Don’t know how much the problem has improved, but about a month ago I finally saw a single honey bee for the first time this year. I live in a rural area and garden their so it was a hopeful thing.
magpye, welcome to the Straight Dope.
When you return, could you please post a link to the column in question? I’m unable to find it.
Thanks!
The column has not yet been placed on the front page, so only those subscribing to the email announcement will know about it (the revision, which is at the end of the 2007 column) for a day or so:
Rico, you really should subscribe!
I do!
I haven’t seen it yet!
Really! I’m a loyal minion!
Thanks, Musicat!
I disagree with the conclusion of the article. I first noticed the bee missing several years ago on a dog walk in the park. I was prepared to walk through a field of dandelions ,and I got the feeling I did when I was a kid. Gotta do it but I might get stung. Then I was shocked that I and my dogs walked through and I saw no bees at all. Then I started to look for them. They are gone. They have not come back. Four years later ,still no bees. I walk miles in the park every day. Still gone.
I disagree with the conclusion. It was not an overblown sky falling thing at all. In my park where I walk several miles every day .the bees are gone. I first noticed about 4 years ago while walking through a field of Dandelions. There were no bees. There are still no bees.
To begin with, do you even know for sure that the bees in question were Apis mellifera?
Gonzomax, your observation may only apply to a very small area, and be distorted by many factors (bees might not be flying much the days you looked due to weather or other factors).
My measure of bee activity is the price of honey in the supermarket. If it doesn’t go through the roof, we aren’t in much of a crisis. If it is pretty stable, and since honeybees are the only producers I know of for commercial honey, the bee population is still around.
I confess I don’t know the retail price trend of honey, but the last time I put some in my market basket, it didn’t cause a wallet shock at the checkout stand, so it must have been pretty reasonable.
It’s purely anecdotal, but it seems to me I’ve been seeing a larger variety of bees & wasps. I wonder if the honey bee die-back isn’t beneficial for our native pollinators.
I do still see what I believe are honey bees. They mainly work the catnip.
RE price of honey, here are some charts:
http://www.honey.com/honeyindustry/statistics.asp
The price has indeed risen from 2004-2008, but not much, and inflation needs to be taken into account before you blame CCD. If 90% of the bees were gone, I think you’d see much greater honey price spikes.
Another item that would be affected by CCD is the price orchards and farmers pay to rent beehives for pollination. I don’t have any figures for that at the moment.
Because I noticed they were missing ,I kept looking. They are gone. Whenever I bring it up, my friends agree . We have had newspaper articles and Tv news has covered it. The only bee keeper I met, gave it up.
Hard to say - it appears that monoculture farming and habitat destruction depresses native bee populations more than compeitition. Flowers and pollen aren’t necessarily a scarce resource, depending on the level of specialization. But it might have an effect on the margins or with particular species.
Certain natives are actually far more efficient at pollinating specific crops on a per unit basis than honeybees, they just lack the portability and sheer efficient mass of honeybee hives.
I saw some Ceanothus carpeted with honeybees a couple of months ago at Ano Nuevo state park. It stood out in my mind as the first time in quite awhile that I’ve seen them in such numbers - meanwhile bumblebess were incredibly numerous and active this summer o a big patch of ornamental Erigonum at my job.
But of course anecdotes don’t mean much.
HUH???
Is this the SDMB, or a wacko conspiracy theory board?
Most of the article makes sense, but the part I’ve quoted is hardly what I expect from this site.
“How can you research this”? asks the Science advisor. Well, how about doing a little scientific research? And a little journalism, too.
Instead of wild wacky and TOTALLY UNSUPPORTED guesses, how about fighting my ignorance, by answering a few questions:
- What types of chemicals are used by bee keepers to kill mites legally? (my proposed suggestion to solve this question : ask 'em)
- What types of chemicals have the same abilities to kill mites, but are illegal? (my proposed suggestion : ask a professor of chemistry, or maybe post the question on an internet message board frequented by well-informed people )
- Where are such chemicals sold? What type of equipment do beekeepers use, how much of it can be sterilized and destroyed? And how much does it cost to replace? What techniques of sterilization are used?
