Actually that link was to a subsequent interview. The PBS link I really meant to offer is here…
I’m not expert, but I question that article. It states Honeybees “pollinate more that 90 of the tastiest flowering crops we have. Among them: apples, nuts, avocados, soybeans, asparagus, broccoli, celery, squash and cucumbers.”
Well, how nice for them. So do thousands of other native insects, as well as the wind. When is the last time you ate asparagus, broccoli, or celery seeds? Okay, maybe you used celery seeds as a spice, but we don’t need these crops to be pollinated. I’m sure the seed growers have no problems bringing these plants to seed. I sure don’t want to eat broccoli that has actually bloomed and produced seed.
The article says:
So? We use honeybees to do 80% of the work, but that scarcely means honeybees are evolution’s only answer to pollination. My corn, tomatoes, peppers, squashes and really just a whole crap load of veggies grow just fine without honeybees. When’s the last time you ate lettuce seeds? We don’t want them to go to seed!
It’s just my humble opinion, but I find that article misleading and sensationalistic.
More editing/clarifying. … The documentary was actually filmed last year(?) but I saw it broadcast in my area a few weeks ago.
And you’re sure honeybees aren’t participants in that?
Um, how did you grow lettuce? I grow mine from seed. So, I’m guessing you grow your lettuce from transplants? But where did those transplants come from? Don’t you know that lettuce transplants come from seeds?
I have a Romaine lettuce plant I let bolt this year. It’s got I’m sure 100’s of seeds on just the one plant. Did a honeybee do it? I can’t say one way or the other, but I’m dead certain a honeybee wasn’t required and I won’t eat for years, the number of Romaine lettuce plants I could grow from this one plant.
I often like to hand pollinate my squashes, gourds, cukes, etc. I have to go out before sunup to beat the ants & bumblebees to them. Could honeybees lend a hand? Maybe, but bumblebees are the ones I have to race to the flowers. Bumblebees are excellent pollinators and in no danger from whatever it is affecting honeybees.
Granted, I forgot that lettuce is self-pollinating, so I’ll give you that one. But I was specifically responding to comment that we don’t want lettuce seeds. I agree that we don’t want lettuce to go to seed if we want to eat it, but we absolutely DO want lettuce seeds.
Otherwise, I’m sure those who’ve devoted their careers to this, those who researched, wrote the articles, filmed the documentary, assembled the committees and organizations around the world in order to study this, they all know exactly which foods need pollinators and which ones don’t. So your argument is really with them, not me. (And maybe you should write the ARS section of the USDA to tell them how ridiculous they all are?)
Ah, but I’m not really in a mood for a debate either. I just thought it was misinformed to think that honeybees are only necessary for honey. I also think it’s misinformed to think that hand-pollination will serve all our food needs; or to assume that all other pollinating insects, birds, etc., will naturally step up to compensate for a significant loss of honeybees; or to say “so what” about the bees because heck, we don’t want those nasty seeds anyway. All of that’s misinformed in my opinion. And I’m inclined to watch/learn more before I summarily dismiss CCD as overblown or insignificant.
raindrop, as an ex-beekeeper, I think I’m pretty well informed on the matter even tho I’m no longer in the business. I’ve seen most of the material you reference, and I’ve kept tabs on the situation fairly closely.
But I think it would be unwise to make firm predictions very far ahead. There are simply too many variables and unknowns.
What we’re having a hard time with here, and what the Staff Report Update was written to address, is just how serious this matter is: overblown or underblown? I don’t think there is a definitive answer at present; some indicators seem to contradict others. It’s certainly something that cannot be overlooked but it’s possible, in the long run, that today’s trends will reverse in the near future before reaching the gloom-and-doom predictions.
Musicat, I’m also not interested in doom and gloom reports just for the sake of doom and gloom. I’m also not interested in giving false and incomplete information. The article from the ARS seems balanced. I see scientists trying to do a sound investigation, not trying to create a problem that doesn’t really exist. My original response to you was only to point out that more than honey is involved because it seemed most(all?) of your earlier comments were about honey. But those who are researching this aren’t just interested in the honey; they are looking at a much bigger picture. That’s all I was originally trying to point out.
Other than that I also agree there is no absolutely conclusive evidence so far. Everyone can do their own research and make up their own minds about it. That’s why I provided the links of the most credible sources I could find.
