bitch all all bees are killed off.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, because light, temperature and humidity values are highly valued by the intelligence community.
Wild bees not disappearing (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
"... we've had more wild bees than ever before"
Maybe they're tired of their "keepers" and just want to be free. :)
Re: (Score:2)
Commercial beekeepers don't want these bees because it's more expensive to test them to determine whether they are "Africanized" than to buy new, so they are usually killed by exterminators.
Africanized bees have already taken over South America. North America is next. It will happen. The only question is how long it will take.
Re: (Score:3)
We've had the same problems in Ontario(pretty damn far north from Florida). The heavily domesticated bees are suffering colony collapse, wild bees are thriving, in the last 5 years I've had 4 new hives pop up on my property in different areas. And my property isn't big, 38x120ft. Each time, I got my cousins boyfriend to come and collect the hives. These hives are doing fine, with only a normal 10-30% winter die off. While his heavily domesticated bees are suffering upwards of 50% or collapsing unless a
Re: (Score:2)
Now we just have to formulate an experiment to test the idea.
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If you're going to try to get away with sock-puppetry, you should be a bit less obvious about it.
Re: (Score:2)
(A) That he *IS* in fact using a sockpuppet account (and proves that he uses it for ghost-modding, definitely against Slashdot's accepted social rules), and
(B) exactly who he is.
And he seems to keep forgetting that he was told
(C) these little episodes are being recorded for legal purposes.
Re: (Score:2)
What you are doing is generally considered unacceptable by the Slashdot community. In other words: you are breaking the rules.
I, on the other hand, am not. I am satisfied with the honest mods I get from honest people. Which you have proved you are not.
I wonder how the Slashdot crew would react if I presented them with my proof that
Re: (Score:2)
"Nobody will ever know, because you're too much of a coward to do anything but whine using your Jane sockpuppet."
You are already proved wrong, because I already had them change your account name once over this harassment you have been doing.
Further, I am a big believer in giving enough rope to really, really hang themselves good. You're doing pretty well so far.
Re: (Score:2)
Changed name? Huh? You do know that "Anonymous Coward" isn't actually an account... right?
Now you're just being stupid, or pretending to be. The rest of us aren't.
You have already confirmed who you are. You confirmed who you were the other time as well. 2 + 2 still equals 4. I don't think that's changed any lately.
The only thing that matters is that I know who you are, can demonstrate that to others, and that there is a record of your behavior. I do, I can, and there is.
It doesn't get much simpler than that.
Re: (Score:2)
You just aren't as smart as you think you are. That's about two or three times I've said it, but I'll say it again for good measure: I don't think you're stupid. But you aren't as smart as you think you are.
You'll keep messing up. And I'll be here to catch it.
Re: (Score:2)
"I saw the Jane impersonator, and saw Slashdot change his/her username. That wasn't me, so you're either bluffing or technically incompetent. A similar conundrum applies to your recording internet comments "for legal purposes."
Aaaaaaaaannnnnndddd... you just proved my point. Again.
Re: (Score:2)
"Presumably your point was that I'm not the Jane impersonator whose name was changed. So I'll generously assume you were just bluffing and accept your apology."
Pretty big presumptions and assumptions there. And the only one you are trying to be "generous" to is yourself. No great surprise.
Re: (Score:2)
First, an AC who replied to me earlier pretty clearly identified himself. Second, it is not very reasonable to "assume" that an AC who continues to reply in the same thread, which was so obviously between two people, and particularly when the messages on one side are scored "0", is someone else.
Obviously it is possible. But it sure as hell isn't very likely.
Re: (Score:2)
"Oh, okay. Feel free to spread all the exaggerated BULLSHIT you want, without any consequences."
I thought you'd get the hint. I guess not.
Since I told everybody it was an exaggeration, I wasn't bullshitting.
AKA humans causing bee death (Score:4, Insightful)
The cause is known but for some reason some countries refuse to take the necessary action - ban the harmful pesticides, fungicides and stop over-working the bees.
