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+--- Thread: Where have the Honey Bees gone to? (/showthread.php?tid=9334)
RE: Where have the Honey Bees gone to? - Lin W - 04-20-2012
Here in upper HPP I have several flowering shrubs and many palms with lacy collars of flowers, all of which used to be full of bees, so many that you could hear them buzzing from inside the house. Last spring there were very few bees - this spring zero. We do have the big black bees but few and far between. Wonder if I should try to hand pollinate my kitchen garden, or just wait and see? Scary times.
You can tell yourself anything is too difficult, or you can just do it. And you do not need to reconstruct your worldview or take issue with others. ~ SUSAN GREGORY THOMAS
RE: Where have the Honey Bees gone to? - mosquitocontrol - 04-20-2012
We definitely need those honey bees. Bees are good for the garden like mentioned, they help keep control of the mosquito, flies and other insects.
RE: Where have the Honey Bees gone to? - jackson - 04-20-2012
70% of plant population is pollinated by bees. The honey bee population has declined by anywhere from 50 - 80% since the 1980s according to many sources. If the bees were to disappear quickly, famine would surely result and famine too often leads to war. The noteable quote from Einstein (doubtful he said it) was four years and mankind would disappear. Thought that statement is somewhat preposterous, two generations without finding another widespread method of pollination would likely be enough to make the Earth look like it had suffered a world-wide holocuast.
The more we rape and poison the Earth, the harder nature will fight back.
RE: Where have the Honey Bees gone to? - MarkP - 04-20-2012
As a reality check honeybees were not native to Hawaii or the mainland US and people thrived in both those habitats pre-bee. Not saying it won't hurt us or that the situation is not serious but if Einstein said it, proves he wasn't universally smart.
RE: Where have the Honey Bees gone to? - jackson - 04-20-2012
reality - there are over 4,000 species of bees many of which are native to North America. There are many plants honey bees cannot pollinate which are pollinated by other bees. The problem as I understand it is that the honey bee (brought to N. Mericaq in the early 1600s) are like the canary in the coal mine. As they go, so will go the others.
All these species dying are an indication of our world out of balance.
RE: Where have the Honey Bees gone to? - Kapohocat - 04-20-2012
Since honey bees #'s are declining.
then how do we encourage them to increase?
Now that's the discussion I would love to see.
RE: Where have the Honey Bees gone to? - jackson - 04-20-2012
Play Marvin Gaye around the hives.
RE: Where have the Honey Bees gone to? - MarkP - 04-20-2012
Again not trivializing the issue. It is very serious. However, the number of honeybees in the Americas and in Hawaii is artificially high compared to what they originally were (zero). We are witnessing a catastrophic decline of a species that has only recently experienced an increase that was almost as precipitous. Bee mites are strongly implicated in the decline, if not directly then as vectors. Bee mites co-evolved with certain breeds of bees, asian bees I think. I guess that those bees are less productive or are more aggressive than the Italian bees that are favored by bee-keepers. If we were employing the asian bees then the decline would not be so catastrophic. If we had not come to rely so heavily on a mono-culture of an introduced species we again would not be hurting so much.
Just saying that if we were talking about a scale insect knocking back the population of invasive guava to what it more normally is in the wild where it came from, there would be some people cheering. The two examples share some characteristics which we should acknowledge regardless of whether we are happy about it or not
RE: Where have the Honey Bees gone to? - Midnight Rambler - 04-20-2012
quote:There are multiple issues getting mixed up here. Many native pollinators are also in decline (Hawaii's native yellow-faced bees among them - yes they do exist, though they're fairly inconspicuous and pretty much only visit native plants). But that has to do with problems such as increasing urbanization and industrial agriculture practices such as using every bit of land instead of leaving hedgerows that serve as nesting areas. Also, many native bees are declining because of competition from honeybees!
Originally posted by jackson
reality - there are over 4,000 species of bees many of which are native to North America. There are many plants honey bees cannot pollinate which are pollinated by other bees. The problem as I understand it is that the honey bee (brought to N. Mericaq in the early 1600s) are like the canary in the coal mine. As they go, so will go the others.
All these species dying are an indication of our world out of balance.
Honeybees, on the other hand, do very well around people and artificial settings. The problems they are having are the result of their being a domesticated/feral species - they've been introduced by people all around the world, but now pests from the native part of their range, or from closely-related wild species, are starting to get spread around as well and catch up with them. And most of these problems are specific to honeybees in particular.
For example, the original host of the varroa mite is the giant honeybee, Apis dorsata, from India; they are adapted to recognize the mites and kill them in the nest. European honeybees (Apis mellifera, the ones we're used to) don't recognize the mites and end up dying from them (though the African and Africanized strains do).
RE: Where have the Honey Bees gone to? - csgray - 04-20-2012
The amount of food that requires honeybee pollination is very high, Humans have come to depend on those foods, so a drastic decline in bee populations is a big deal. All tree fruits and nuts, berries, squashes, melons, tomatoes, are just a few crops that depend on bees for pollination, beekeepers truck their hives all over the country on the mainland to do that pollinating.
Think about no longer having affordable mango, lychee, avocado, oranges, limes, lemons, papaya, tomatoes, mac nuts, pumpkin, melon, just to name a few, if a fix for this problem isn't found. Once again the Dept. of Ag is a day late and a dollar short when it comes to protecting out farmers and food supply.
Carol