Look, we’re talking about the European honey bee. What do you suppose people have been eating everywhere around the world besides Europe, very generously assuming the European honey bee is what was somehow keeping Europe alive?
Yes, of course we need seeds, but can you name a plant that must be pollinated by the European honey bee, and nothing else?
There’s also Apis cerana. or Asian honey bee that seems to work just as well, while being resistant to the mites probably responsible for the European honey bee die off.
From the column, SDSTAFF Doug said:
Uh, doesn’t that just make you the #1 loudmouth on the subject? 
raindrop said:
True. I don’t think anyone has said otherwise. The point about honey prices was that one obvious, direct link to a dramatic loss of honeybees would be a honey shortage. If honey is rare, then the price would shoot up based upon assuming a reasonbly consistent demand. But honey prices have not seen the dramatic increases that would herald a dramatic loss of bees.
Actually, it does make him an authority.
Google cites his article as the #1 resource on that topic. And when someone looks up that topic and clicks on his link, they are appealing to him, so by both definitions he’s an authority.
It may also make him a loudmouth 
I’ve never thought about this before: how can we harvest so much honey without killing off the hives? Have we cultivated bees that produce a huge excess of honey?
Once upon a time, when honey was harvested, the bees, hive, comb and all, were destroyed in order to get the honey for human consumption. Then the modern hive with removable frames and supers (modular hive body parts) was invented, and honey could be removed without killing any bees, the honey extracted from the frames, and the empty comb replaced in the hive for the bees to fill up again.
Works pretty well in many ways. It takes about 8 lbs of honey to manufacture a pound of beeswax, so by not destroying the wax comb, the bees can fill them up faster without having to make more costly comb. Beekeepers even fill up new supers with a wire-reinforced, hex-comb “base” that serves as a perfect template for bees to extrude the comb and make for easy handling.
And yes, as modern bees are raised and cultivated, with good hive management, good weather, and other favorable conditions, bees produce an excess of honey way beyond their essential needs, and that is what humans harvest.
New guy to the forum here, but long-time follower of CCD reports;
I do agree that a lot of the mainstream news articles concerning the honeybee die-off amps up the sensationalist factor to scare the masses. I remembered in 2007, the internet was rife with various theories that claim to be the specific cause of CCD, and if you dig even deeper, you’d find a lot of esoteric theories as well that border on the occult/conspiracy angle, but the less said about that, the better, I think 
The one question that bugs me to this very day however, is when you consider how odd it is that the concern here, is that the bees are “disappearing”. Not dying. Disappearing.
That’s the weird bit about CCD, not to mention the fact that “healthy” bees refuse to repopulate a CCD affected hive. The question then is as such; do apiarist find dead bees within a specific radius of the affected hive?
Well, the update to the staff report suggests that if the bee keepers are playing around with unapproved chemicals that could get them in trouble, they destroy all the evidence and sterilize everything before government inspectors can get to the bottom of it.
Also, if the bees are deciding not to return to the hive, you probably wouldn’t expect to find them dead near the hive.
Can any beeks here respond to the IMD query I asked about in post #15?
Thanks for the info. I’m a bit surprised because I would have expected the honey output to be just a little more than the hive needs to survive, otherwise it’s expending a lot of energy for no apparent evolutionary benefit. I’m not really looking for an answer (although if you have one I’ll take it!) just kinda’ musing out loud.
Chickens lay more eggs than they need, apple trees produce more apples than they need, etc. – it seems to be pretty common in nature to reproduce to excess if conditions allow.
I’m just musing here, myself, but I’d imagine the hives that can produce the most have an evolutionary advantage over marginal producers. Marginal ones may not last during hard times like winter. And one way honeybees reproduce, at the hive level, is to throw off swarms that effectively split the hive population in two. One part takes off to find a new home, the other stays behind. That can only happen if there is enough food and population to take a chance.
Beekeepers try to avoid triggering the swarming instinct, since they would lose half of their production team. So they make sure the bees aren’t too crowded and too overstocked at certain times of the year.
It’s also possible that domestic bees have been selected by man for high production qualities in the same way as crops are.
Or milch cows.
Um, check again, because there were in fact some in this thread who said “otherwise.”
I’d personally not want to wait until the honey prices went up before the researchers started looking into this. But of course YMMV.