Here in Britain we have a history of allowing poisons - MDF, air pollution, pesticides, Asbestos, trans-fats, BPA, a whole slew of nasty shit that are called food additives, if banning anything causes some company to lose money then it isn't banned.
http://www.treehugger.com/natural-sciences/scientists-discover-another-cause-bee-deaths-and-its-really-bad-news.html [treehugger.com]
When bathing in a bath of poison, switching to a different bath design is not going to help.
Re: (Score:1)
Science says the nicotinoids don't help, but Science also says this is not the only reason for colony collapse. viral and other diseases have probably been introduced.
Rather than chanting the simplistic 'ban insecticide' maybe what we need is 'do more good science now' because if we ban insecticide and don't fix the viral issue, we're not actually better off.
How about (for instance) exploring alternative pollenation species? I have been told that many locations have a mix of viable pollenators, insect and o
Colony Collapse Disorder already understood (Score:3, Informative)
Basically, the problem is that beekeeping has a monoculture problem - watch the video at the end of this link [permies.com] which explains that basically the bees are not treated well and there's not really a diversity of managed bees.
Re:Colony Collapse Disorder already understood (Score:5, Informative)
I was just about to post that video. A summary from the YouTube video description:
Re: (Score:2)
[[Citation Needed]]
Seriously, this sounds like a collection of random ideas rather than the result of proper studies. A couple sound like nutbar dreams, others sound like the folks proposing them aren't necessarily stupid but do have little grasp on science.
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Feed bees honey not sugar?
Are you mad? Thats the number one way to give a healthy hive AFB or something else nasty and I personally like my beehives and don't feel like burning them down because I gave them AFB from tainted honey.
Yes, if only there were a way for bees to make their own honey......
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"Basically, the problem is that beekeeping has a monoculture problem - watch the video at the end of this link which explains that basically the bees are not treated well and there's not really a diversity of managed bees."
Mod parent up.
I've been making this monoculture argument for years. It is just as valid as a reason why spread of "Roundup Ready" corn and other crops are a very Bad Idea.
History is chock-full of examples of why monoculture crops (and bees are a "crop" of sorts) is courting disaster. When you are dependent on a monoculture, any little thing can cause it all to "collapse". The Irish Potato Famine is one good, famous example.
Diversity is a usually good thing, whether you're talking about human cultur
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"I wasn't convinced about your monoculture argument until it swerved into racist territory in the last paragraph."
Racism, by definition, is treating people differently according to race. It doesn't matter whether that treatment is better or worse... it means different.
"Affirmative Action", as it has been called, is government-sanctioned racism.
You don't get to re-define "racism" as "only if it's against MY race". Or "only if it's against minorities."
No points.
Re: (Score:2)
"Jane's claim implies that a university with 100% white male students isn't less diverse than a university with at least some students who aren't white and male. What a fascinating definition of diversity..."
FAIL! I neither wrote or suggested anything of the sort. I am not sure whether the problem is your reading comprehension or your grasp of logic, but one of them definitely failed you.
What I actually meant (and for that matter what I actually wrote) is that one American university with exactly the same mix of races as another American university, is no more or less diverse than that other university. They are conformant in that context, not "diverse".
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"Saying "the way U.S. universities have tried to do" refers to their trying to increase their percentage of non-white/female students above ~0%, which makes universities more diverse."
Not even close. I'm the one who wrote it, so I fucking well know what it referred to, and that wasn't it.
I wrote: "... the way U.S. universities have tried to do. When they do that, what they end up with instead is many clones of the same mix.
What that actually referred to, was "affirmative action" quotas, which universities still have (and which was proved in court just last year).
When they enforce similar quotas (and most of them are similar), they end up with approximately the same mix
And fra
Re: (Score:2)
"That mix being something other than 100% white males."
Uh... gee, Mr. Genius, I guess the word "mix" would kind of imply that, wouldn't it? Especially since I already stated that was the subject under discussion.
Holy crap.
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"That mix of something other than 100% white males is more diverse than a "mix" of 100% white males.
No shit, Sherlock. But that wasn't the point.
WHOOSH!
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"The point is that universities have tried to "force" diversity by changing the mix of students from ~100% white males (which might be called homogeneity) to a mix that's not ~100% white males. Which is more diverse."
