Bumblebees are, however, doing well in one region, Neath Port Talbot, which was declared the bumblebee capital of Wales in 2004 after experts found 15 different species thriving there. This is almost certainly because the local council allows roadside verges to become overgrown with “weeds” and wildflowers. (20)
Surprise — it’s an ecosystem thing. As with honeybees and CCD, the root of the bumblebee problem lies in our modern rationalist drive toward endlessly ordering the world around us. The long-term solution is a return to a more natural ecological order. This interpretation needs to be conveyed when mainstream media tell the CCD story.
Of course, with all the parasites, pathogens, pesticides and transit to stress out our hardworking honey bees, they are in peril. Even if some silver bullet saves us from CCD, it is more than obvious that we need to pay more respect to bees, and to nature. This truth may be generalized to most facets of our agricultural existence; the bees are just a warning. Wherever you look, pests are getting stronger as the life forms we depend on get weaker. Adding more chemicals isn’t going to help for much longer.
Beekeepers are a busy and underpaid lot, and we should pay more heed to their services. Even now, with the vanishing bee story headlining on major networks, government players appear to have their eyes elsewhere. “There used to be a lot more regulation than there is today,” says Arizona beekeeper Victor Kaur. “People import bees and bring new diseases into the country. One might be colony collapse disorder.” (30)
“The bees are dying, and I think people are to blame,” is how Kaur puts it simply. “Bee keeping is much more labor intensive now than it was 15 years ago. It’s a dying profession,” he eulogizes. “The average age of a beekeeper is 62, and there are only a couple of thousand of us left. There are only about 2.5 million hives left. …It’s too much work.” (30)
If CCD proves to be more than a one-time seasonal fluke, the job of beekeeping just got a lot harder. Pollination can’t be outsourced, although it isn’t too difficult to imagine fields full of exploited underclass laborers pollinating crops by Q-tip. Let’s hope we never have to go there.
Perhaps a sensible reaction to the information summarized in this short article would be to write a letter to your government leaders. Insist that they immediately allocate significant funding to combat CCD using a variety of approaches. This must include ecological approaches such as wildflower renewal. Furthermore, insist that our few remaining beekeepers be given the support they deserve and desperately need at this important juncture. Humanity cannot afford to ignore this battle. It’s not science; it’s common sense.
Peter Dearman is an English teacher living in Taiwan; concerned about depleted uranium, repression in Burma, stolen elections, organ harvesting, aspartame, sugar, species depletion, animal abuse, ocean pollution, helium depletion and the generally high level of bad things happening in the world today.
I read on the net that "organic colonies" are not affected by this problem. I also read that the same type of problem occured in parts of the US around 1990.
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joed (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 49 comments)
on Friday, May 4, 2007 at 8:57:39 AM
To begin, here is a link to an essay by Sharon Labchuk, who is not only an organic beekeeper in Prince Edward Island, but also an activist and most recently a political candidate (federal) for Canada's Green Party.
This is a 'rewrite' of the email that I quote from in the story above.
Regarding earlier cases that are similar, I don't know what you're referring to. A lot of other stories make a stronger claim than mine does that recent deaths, say circa 2004, that were attributed to varroa mites. I'll go looking a bit. If you want to find out about that, you could try the beekeepers lists, like the one Labchuk refers to in this article. Personally, I don't see the point in hoping that it is a one-time fluke that may have happened before. We are mismanaging bees and they are an extraordinarily precious resource.
On a brighter note, I did for the first time think of one obviously bright (as in optimistic) thought. Bees are insects, with short lifespans, so we can presumably get immediate results from improving our practices. Sorry for saying 'our' all the time, as if I am a beekeeper hah, but I think we should look at bees, and all pollinators, as a public good that might warrant special protection. They are certainly more important than spotted owls, right?
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Peter Dearman (6 articles, 8 quicklinks, 6 diaries, 94 comments)
on Friday, May 4, 2007 at 10:42:05 AM
What is happening to bees is also happening to the other four "B's" that are absolutely necessary for a sane, sensible, and successful agricultural system that isn't being used primarily for the benefit of the fossil fuel producers.
In the title I've used, 'bugs are all kinds of micro and macro insect life (especially the beneficial soil bacteria needed to produce healthy plants, animals, and people) and for the sake of the alliteration, I've used 'baits' to mean all kinds of earthwsorms, especially those most preferred for fishing 'bait'.
