The Bee Crisis

In search of truth, the mysterious, and bizarre. Gary rules here.
Forum rules
Civil discussion appreciated. No Spam...
User avatar
Gary Oak
VIP Member
VIP Member
Posts: 9841
Joined: June 25th, 2012, 5:32 pm

The Bee Crisis

Post: # 156573Unread post Gary Oak »

Those bees were still struggling to get their stingers out unlike hornets that just keep stabbing theirs in. That's good to know though as I might be willing to allow a honeybee to get it's stinger out if convenient to do so. I also support any efforts to help the native solitary bees.


User avatar
Blue Frost
SUPER VIP
SUPER VIP
Posts: 97938
Joined: May 14th, 2012, 1:01 am
Location: Yodenheim

The Bee Crisis

Post: # 156581Unread post Blue Frost »

I was hit in the temple by a hornet, and was sick for two months from it, and it felt like a hammer hit my head when it hit me.
I killed them all, and burned the nest, vile creatures.
It's been a real long time since I have been stung by a honey bee, since i was a kid I guess walking barefoot in the grass.
"Being alone isn't what hurts. It's when the people around you make you feel alone" ~ Naruto Uzumaki, an Anime Character
User avatar
Gary Oak
VIP Member
VIP Member
Posts: 9841
Joined: June 25th, 2012, 5:32 pm

The Bee Crisis

Post: # 156610Unread post Gary Oak »

Yellow jackets are invasive and out compete native wasps everywhere so I kill them whenever possible.
User avatar
Blue Frost
SUPER VIP
SUPER VIP
Posts: 97938
Joined: May 14th, 2012, 1:01 am
Location: Yodenheim

The Bee Crisis

Post: # 156627Unread post Blue Frost »

I hate those things, just vile creatures. Never hang out around a trash can in the summer here, they will get you.
"Being alone isn't what hurts. It's when the people around you make you feel alone" ~ Naruto Uzumaki, an Anime Character
User avatar
Gary Oak
VIP Member
VIP Member
Posts: 9841
Joined: June 25th, 2012, 5:32 pm

The Bee Crisis

Post: # 156957Unread post Gary Oak »

Being a bee fan this is a bit of a tragedy however I wish there was a photo or a video of this as it would be something to see.

'Swirling tornado' of 20,000 honeybees loose in Halifax, but don't panic

When Lorraine Simmons-Yerian heard a very loud hum coming from her backyard Tuesday afternoon in Halifax, she looked out her window and saw a "swirling tornado of bees."
"These guys went up above the tall pine tree and over my house and kind of disappeared within two minutes," said Simmons-Yerian, a member of the Halifax Honeybee Society.
She estimates more than 20,000 of her honeybees fled the hives she keeps in her backyard in the Fleming Heights subdivision and thinks the warmer weather could have been a factor.
"It feels more crowded [in the hive], just like us in the house with no air conditioning, and so they make the decision to leave on a nice day to really increase their chances of survival," she said.
Crowded, hot hives
When bees abscond, they usually don't go very far — 20 metres at most, said Simmons-Yerian. But this time they swarmed out of eyesight.
In the past, she's been able to catch them fairly easily. The bees typically will swarm and land nearby on a branch, where they surround the queen, form a big ball and then move a short distance again.
"It's actually a very natural process for bees. They're incredible insects. They will sort of scope out the whole hive, see if it's getting crowded, the queen will lay an egg to raise a new queen — that would be one that's going to replace her — and then they make a plan," explained Simmons-Yerian.
"They exercise the queen, they chase her around the hive and just before they're going to swarm, usually on a hot day like today, they all gorge on honey so they're super well-fed for the trip and then about 60 per cent of the bees just leave the hive in a very controlled manner." 
Don't approach the swarm
The bees usually swarm on fence posts or branches, but Simmons-Yerian said she has no idea where hers have landed this time.
After a swarm, the bees are "the calmest and most docile of any time," she said, and generally will not sting unless they're provoked. That said, she discouraged anyone from going near a swarm unless they are trained to deal with one.
"Don't panic, just give me a call and I would be happy to come and get them," she said. "I'm hoping to hear that somebody has seen the swarm so I can go and get it and bring it back home."
She said collecting a swarm often means donning protective gear and scooping the bees into a box or lowering them into the box if they are attached to a branch.
Anyone who may have seen the bees, can contact Simmons-Yerianto at 902-579-0959.