No, that was NOT the point. I wrote what I meant and I even explained it again. Don't blame me if you failed to understand.
Re: (Score:2)
Dan Rather Reports had a episode on this I watched a few weeks ago. I'm just a layman, but I was under the impression that there was intermingling of different bee colonies whenever bees are trucked in from different parts of the country. They noted this as one of the ways problems with one bee colony can spread faster (like an airport phenomenon).
Perhaps there is no genetic mixture when different colonies are pollinating the same orchards?
Interesting process (Score:1)
There's no mystery. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's real simple: monoculture and chemicals -- agricultural chemical warfare.
Hobby beekeepers are not having this problem in the cities. It's the commercial guys out where the spray'n'pray farms are who are losing bees.
The only reason that *everyone* doesn't know this yet -- is because the makers of said chemicals (cough Monsanto cough and others) have heavily invested in creating confusion around the issue to hide the fact that it's THEIR PRODUCTS killing the bees.
There is nothing further to investigate. We don't need any goddamn sensors in the beehives. We don't need to spend any more tax dollars or time researching this. We need to start banning some shit. Now. Yesterday.
Re:There's no mystery. (Score:5, Informative)
A lot of the problem is people who don't study or keep bees offering completely baseless opinions.
I do keep bees, asshat. I also make my own equipment, and do cutouts. I am not a professional, but I also don't lose anywhere near 25% of my bees! Let's just say I'm always learning, but I know a thing or two.
I'll make this real simple:
1) Spray insecticide on bees; they die.
2) Place bees near commercial agriculture where:
3) Farmers spray insecticides.
4) Bees die.
I'm sorry to you and the other nitwit AC, but this is fall-off-log-backwards dead simple fucking obvious even to morons.
Re: (Score:2)
LOL.
But morons have the advantage that they don't have industry hired research studying Logs instead of Idiots.
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Informative, but one place you fail miserably is at bulleting points:
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I'm the anonymous who called you out on being a MORON
... as I am both science and philosophically oriented I prefer scientific studies to generate facts and not untutored opinions.
You throw around a lot of ad hominem attacks, name-calling, and personal anecdotal evidence for someone supposedly science and philosophically oriented, Skippy the Anonymous Coward.
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I think I know what you were trying to say, but you messed up with the roundup part. Please get your facts straight. Roundup is a herbicide, not an insecticide. An overused and ultimately problem-causing herbicide, but not related to bees in any way that I know of. At least in this context.
The suspected class of insecticide is neonicotinoids, which is actually a naturally-occurring pesticide secreted by some plants. Two companies that I know of, Bayer and Syngenta, produce an insecticide based on this c
Maybe they're just tired of working for free? (Score:1)
Obligatory Fight Club reference:
worker bees can leave
even drones can fly away
the queen is their slave
Not alarming (Score:2)
Crop growers need bees. Beekeepers supply bees. When bees die, beekeepers make more. Maybe crop growers pay more and prices increase a little.
If pesticides on crops are killing bees, crop growers might have to decide whether they want the benefit of the pesticide at the cost of paying more for bees. It's probably not a hard calculation for them.
This is only "alarming" for drama people.
Why more research, we already know! (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact is - more research always helps - so long as it is not taken as an excuse for inaction when known issues are present. Glad to see work is being done to further understand the problem, and I hope the diverse reasons cited in the comments for this article are taken seriously and addressed before it is too late.
Insecticide (Score:2)
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You'd think that'd be obvious enough even for /.ers who are usually "too smart" for the obvious.
google this phrase: (Score:2)
"monsanto treats seeds with systemic insecticide"
The whole "we're going to lose all the honeybees!" (Score:2)
...thing takes on a much less catastrophic feel when you recognize that honeybees are an INVASIVE SPECIES, and that this continent was perfectly-well vegetated without them.
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Yeah, but to be fair, a lot of our crops aren't entirely native to this continent either.