(my suggestion: do some investigative journalism: like asking the manufacturers of said equipment and chemicals how many sales they make per year.Then follow the money (hey, it worked for Woodward and Bernstein in Watergate) .
Okay, I’ve finished now.
And I apologize for being obnoxious. I realize that this board is run by volunteers, who have jobs and stuff. (Heck, some of 'em might even have families to raise, and real lives to live. But I hope not–this place is too adictive 
)
So if a certain issue is beyond the resouces of the author to answer, then let’s all admit it. I was glad to learn that colony collapse has not turned out to be a serious problem, and I find it interesting that nobody knows why.
But stick to the facts…
If you don’t have the time and money to solve the mystery, let’s not declare it an impossible problem, caused by a conspiracy of unnamed people using unnamed chemicals.
chappachula, I would suggest you a) look up the definition of “purely hypothetical” and b) reread the article since you have obviously completely missed the point he was trying to make before going off on a rant like that…
A friend of mine who is a beekeeper suggests that the issue may have to do with IMD, a legal pesticide. To quote my friend:
I found this informative article about IMD and bees disappearing:
http://www.ombwatch.org/article/articleview/4343/1/1?TopicID=1
Do any other apicurists here have an opinion on this?
It’s not just the honey prices we’ll have to worry about.
Unh…that article is a year and a half old, and is threatening dire consequences to our food supply (from lack of pollination). So either it’s too soon to tell, or the warnings were a little too strident, because although food prices have risen in the past year, I don’t think it has had “a devastating effect on America’s dinner plate, perhaps even reducing us to a glorified bread-and-water diet.”
I’m eating chicken with veggies tonight, and apple cobbler for dessert. What are you having? Bread and water?
Is there a Dope thread on why bees make honey?
I don’t recall a thread, but I can speak from experience as a beekeeper in ages past…honey is a food and a food storage medium. When the nectar is evaporated down and cells are capped, honey keeps for a long time and sustains the colony over the winter in harsh climates. It’s mostly sugar, in fact I have been told that bees are relatively insensitive to sugar to prevent them from wasting time gathering low-sugar nectar.
When I fed my bees in the very early spring – when their stores were running out and they needed extra energy to build the colony for the summer – I would give them a sugar water mixture made with 2 cups of (granulated white cane) sugar dissolved in 1 cup of water. To a human, that is…icky tasting, but the bees love it.
Or as seen on a bumper sticker, “Bee healthy. Eat your honey.”
Firstly, in my previous post there was no declaration one way or the other. I was just pointing out that [if it’s true] honey won’t be the only thing affected. In fact, if true, we’ll be damned lucky if honey was our only concern.
So, you can wait until we’re all having bread and water before you take it seriously…
Or…
You can keep an open mind and do a little more research before you summarily dismiss what others (i.e. experts) are already finding to be true. I’ll admit to leaning towards believing it’s true, or at least believing it’s definitely worth a second look before being dismissive about it.
And, unh, here’s some more “research” to help you become better informed (which you obviously aren’t)…
I watched this PBS documentary filmed a few weeks ago that I personally find difficult to dismiss…
NATURE - Silence of the Bees
You can watch the entire documentary online.
There’s tons more information available if you’re willing to really look into it. For instance, the Mid-Atlantic Apiculture Research and Extension Consortium provides an exhaustive list of links on Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). … including this one titled Colony Collapse Disorder: A Complex Buzz from the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). It’s an article published just this past summer in the Agricultural Research magazine. It states that… While CCD is truly a serious problem, agricultural pollination is not in crisis at this time. There were enough honey bees to provide all the pollination needed in 2007. Specific reports of CCD during the last year were not greater than they were in 2006. But a survey of managed hives done in fall and winter 2007 by the Bee Research Lab and the Apiary Inspectors of America showed that beekeepers lost about 35 percent of their hives compared to 31 percent in 2006, so bee losses overall are not improving.