Opinion

What's buzzing?

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Hi neighbors. Have you heard the news about honey bees disappearing by the millions around the world? For the last several years, bee keepers have been finding hives that are entirely empty of worker bees -- the ones that leave the hive and search for pollen.

The queens are still there and the larvae and young bees -- the ones who can't get out.

Another aspect of the mystery is that no wasps or other bee enemies try to invade the defenseless hive.

The problem, called colony collapse disorder, has happened before. The first noted time in 1894.

There are many suggested theories for the wide scale losses this time -- but no proof yet for any of them.

One of the most likely is the worker bees become disorientated or exhausted and just fly off to gather pollen and die before they get back home.

Varroa mites have been suggested as the culprit. Viruses carried by these mites have been thought to cause the problem.

The spray used to kill the mites has also been targeted as a potential cause of death for large numbers of bees.

Another is they are poisoned by plants that have been sprayed with pesticides or certain chemicals to help pollination.

It would have to be a quick death, in my opinion, and all the worker bees would have to succumb to the poison within a day or two. I would think that some bees would bring the poison back to the hive; enough to kill some of the larvae or the queen.

Since honeybees are now taken by the millions around the country in huge trucks to pollinate specific crops at different times of the growing season, it could be they have had their common sense or directional locator bred out of them.

Scientists have developed honeybees through DNA manipulation that concentrate more on pollinating plants than making honey.

Other scientists think they may be dying from radiation poisoning created by cell phone towers.

One man thought they were disappearing into tiny little black holes created by nuclear accelerators! Wow, I wish the mosquitoes would find all these tiny black holes!

Another culprit could be the "food" bees are fed while hired out to pollinate crops. This is a protein supplement and a liquid mix of sucrose and corn syrup carried in tanker trucks.

The bad news is the honeybees ARE disappearing in huge numbers. The New York Times article from February 2007 stated that 30 to 60 percent of the bees have been lost on the U.S. West Coast alone. Some bee keepers have lost as much as 90 percent of their hives.

At least 24 states in America and several countries in Europe have been affected. So far honeybee hives in Australia and China are not displaying this problem. This may rule out the cell phone theory in my opinion. I've heard that China has terrific cell phone coverage all over that vast country.

For every worker in a hive to disappear something drastic has to have happened. Hives affected have no little bee bodies lying on the ground around the hive which would indicate an attack by other insects.

Almond trees in California depend on honey bees to pollinate them -- and California depends on the almond crop to support a lot of its citizens.

If we continue to lose honeybees, we will lose a lot of crops besides honey. As much as one-third of the food we eat depends on bee pollination to grow. Many fruits, vegetables and nuts are dependent on bees to produce food.

An estimated 14 billion dollars in crops in the United States are dependent upon bee pollination.

The honeybee is Missouri's state insect.

Until the next time friends remember we need the honeybees or we may not have the produce from any crop that relies on a bloom for pollination.

A lot is at stake and something needs to be done. We may not have decades or even a single decade to figure out a way to save our honeybees.

One thing you can be certain of -- if the honeybees all die out -- we may not be far behind them as a species.