Seriously, a CNC is needed? (Score:2)
I'll just go down to my shop and use my Northwood dual table CNC router and start milling right away. Oh wait, sold that business a decade ago. Never mind. I know! I'll just go ask my neighbor to borrow their CNC router for a few hours..... Darn. I asked my neighbor to use their CNC router and he called the police. He also looked scared and confused. Maybe I need to ask a beekeeper since obviously the project is aimed at beekeepers who all seem to have CNC machines.
Sometimes the maker community can be dumbe
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home laser/routing cnc's are now more popular than ever...
also cnc shops are cheaper than ever for such work.
if you want to bother with the hand tools https://www.google.com/search?q=beehive+plans&oq=beehive+plans&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.1579j0j4&sourceid=chrome&espv=210&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8 [google.com]
though, knowing bees, some twigs in a barrel with 3 holes would work just fine.
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also cnc shops are cheaper than ever for such work.
They are not in fact cheaper than whipping out a hand saw. You can build a beehive with ten dollars in tools: pencil, saw, and hammer.
There is some debate on what the best shape for a beehive is, though. It's fairly conclusively not square, from the bees' point of view. They can make a hive almost anywhere, but what is optimal?
CNC milling ? (Score:4, Informative)
That is not how beehives are made. I should know, I grew up as the son of a beekeeper. It is the "CNC milling" part in this initiative that may make it fail. Beekeepers have other things to do, and are often too money-stretched, than to invest in such equipment.
Thing is, already 35 years ago the first waves of Varroa mite swept over Europe and killed a bazillion beehives all over the continent. And we still don't have any insight into what CCD exactly is, what combination of factors it is caused by, what factors favorize it. We just and only gained some insight into how Varroa spreads. Apis carnica has hard times ahead...
hivetool.net (Score:5, Interesting)
Misleading statistic (Score:2)
The summary states that a third of honeybees vanished last year. While this is correct, it is misleading. Bees are lost every year, usually over the winter. This is normal. From TFA: "Annual losses from the winter of 2006-2011 averaged about 33 percent each year, with a third of these losses attributed to CCD by beekeepers." So, only a third of the losses are attributed to CCD. The other two thirds are normal losses. CCD is a serious problem, but it is not as huge as the summary makes it out to be.
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It seems the honeybee crowd only ever want to talk about winter losses or mortality rates, not yearly peak or average population.
Clearly honeybee numbers are actually on the rise, but they don't want us to know about it!
And I for one...
Argh! (Score:2)
I'm covered in bees!
also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlctsjhIy30 [youtube.com]
Problem found already? (Score:2)
I could be mistaken, but i remember hearing somewhere that scientists discovered the cause of this problem. Something to do with a small worm that was incubating in their brains and as it grew larger and more mature it would literally drive the bee insane. The bee would then fly away from the hive to die as its brain was being reamed out by this parasite.
I could be entirely mistaken, but that's what I heard.
That design is crap (Score:2)
Sorry, but it's crap:
* Uses plywood instead of wood that's naturally resistant to water and insects, line white pine (pinus strobus)
* That build wastes a huge sheet of wood instead of starting with small pieces. That's a waste
* Need for CNC
* Insanely complex build
* Angled roof, resulting in bad support for the hive
* No room to extend the hive to harvest honey
* No immediately obvious way to access the hive from below
** No way to check on bees to see if they are all right
** No way to deploy stuff that kills v
Re:An insecticide-infection connection in bee colo (Score:4, Funny)
But the insecticide companies say there must be a different explanation, so that's settled then. A massive multinational chemical company wouldn't lie.
Re:An insecticide-infection connection in bee colo (Score:4, Interesting)
Problem is CCD happens on organic farms and in countries where neonicotinoids are banned. In Australia, and large parts of Canada where these insecticides are widely used they DON'T have CCD.
The fact of the matter is that this is a witch hunt, and lots of innocents are being burnt on no reliable evidence.
But what the heck. Science be damned we KNOW it's the fault of some greedy company somewhere.
Re: (Score:2)
It's too farfetched to think that industrial farming and the use of GM modification in plants to imbed pesticides might actually have COLLATERAL DAMAGE?
However, I think we need a citation for this widespread proof you are seeing. There's not a lot of places anymore where there are no GM crops which are likely more a key player than the pesticides.
