BEES COOL MAN

Pesticide data may tell why bees die

A Bayer CropScience pesticide is at the center of a legal battle for research data that could help explain what's killing U.S. honeybees in large numbers.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in a Washington, D.C., federal court, accuses the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency of hiding the honeybee data.

The Natural Resources Defense Council sued after the EPA missed a deadline to respond to a Freedom of Information request the council submitted July 17.
It's not unheard of for federal regulators to take years to fulfill an FOIA request. But in the case of Bayer's pesticide chlothianidine, the Natural Resources Defense Council decided to push hard.

THE BUZZ

All we are saying, is give bees a chance

There is increasing reason to believe that Gaucho and other members of a family of highly toxic chemicals - neonicotinoids - may be responsible for the deaths of billions of honeybees worldwide.
Something is killing the bees. Some scientists suspect a virus; others mites, even cellphones. (Bees are not known to use phones, though, having their own communications system - a dance called the "waggle.")

Rachel Carson was vilified by an industry smear nearly 50 years ago, after the release of her book, "Silent Spring." "If we were to follow the teachings of Miss Carson," said American Cyanamid, the maker of DDT, "we would return to the Dark Ages ... insects, vermin and disease would once again inherit the Earth."

But, as Carson so eloquently put it in a CBS documentary in 1964:
"Man's attitude toward nature is today critically important simply because we now have acquired a fateful power to alter and destroy nature. But man is part of nature, and his war is inevitably a war against himself."

COAL-MINE CANARIES

Cell Phones To Blame For Deserted Bee Colonies?

A small study from Landau University in Germany suggests that the navigational capabilities of honeybees may be adversely affected by radiation from GSM cell phones.

The findings could provide an answer to the mystery of disappearing bee colonies across the Western world.

The cell phone study, conducted by Landau's Jochen Kuhn, focused on the effects of cell phone radiation on the neurological mechanisms that control learning and memory.

Placing handsets near hives, Kuhn observed that GSM cell phone radiation in the frequency range 900-1800MHz caused the bees to avoid the hive.

[Kuhn speculates that the "waggle" dance that bees perform on the honeycomb to communicate with others could be influenced by the radiation.]

COAL-MINE CANARIES

Pollinate or perish

A mystery disease dubbed 'Colony Collapse Disorder' has destroyed about a quarter of the United States 2.4 million hives in the space of six months.

That means big business for Australian exporters, who are busy as bees helping to restock empty American hives.

But few Australian apiarists are rejoicing because they fear that whatever is causing the disorder may soon spread here.

In fact, just this week the CSIRO has been examining a sample of Asian honey bees recently discovered in far north Queensland, to see if they carry a mite - that just might be the source of the problem.

THE QUICKENING

BULLETIN #070520: It's happening faster than we thought

All the ominous predictions we heard about climate changes are now showing data indicating the effects are faster or more marked. And check out what's happening to the bees too.

COAL-MINE CANARIES

Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?

Scientists claim radiation from handsets are to blame for mysterious 'colony collapse' of bees

Scientists suggest that mobile phone radiation (and that of other hi-tech gadgets) is responsible for the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops.
Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon - which started in the US, then spread to continental Europe - was beginning to hit Britain as well.
Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) occurs when a hive's inhabitants suddenly disappear, leaving only queens, eggs and a few immature workers.
The vanished bees are never found, but thought to die singly far from home. The parasites, wildlife and other bees that normally raid the honey and pollen left behind when a colony dies, refuse to go anywhere near the abandoned hives.

[The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees' navigation systems, preventing them from finding their hives. There is now evidence to back this up.]

COAL-MINE CANARIES

"If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man." - Albert Einstein

Flowers and fruit crops facing disaster as disease kills off bees

Devastating diseases are killing off vast numbers of bees across the country, threatening major ecological and economic problems. Honeybee colonies have been wiped out this winter at twice the usual rate or worse in some areas.
The losses are the result of either Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), a disease that has already decimated bee populations in the US and parts of Europe, or a new, resistant form of Varroa destructor, a parasite that attacks bees.
Experts fear that, because honeybees are responsible for 80 per cent of all pollination as they collect nectar for the hive, there could be severe ecological problems with flowers, fruit and crops failing to grow.

In London, about 4000 hives — two-thirds of the bee colonies in the capital — are estimated to have died this winter.
In the US, 50 per cent of honeybee colonies have been destroyed by CCD, while hundreds of thousands have been wiped out in Spain.
Bee-keepers in Poland, Greece, Croatia, Switzerland, Italy and Portugal have also reported heavy losses. Meanwhile, scientists at universities in Southampton and Stirling who are concerned about declining numbers of wild bumblebees — which also aid pollination — are to use dogs to search for colonies in Scotland and Hertfordshire this year.

COAL-MINE CANARIES

Bees dying by the millions

Honeybees are vanishing at an alarming rate from US states with losses ranging from 30% to more than 70%.
American bee colonies have been hit by regional crises before, but keepers say this is the first national crisis.
The mystery disappearances highlight the important link that honeybees play in the chain that brings fruit and vegetables to supermarkets and dinner tables.

“I have never seen anything like it,” California beekeeper David Bradshaw, 50, told the New York Times.

[“Box after box after box are just empty. There’s nobody home.”]

Italian bee deaths signals woe for environment

Italian bees are been killed off by the millions and environmentalists and honey producers warned today this was a sign of a worrisome turn for the environment.
The National Beekeepers' Association UNAAPI said the country was witnessing a silent "slaughter of bees" and that Italian honey production would plummet by at least 50% this year.

"Bees are our 'sentinels of the environment', very much like butterflies and fireflies. Unlike ants, termites or coachroaches they are extremely delicate and will not adapt to a negative environment," UNAAPI Chairman Francesco Panella told ANSA.

"A bee does not survive contact with toxic substances and dies before it even reaches the hive. Pure honey, in fact, is nature's real wonder product," said Panella, distressed that the shocking mortality rate has not yet shaken the authorities and the public out of their complacency.
He claims the situation in Italy is far worse than in neighbouring France where in June environmentalists and the influential daily Le Monde drummed up a campaign highlighting the plight of French bees, claiming they were being felled by a new high-tech pesticide being marketed by a major multinational.

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

"Where the bee can live, man too can live" - Juliette de Bairacli-Levy

Howard's science award lauds military applications of the bee

The Prime Minister's Science Prizes, awarded in Parliament House in Canberra, went to Professor Srinivasan of the Australian National University for studying the brilliance of bees and even how their brains may be adapted to fly combat aircraft.

Mandyam Veerambudi Srinivasan: "What I could tell you about is something that really excites me for some of my future work. I'm getting more and more interested in trying to learn how sophisticated these small nervous systems are in terms of being able to feel emotions and feel pain."

RACIST PLANET

Asian Carp Disrupts Life

Part of the general fear campaign regarding those 'others'?

First there was Africanized Killer Bees, swarming up from South America. Now it's the Asian Carp.
The Asian carp, first brought to U.S. waterways to eat overabundant algae, is becoming a major menace to fishermen in states such as Illinois by consuming all the plankton and depriving other fish of food. (mpg 5mb).

For reasons involving some strange logic, German measles were called liberty measles during WWI.


[Fortunately human Asians, Africans and Caucasians (Aryans?) are all the same race ... imagine the trouble if they weren't.]