http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/swi ... smsnnews11
User avatar
Blue Frost
SUPER VIP
SUPER VIP
Posts: 97938
Joined: May 14th, 2012, 1:01 am
Location: Yodenheim

The Bee Crisis

Post: # 156965Unread post Blue Frost »

I always wanted to see a hive split, there may still be a queen in the hive even if one took off with a lot of the bees.
I hope that's the case.

Speaking of, my sister has a tree with honey flowing out of it, she has called to have the hive removed, and saved since she wants the tree removed. :)
Free Honey :)
"Being alone isn't what hurts. It's when the people around you make you feel alone" ~ Naruto Uzumaki, an Anime Character
User avatar
Gary Oak
VIP Member
VIP Member
Posts: 9841
Joined: June 25th, 2012, 5:32 pm

The Bee Crisis

Post: # 161171Unread post Gary Oak »

It's about time they found out what is causing this damage to the beee indunstry. Will this study hurt Monsanto I wonder ?

What’s killing the world’s bees? New study claims a surprising culprit

Scientists have found what they believe to be the strongest factor leading to the worryingly steep decline of bumblebees… fungicides.
The discovery has now been added to the growing list of threats that could potentially lead to the extinction of the essential pollinators. The revelation that common fungicides are having the strongest impact on the insects came as a surprise, as they typically affect mold and mildew, but appear to be killing bees by making them more susceptible to the nosema parasite or by exacerbating the toxicity of other pesticides.


© Kimimasa MayamaCanada fails to protect bees by opting against full pesticide ban – environmentalists
The discovery was made during a landscape-scale study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, which used machine learning technology to analyze 24 different factors and how they impacted four bumblebee species.

The study collected ‘subjects’ from 284 sites across 40 US states and tested them against various factors like latitude, elevation, habitat type and damage, human population and pesticide use.

For context, about 75 percent of the world’s crops are fertilized by pollinators. The widespread decline of bees has been attributed to a number of factors including pesticides, destruction of their habitats, disease and climate change, but until now it was unclear which was the most decisive factor.

READ MORE: 1st bee species officially placed on endangered species list

The unexpected culprit behind bee decline means “people have not been looking in all the places they probably should,” according to lead author of the study, Cornell University’s Scott McArt.

“We threw everything but the kitchen sink at this analysis and the ‘winner’ was fungicides,” McArt said to UMass. “It turns out that fungicide use is the best predictor of bumblebees getting sick and being lost from sites across the U.S.”


© Global Look Press‘Ecological Armageddon’: Plummeting insect populations could ravage life on Earth
“I was definitely surprised,” said McArt, to The Guardian, as “fungicides have been largely overlooked,” until now. Going forward, McArt says researchers will have to carry out “much more work on fungicides and their role in bee declines” if humanity is to make any progress in regenerating the dying species.

Common systemic pesticide sprays are used worldwide to manage landscapes, and are often found in nectar and pollen. Another recent study, published in same journal, found chemicals are causing severe nutritional stress on honey bees, affecting their survival rates by a whopping 50 percent.

The Canadian government recently failed to protect bees after rejecting a plea by environmentalists to completely ban the use of insecticides, instead opting to continue their use of neonicotinoids, promising to consider limiting the use of pesticides by March 2018.

https://www.rt.com/usa/414630-bumblebee ... ion-study/
User avatar
Blue Frost
SUPER VIP
SUPER VIP
Posts: 97938
Joined: May 14th, 2012, 1:01 am
Location: Yodenheim

The Bee Crisis

Post: # 161191Unread post Blue Frost »

They will never pay a dime for their crimes thanks to the people they own in Washington.
"Being alone isn't what hurts. It's when the people around you make you feel alone" ~ Naruto Uzumaki, an Anime Character
User avatar
Gary Oak
VIP Member
VIP Member
Posts: 9841
Joined: June 25th, 2012, 5:32 pm