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No, it is not farfetched to think there might be problems with any particular artifact of technology. Everything you do in life has positives and negatives.
However it is TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE to just go and place blame on something for a problem without having any real evidence, and in fact in the presence of evidence to the contrary.
This is exactly what happened during the Salem witch trials. It's what happened to vaccines and why we are now getting measles outbreaks in he US when measles used to be conside
Re: (Score:2)
How do you think honey bees got the US in the first place?
THEY ARE NOT NATIVE.
The Pilgrims brought them. They have been shipped globally for FIVE HUNDRED YEARS.
No native American plants require bees for pollination.
Crikey how about some basic knowledge people.
FTFY (Score:3)
No native American plants require honey bees for pollination..
Many native American plants require do require bees for pollination but the imported (and possibly undocumented) European bees just don't do the job.
--
See Native Bees of North America: http://bugguide.net/node/view/475348 [bugguide.net]
Re: (Score:2)
http://www.setac.org/resource/resmgr/publications_and_resources/executivesummarypollinators_.pdf?hhSearchTerms=SETAC+and+Pellston+and+Workshop
Of course, maybe their boss' boss' boss doesn't know about this yet, which is why they're still in a job.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:only ONE species...sheesh... (Score:5, Informative)
Ummm...no. The current instance of Colony Collapse Disorder is a marked difference in bee colony behavior that began in about 2007-2008. The dieoffs are far larger than anything seen before.
Current theories are that neonicitinoids were introduced at about the same time that CCD began devastating bee colonies. Neonicitinoids, such as imidicloprin, are some of the latest and safest insecticides on the market, with very little harmful effects on mammals. But they have one huge drawback: it has been recently learned that they are extremely lethal to bees - up to 150X more lethal to bees than to other insects. They are neurotoxins. Even sub-lethal doses cause visible confusion in the bees, resulting in "incorrect" dances that the bees use to tell other bees about nearby sources of food.
Re:only ONE species...sheesh... (Score:5, Interesting)
I work for a university in central Illinois that does a large amount of bee related research. (Full disclosure: I'm not one of the researchers. I do the repair work on their instruments from vacuum pumps to mass specs. The guy in the shop across the street does even more work for those groups. We get to talk to them a lot about their work, and bees are an interest of mine. see below for the reasons.)
Though there is thought that the neonicotinoids may be related, it's probably not the whole story. (see: http://illinois.edu/lb/article/72/3231/page=1/list=list [illinois.edu] and http://illinois.edu/lb/article/72/73513/page=1/list=list [illinois.edu] for some insight by two of our researchers). Most of the ones I've talked to think it's a combination of factors.
Agriculture here uses large amounts of the neonicotinoids, and the bee declines started before they were being used.
Just from my own observations (I kept bees along with my dad when I was a kid), the declines in bee population were happening here in Illinois long before the neonicotinoids were fielded. I was amazed at the drop in the numbers of wild bees here in the early nineties. The stress of varroa mites was likely a big part of that. Some other diseases are thought to have been involved as well.
The EU has largely restricted the neonicotinoids so we should have some comparison data in a few years.
New study what's killing the bees; future of ag (Score:5, Informative)
http://qz.com/107970/scientists-discover-whats-killing-the-bees-and-its-worse-than-you-thought/ [qz.com] ...
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0070182#authcontrib [plosone.org]
-----
Scientists had struggled to find the trigger for so-called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) that has wiped out an estimated 10 million beehives, worth $2 billion, over the past six years. Suspects have included pesticides, disease-bearing parasites and poor nutrition. But in a first-of-its-kind study published today in the journal PLOS ONE, scientists at the University of Maryland and the US Department of Agriculture have identified a witch's brew of pesticides and fungicides contaminating pollen that bees collect to feed their hives. The findings break new ground on why large numbers of bees are dying though they do not identify the specific cause of CCD, where an entire beehive dies at once.
When researchers collected pollen from hives on the east coast pollinating cranberry, watermelon and other crops and fed it to healthy bees, those bees showed a significant decline in their ability to resist infection by a parasite called Nosema ceranae. The parasite has been implicated in Colony Collapse Disorder though scientists took pains to point out that their findings do not directly link the pesticides to CCD. The pollen was contaminated on average with nine different pesticides and fungicides though scientists discovered 21 agricultural chemicals in one sample. Scientists identified eight ag chemicals associated with increased risk of infection by the parasite.