Our agriculture is killing off all five of these types of vital aids to good growing practices. Darwin said we're wrong in thinking the dog is man's best friend. According to him, in his second-most poipular book, which was about earthworms, they're the true 'best friend' to mankind. If Einstein really said 'even with exaggeration' that man has only a few days of existence after killing off all of the bees, he probably knew of Darwin's conclusions about earthworms.
One of the saddest things of our time (to those who have spent decades studying the better and more profitable way for farming to go, as I have in my 84 years) is to see how determined we, the public, are to protect the unethical and unjustified profits of a system that has no sane and sensible reason for existing.
In Central Kentucky in 1956, I was given the basic principles of what I later named the StaMinA Soils System. And I was also pointed toward the goal of making that system practical all over the world. What I was given was based on more than four decades of work by Dr. Julius Hensel, the German biochemist who wrote Das Leben, one chapter of which was translated into English and published in 1893 under the title of Bread from Stones.
When 18-year-old Albert Carter Savage read that small book in 1893, he decided to spend his life formulating a complete soil-care system. When I met him in 1956, when I was 34 years old and he was 81, he allowed me to work with him for the months I needed to learn how to use that StaMinA Soils System effectively and profitably.
Little did I know how far the oil, chemical, and farm machinery industries would go to stop me. But I soon found out. Now, the world is paying the price of that 'blocking effort' in high-priced, low-quality, poor-tasting, and quick-spoiling foods that have to be put into silly concoctions and killed of all true life-supporting ingredients and then those packaged substitues for foods have to be touted to the tree tops to addict people to them.
1. Has anyone thought of importing mite-resistant bees from China?
2. Pre-Columbian Indians ate tomatoes, blueberries, raspberries, squash, etc. without the help of honeybees. Grapes certainly did not need honeybees when the Vikings set foot on Vineland. The remark that other insects can take up the slack implies that the people who sell honey and the people who make insecticides will suffer. Follow the money.
3. I have not seen a honeybee on my Pennsylvania farm in two years. None of my crops (apples, pears, plums, grapes, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, watermelons, cucumbers, squash, peas, and beans to name a few) have suffered. I don't use pesticides. I notice that plenty of small insects are crawling over everything. No doubt they do a lot of pollinating, along with those tiny bees native to the New World. This year the apple, plum, and pear blossoms have been fertilized and incipient fruits are swelling. The earliest blueberries that have bloomed appear to be 100% fertilized without honeybees. Where does the truth lie? Are any of the doomsaying pundits actually dirt farmers like me?
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JackN (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 28 comments)
on Friday, May 4, 2007 at 8:27:53 PM
Peter one of my graduate degrees is in Cultural anthro and the bee problem has vexed me, being an avid reader of Einstein's work and comments, I recall you quoted him about the bees and humans-scary, but predictable, so Unless you mind, I am going to put a link from my article up to day to yours, as well as put up your reading list and links in a comment of my own sending my readers over to you. My article is one of my rarer weak attempts at comedy, but I think what you have written here is important so I will list your bibiography, right now, because I do seem to get a lot of readers.
IT TOOK ME SEVERAL TRIES BUT THE HTML KEPT VEXING ME BUT I FINALLY GOT ALL OF IT IN AND WHEN I FINISHED, THERE YOUR ARTICLE WAS JUST UNDER MINE. DON'T KNOW IF MY PROMPTING AND REFERENCES HAD ANYTHING TO DO WITH MOVING IT AHEAD, BUT ANYWAY HERE YOU ARE WHERE MORE FOLKS CAN READ IT. AGAIN HAPPY BUT SORRY I GOOFED UP TRYING SO MANY TIMES TO GET ALL YOUR REFERENCES IN, GOOD LUCK.
just wanted to let you know, your article was posted on wrh, may 3, it still appears about halfway down the homepage, and also here is the link to it in wrh's permanent archives..
Thanks for telling me that. I also managed to land the article on the top page og Op-ed during its busiest day ever I think. This is thanks to Rob sending an email to all the users telling them about the visitor influx because an Op-ed story was getting super-digged right now. That got me to immediately submit the story, which had just finished going through some 'community editing' over at GNN.tv where I first published it. Thanks Rob.
I think I'll submit it to IndyMedia too in a day or so.
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Peter Dearman (6 articles, 8 quicklinks, 6 diaries, 94 comments)
on Saturday, May 5, 2007 at 8:34:37 AM