The Bee Crisis

Post: # 161963Unread post Gary Oak »

User avatar
Blue Frost
SUPER VIP
SUPER VIP
Posts: 97938
Joined: May 14th, 2012, 1:01 am
Location: Yodenheim

The Bee Crisis

Post: # 161970Unread post Blue Frost »

Here it's clover they like the most, and you can taste it in the honey. Which reminds me my stock is getting low so Ill have to buy some soon.
"Being alone isn't what hurts. It's when the people around you make you feel alone" ~ Naruto Uzumaki, an Anime Character
User avatar
Gary Oak
VIP Member
VIP Member
Posts: 9841
Joined: June 25th, 2012, 5:32 pm

The Bee Crisis

Post: # 163286Unread post Gary Oak »

What can be done now? Isn't this a bit of a catch twenty two ? If you don't use fungacides then plants die and if you don't have bees then the plants can't produce. If they are correct then this is a big step forward I imagine.

Scientists Discover What’s Killing The Bees And It’s Worse Than You Thought

As we’ve written before, the mysterious mass die-off of honey bees that pollinate $30 billion worth of crops in the US has so decimated America’s apis melliferapopulation that one bad winter could leave fields fallow. Now, a new study has pinpointed some of the probable causes of bee deaths and the rather scary results show that averting beemageddon will be much more difficult than previously thought.

Scientists had struggled to find the trigger for so-called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) that has wiped out an estimated 10 million beehives, worth $2 billion, over the past six years. Suspects have included pesticides, disease-bearing parasites and poor nutrition. But in a first-of-its-kind study published today in the journal PLOS ONE, scientists at the University of Maryland and the US Department of Agriculture have identified a witch’s brew of pesticides and fungicides contaminating pollen that bees collect to feed their hives. The findings break new ground on why large numbers of bees are dying though they do not identify the specific cause of CCD, where an entire beehive dies at once.

When researchers collected pollen from hives on the east coast pollinating cranberry, watermelon and other crops and fed it to healthy bees, those bees showed a significant decline in their ability to resist infection by a parasite calledNosema ceranae. The parasite has been implicated in Colony Collapse Disorder though scientists took pains to point out that their findings do not directly link the pesticides to CCD. The pollen was contaminated on average with nine different pesticides and fungicides though scientists discovered 21 agricultural chemicals in one sample. Scientists identified eight ag chemicals associated with increased risk of infection by the parasite.

Most disturbing, bees that ate pollen contaminated with fungicides were three times as likely to be infected by the parasite. Widely used, fungicides had been thought to be harmless for bees as they’re designed to kill fungus, not insects, on crops like apples.

“There’s growing evidence that fungicides may be affecting the bees on their own and I think what it highlights is a need to reassess how we label these agricultural chemicals,” Dennis vanEngelsdorp, the study’s lead author, told Quartz.

Labels on pesticides warn farmers not to spray when pollinating bees are in the vicinity but such precautions have not applied to fungicides.

Bee populations are so low in the US that it now takes 60% of the country’s surviving colonies just to pollinate one California crop, almonds. And that’s not just a west coast problem—California supplies 80% of the world’s almonds, a market worth $4 billion.

In recent years, a class of chemicals called neonicotinoids has been linked to bee deaths and in April regulators banned the use of the pesticide for two years in Europe where bee populations have also plummeted. But vanEngelsdorp, an assistant research scientist at the University of Maryland, says the new study shows that the interaction of multiple pesticides is affecting bee health.

“The pesticide issue in itself is much more complex than we have led to be believe,” he says. “It’s a lot more complicated than just one product, which means of course the solution does not lie in just banning one class of product.”

The study found another complication in efforts to save the bees: US honey bees, which are descendants of European bees, do not bring home pollen from native North American crops but collect bee chow from nearby weeds and wildflowers. That pollen, however, was also contaminated with pesticides even though those plants were not the target of spraying.