Most disturbing, bees that ate pollen contaminated with fungicides were three times as likely to be infected by the parasite. Widely used, fungicides had been thought to be harmless for bees as they're designed to kill fungus, not insects, on crops like apples.
"There's growing evidence that fungicides may be affecting the bees on their own and I think what it highlights is a need to reassess how we label these agricultural chemicals," Dennis vanEngelsdorp, the study's lead author, told Quartz.
Labels on pesticides warn farmers not to spray when pollinating bees are in the vicinity but such precautions have not applied to fungicides.
Bee populations are so low in the US that it now takes 60% of the countryâ(TM)s surviving colonies just to pollinate one California crop, almonds. And thatâ(TM)s not just a west coast problemâ"California supplies 80% of the worldâ(TM)s almonds, a market worth $4 billion.
----
This has been so obvious for many many years to the organic faring community... It is just another negative externality of conventional farming practice, and another example of market failure to account for systemic risk.
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/162375-whos-killing-the-bees-new-study-implicates-virtually-every-facet-of-modern-farming [extremetech.com]
In general, safety studies are almost never done (including for human health) on *combinations* of chemicals (including human medicines). And studies of health effects of individual chemical's health affects often ignore secondary, tertiary, and further breakdown products.
The future of agriculture is probably indoors powered by cheap electricity (from fusion and solar) and managed by robots (including probably pollination).
http://www.howstuffworks.com/environmental/conservation/issues/farm-indoors.htm [howstuffworks.com]
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/TCHA [juliansimon.com]
Re: (Score:2)
It's kind of obvious that Bees are being killed off with "death by a thousand cuts." Whether it be the GM pesticides built into plants, or some other toxin we find in the pollen -- the point is; we have too many knives.
In our "profit only" driven system, we have to prove a specific cause to shut down a specific product. It will take decades to prove a specific cause -- and meanwhile, someone will come out with a new GM product or pesticide and yet another knife.
The number of fingers being pointed will outnu
Re: (Score:2)
TL;DR
AIDS patients die because of Pneumonia or a host of rare diseases that do not kill off healthy people. Bees die off due to parasites, diseases, and many maladies that do not kill healthy bees.
So our current unnatural pesticide and GM farming practices are causing Bees to die by opportunistic infections and parasites that are natural. Studies can make the problem look really complicated if we don't look at the system as a whole.
Great post - thanks! (Score:2)
Great post - thanks. This is what makes Slashdot such a great site.
Re: (Score:2)
In fact there's a huge controversy about neonicotinoids ban. Not against, but it happens that despite the ban some national laws (like here in Holland) have found a gap in legislation that allows it's massive use. You can even find it in garden centres, no problem.
And most published studies also agree on pointing at a combination of factors with neonicotinoids as one of the most important.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Given the importance of bees in our agricultural system, I'd think that a little caution would be prudent. There's no need to ban substances outright on a permanent basis, but a 2-3 year moratorium would allow us to see whether it solves the problem and decide whether the ban should be made permanent.
The "let's do nothing until we're sure" strategy isn't really the way you want to play the "preserving a resource we need to produce our food" game.
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I don't think we need to go that far. If pesticides are truly the problem, it should be evident in fewer cases of CCD in regions that are mostly covered in organic farms. They might need to restrict local homeowner uses on flowers and gardens, just for a test. Plus, there is no evidence that removing one cause is sufficient to recover the populations. Mites could still be a significant factor.
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Monsanto, a.k.a. federal government, will obviously kill any chemical bans long before they see the light of day. But are they doing any research on a patentable super-bee?
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Monsanto would most probably love it as an opportunity to introduce new sorts of GMO and also as a way of showing to the world that their GMO crops are harmless. So it's a pretty dual stance and I don't think Monsanto in particular gives much of a shit.