“It’s not clear whether the pesticides are drifting over to those plants but we need take a new look at agricultural spraying practices,” says vanEngelsdorp.

https://www.jewsnews.co.il/2013/07/30/s ... ought.html
User avatar
Blue Frost
SUPER VIP
SUPER VIP
Posts: 97938
Joined: May 14th, 2012, 1:01 am
Location: Yodenheim

The Bee Crisis

Post: # 163287Unread post Blue Frost »

What they can do is what there was before those pesticides, let healthy plants fend for themselves, and use a more natural way of using the stuff we did have.
Just because Monsanto is selling it, and we are force feed their toxic plants don't mean we have to grow their plants, and use their products.
We had better food, and healthier food before they corrupted it, and our environment so much.
"Being alone isn't what hurts. It's when the people around you make you feel alone" ~ Naruto Uzumaki, an Anime Character
User avatar
Gary Oak
VIP Member
VIP Member
Posts: 9841
Joined: June 25th, 2012, 5:32 pm

The Bee Crisis

Post: # 164042Unread post Gary Oak »

I was stung three days ago at work by a bumblebee for the first time ever. It was a queen bumblebee and she is huge. She must have just been taking a rest on my forearm and I didn't notice her. I moved my arm in a way that must have made her feel threatened and she gave me a sting. It didn't hurt to bad and it still hurts a little bit now. Bumble bees won't get killed or harmed if they sting me especially queen bumblebees as I like them so much. I think she was tired looking for a place to make her nest and find flowers for some energy.
User avatar
Blue Frost
SUPER VIP
SUPER VIP
Posts: 97938
Joined: May 14th, 2012, 1:01 am
Location: Yodenheim

The Bee Crisis

Post: # 164043Unread post Blue Frost »

If you where sweating she was likely enjoying some salts, or she likes the soap you use. :)
Sometimes you can rub an aspirin on the sting after crushing, and wetting it, it might help the pain.
I used to get stung a lot as a kid, should have wore shoes when playing in the yard. Wasp really made me swell up, sometimes they just stung me for being around.
"Being alone isn't what hurts. It's when the people around you make you feel alone" ~ Naruto Uzumaki, an Anime Character
User avatar
Gary Oak
VIP Member
VIP Member
Posts: 9841
Joined: June 25th, 2012, 5:32 pm

The Bee Crisis

Post: # 164044Unread post Gary Oak »

I hope that she got a good feed before she had to move on. There aren't any flowers around yet here
User avatar
Blue Frost
SUPER VIP
SUPER VIP
Posts: 97938
Joined: May 14th, 2012, 1:01 am
Location: Yodenheim

The Bee Crisis

Post: # 164045Unread post Blue Frost »

They get some pollen from trees if they are budding out, and if they have a hive some maybe from last year.
"Being alone isn't what hurts. It's when the people around you make you feel alone" ~ Naruto Uzumaki, an Anime Character
User avatar
Gary Oak
VIP Member
VIP Member
Posts: 9841
Joined: June 25th, 2012, 5:32 pm

The Bee Crisis

Post: # 165389Unread post Gary Oak »

I had never heard of bzz polination or that one trip by a bumblebee is worth four trips by a honeybee. I also didn't know that there are only 46 species of bumblebee in North America. It's good to see that farmers are using bumblebees now too. I have seen that there are methods being used to help native solitary bees too.

MONITORING THE DANGEROUS DECLINE OF WILD BEES
Bees are an essential part of food production and a healthy ecosystem, so following the rise and fall their populations is essential.

Declines in bee populations around the world have been widely reported over the past several decades. Much attention has focused on honey bees, which commercial beekeepers transport all over the United States to pollinate crops.

However, while honey bees are a vital part of our agricultural system, they are generally considered the chickens of the bee world—domesticated and highly managed for specific agricultural use. They are not native to North America and often can't be used as a surrogate for understanding what is happening with native wild bees—the focus of my research.

There are about 5,000 native bee species in North America. Many have shown no evidence of decline, and some are thriving in highly urbanized areas. But other species, including some that were previously common, are becoming harder and harder to find. As scientists work to understand bee decline, it is important to identify the unique roles that native bees play, and to identify threats specific to them.

EFFICIENT POLLINATORS
One in every three bites of food we eat is made possible by bees. They pollinate almonds, apples, blueberries, squash, tomatoes, and many other popular crops. They also pollinate alfalfa, which we feed to farm animals, so they support the meat component of our diet too.


We need bees for food security and to maintain healthy ecosystems. Bees pollinate flowering trees and wildflowers, which in turn provide food and homes for other animals and improve water, air, and soil quality.

Along with honey bees, wild bees are also vital for crop pollination. Research has shown that the presence of wild bees increases yields across many types of crops. They often are more efficient at pollinating crops native to North America than honey bees. For example, a honey bee would have to visit a blueberry flower four times to deposit the same amount of pollen as a single visit from a bumble bee queen.

Wild bees have a unique way of extracting pollen from flowers called "buzz pollination." By shaking flowers at a certain frequency, more pollen will be released, thus allowing for more efficient pollination. Honey bees can't do this.

Bumble bees are particularly good at buzz pollination, so several species are now commercially managed. Increasing numbers of farmers who grow fruits, vegetables, tree nuts, and flowers are now using either bumble bees alone or a mix of bumble bees and honey bees to pollinate their crops.

BUMBLE BEES IN DISTRESS
But some bumble bee species are in decline. The rusty patched bumble bee once was distributed throughout the Eastern U.S. and southeastern Canada, but now is found only in a few small populations in the Midwest. In March of 2017, it became the first bee in the lower 48 states to be listed as an endangered species after its population shrank by an estimated 91 percent in 20 years. Other bumble bees, such as the American bumble bee have declined more gradually.


Reasons for bumble bee decline include increased prevalence of pests and pathogens, poor nutrition, and pesticide exposure. Many of these stressors are due to agricultural intensification, particularly in the Midwest. Traditionally, grassland prairies provided nutritionally dense, safe forage for bees. But most former prairie lands have been converted to corn and soybean fields or developed for commercial and residential use. As a result, bumble bees are increasingly exposed to pesticides and their food supply is shrinking.

Why are some species thriving while others are declining? Some research suggests that traits such as a narrow or specialized diet and large body size are associated with decline. But much more research is needed to fully understand which traits make species vulnerable, and to identify species that are especially at risk.

There are 46 species of bumble bee in North America; the other native bees (4,954-plus species) are vastly different in size, color, and life history traits. Because native bees are so diverse, it is hard to identify a primary cause for wild bee decline. But as with bumble bees, poor nutrition and pesticide exposure are likely culprits. We also know that the majority of native bees nest in the ground, so they are vulnerable when natural areas are converted to tilled agricultural fields or paved over. Providing safe nesting areas for native bees is therefore vitally important to their conservation.

MEASURING BEE ABUNDANCE AND DIVERSITY
I am part of a team at Michigan State University, funded by the Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture, that is working to fill in some of knowledge gaps about bees. Michigan has 465 documented bee species, each with unique life history traits It also has a diverse agricultural sector, ranging from specialty crops like apples, blueberries, and tart cherries to large-scale commodity crops like corn and soybean. And Michigan habitats range from highly urbanized to pristine wilderness. This diversity helps us ask questions about how different landscapes affect the local bee community.

To determine how the state's bees are doing now, we need to know how abundant and diverse communities were in the past. Fortunately, Michigan has a rich history of surveying bees, dating back several decades. We are replicating these studies now to detect changes in bee communities.

We are also sampling bees across different landscapes and regions to identify areas with low bee abundance or diversity where conservation efforts could have the greatest impact. But the only way to know whether these actions are effective is to track changes in bee communities going forward. Our project is providing an important baseline for future comparisons and assessments of conservation programs.

We are also monitoring the health of managed bumble bees and honey bees that provide pollination services to local crops. One strategy we are testing is whether management practices, such as wildflower plantings, can improve bee health.

Results from this project will provide the most complete assessment of bees in Michigan to date. Importantly, we are looking at all bee species, managed and wild, since they all play vital roles in maintaining a healthy agricultural system and ecosystem.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Kelsey K. Graham is a postdoctoral research associate at Michigan State University.

https://psmag.com/environment/are-you-n ... t-the-bees
User avatar
Blue Frost
SUPER VIP
SUPER VIP
Posts: 97938
Joined: May 14th, 2012, 1:01 am
Location: Yodenheim

The Bee Crisis

Post: # 165424Unread post Blue Frost »

i was attacked by bumble bees yesterday behind my garage, I left them alive for now, but they better not do that again.
One bit, or stung my back.