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a 2-3 moratorium on chemical manufacture would devastate the industry manufacturing that chemical
(eyebrow raise) The entire agricultural pesticides industry would be devastated by a single one of their products being temporarily banned?
That's one heck of a fragile industry you've got there.
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No, there are many agricultural pesticides. Problem is one company does not manufacture 50 types of pesticides; some are specialized, and the ones with capacity for 6 chemicals will be better served by re-tooling if they can't sell one of them. Then there's an expense to re-tool back after a moratorium, which they'd rather avoid. Start-up costs are big, and risk is high. Some companies drop the product and never come back, others completely fold, others drop capacity and employees.
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You are right, poor little BASF and Bayer... they were able to finance the Third Reich and survived restructuring after WWII and ban on a large list of chemicals including DDT... but now they will be devastated if we ban a single one of them. I can't but cry for them... Bwaaahhhhh!!
How will they survive, in Gods name, how? Not even the Greek masters could hav imagined a tragedy as huge as this!!
And BTW, why the heck to you lobby for a bunch German companies?
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You fail to see that "the companies, bla, bla..." are not a small startup in a garage specialised in making neonicotinoids for the hobby gardner but BASF,Bayer, Dupont etc... for which changing to one or the other compound will hardly mean "end of business" for any of them.
Do you have any study about bumblebees not being affected? From what I have read and heard (and it's a mayor topic here in Holland) we jsut don't have any numbers on wildlife but only on domestic bees (for rather obvious reasons).
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Let's repeat this.
SPECIALIST businesses will likely die, or retool away.
DIVERSIFIED businesses will likely survive, and retool away from the banned product.
After retooling and specialist collapse, nobody will be making the banned product. The market will not provide a great opportunity for moving back onto the banned product--even if it's discovered to have the most benign environmental impact. That means the product is, effectively, likely to be lost forever.
Devastates an industry: the manufact
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I agree that it's far from proven. Pesticides, however, are still likely to be significant contributors.
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They quite possibly are part of the problem. If not as a main cause, then as an exacerbating factor. And, though the neonicotinoids are currently under suspicion, it could be other chemicals, or combinations of them that are contributing. Nearly anything that reduces the overall health of a hive is going to make it just that much worse whether it's the main cause or not.
And, it could be that varroa mites and diseases have hurt the colonies enough that chemicals in amounts that wouldn't have had a major impa
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Our restrictions don't mean anything. We aren't applying them.
No, it affects MORE THAN ONE SPECIES ! (Score:3, Interesting)
Why does no one ever give the full story about bees? There's only one species of bee suffering from colony collapse disorder(CCD) and that's been going on and written about since the 1800's so it's not a new thing.
While most of the colony collapse disorders affected the European Bumble Bees, other bees are also affected.
The culprit is the MITES, specifically the Varroa Mites
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder#Varroa_mites [wikipedia.org]
There is NO WAY to kill those mites without harming the bees, and the mites can evolve much faster than the bees, making them effectively immune to whatever chemical concoction that we use to kill them, while the bees can't cope with the same chemicals (when we use it inside the b
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Re:Would help, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
"Killer" or Africanized honeybees are not as big a problem as the mass media made them out to be. The solution turns out to be rather interesting.
Africanized bees like different dimensions in their hives -- smaller boxes, less space between frames. They're angry in European-sized bee equipment, but give them homes they're comfortable with, and their "killer" behavior goes away. Colonies of Africanized bees can be re-queened with gentler European queens, too.
In Brazil, the Africanized bee is considered to have been re-domesticated this way, and it's only a matter of time before it's the case everywhere.
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The price of queen bees, which can apparently be produced on demand very quickly, hasn't gone up appreciably.
As compared to when? It has in fact gone up significantly. Queen-rearing is non-trivial. It's not turnkey; not everyone can even accomplish it.
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how about the associated hunger that may go along with that money loss. How about the alteration of essential dietary needs as food becomes costlier and less diverse. I am not interested in a Soylent diet. Money is just the surface.
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(you know you need to move the hive around, right?)
Are you basing that on beekeeping fact, or just on the fact that you found a picture of a truck full of beehives, which only suggests that one guy once had a reason to move a lot of beehives?
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