If I had the land I would have some hives.
"Being alone isn't what hurts. It's when the people around you make you feel alone" ~ Naruto Uzumaki, an Anime Character
User avatar
Gary Oak
VIP Member
VIP Member
Posts: 9841
Joined: June 25th, 2012, 5:32 pm

The Bee Crisis

Post: # 171358Unread post Gary Oak »

how do plants think ? They don't have a brain but there is an ever increasing evidence that they think. How smart are they ? Was this bee plant relationship really merely evolved or was it created ?

Flowers Can Hear Buzzing Bees

Even on the quietest days, the world is full of sounds: birds chirping, wind rustling through trees, and insects humming about their business. The ears of both predator and prey are attuned to one another’s presence.

Sound is so elemental to life and survival that it prompted Tel Aviv University researcher Lilach Hadany to ask: What if it wasn’t just animals that could sense sound—what if plants could, too? The first experiments to test this hypothesis, published recently on the pre-print server bioRxiv, suggest that in at least one case, plants can hear, and it confers a real evolutionary advantage.

The sweetest sound

As an evolutionary theoretician, Hadany says her question was prompted by the realization that sounds are a ubiquitous natural resource—one that plants would be wasting if they didn’t take advantage of it as animals do. If plants had a way of hearing and responding to sound, she figured, it could help them survive and pass on their genetic legacy.

Since pollination is key to plant reproduction, her team started by investigating flowers. Evening primrose, which grows wild on the beaches and in parks around Tel Aviv, emerged as a good candidate, since it has a long bloom time and produces measurable quantities of nectar.

To test the primroses in the lab, Hadany’s team exposed plants to five sound treatments: silence, recordings of a honeybee from four inches away, and computer-generated sounds in low, intermediate, and high frequencies. Plants given the silent treatment—placed under vibration-blocking glass jars—had no significant increase in nectar sugar concentration. The same went for plants exposed to high-frequency (158 to 160 kilohertz) and intermediate-frequency (34 to 35 kilohertz) sounds.

But for plants exposed to playbacks of bee sounds (0.2 to 0.5 kilohertz) and similarly low-frequency sounds (0.05 to 1 kilohertz), the final analysis revealed an unmistakable response. Within three minutes of exposure to these recordings, sugar concentration in the plants increased by an astounding 20 percent.

A sweeter treat for pollinators, their theory goes, may draw in more insects, potentially increasing the chances of successful cross-pollination. Indeed, in field observations, researchers found that pollinators were more than nine times more common around plants another pollinator had visited within the previous six minutes.

“We were quite surprised when we found out that it actually worked,” Hadany says. “But after repeating it in other situations, in different seasons, and with plants grown both indoors and outdoors, we feel very confident in the result.”

Flowers for ears

As the team thought about how sound works, via the transmission and interpretation of vibrations, the role of the flowers became even more intriguing. Though blossoms vary widely in shape and size, a good many are concave or bowl-shaped. This makes them perfect for receiving and amplifying sound waves, much like a satellite dish.

To test the vibrational effects of each sound frequency test group, Hadany and her co-author Marine Veits, then a graduate student in Hadany’s lab, put the evening primrose flowers under a machine called a laser vibrometer, which measures minute movements. The team then compared the flowers’ vibrations with those from each of the sound treatments.

“This specific flower is bowl- shaped, so acoustically speaking, it makes sense that this kind of structure would vibrate and increase the vibration within itself,” Veits says

https://sorendreier.com/flowers-can-hear-buzzing-bees/
User avatar
Blue Frost
SUPER VIP
SUPER VIP
Posts: 97938
Joined: May 14th, 2012, 1:01 am
Location: Yodenheim

The Bee Crisis

Post: # 171373Unread post Blue Frost »

Basic functions isn't thinking as much as an automatic body system like us breathing, or our heart pumping blood.
Plants don't think, but use this auto system, this is my belief.
"Being alone isn't what hurts. It's when the people around you make you feel alone" ~ Naruto Uzumaki, an Anime Character
Post Reply