I thought we knew it was from chemicals? Just not which ones? Either way, we know now. And knowing is half the battle. Now we just need to actually do the hard part...
Bees Are Dying, Scientists Have Found Out Why
- Thread starter Lauren Admire
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It's nice to see this story finally start being picked up after more than a year. I guess Bayer (lead manufacturer of said pesticides and mult-bazillion dollar Big Evil Corp.) can only suppress it for so long.
Yeah, this shit's bad. Hopefully, there's bee friendly alternatives, but if not, we're gonna have to take a cut to crops to avoid having no crops at all.
Is it possible that beekeepers in a managed enviroment could work to increase bee population? Effectively...mass produce bees?Saulkar said:
You know, when people say if bees die out, humanity would fallow... It makes me think that that would be good incentive to not fuck with bees... I think we gonna need to fix this PDFQ...idarkphoenixi said:
actually from the insect pollinated plant bees to only a tiny fraction of pollination, well even less when it comes to honey bees (most bees are not hive animals).idarkphoenixi said:
Though we would end up with a limited supply of honey so I say by as much honey as you can (it never goes off) and wait for its price to sky rocket and re sell it.
Hopefully if the assessment is correct, we can mandate steps to take to turn the wave of CCD around. It's true that not all crops will be devastated if honeybees cease to pollinate, but enough will to make a serious dent in the modern commercial agriculture we depend on. And I don't particularly want to stop being able to get onions, lemons, limes, broccoli, tangerines...
And now we must genetically engineer an army of vengeful killer bees bees that are immune to that parasite.
Science has unintentionally made the problem worse but it can ultimately fix it. Maybe not in the way I think of, though.
Science has unintentionally made the problem worse but it can ultimately fix it. Maybe not in the way I think of, though.
If bees go extinct, the primary pollinator of plant life is gone, which means a massive dropoff in the plant life that supports the entire ecosystem. That's bad. It also might mean global famine on an unprecedented scale. That's worse.Scarim Coral said:
There is nothing more cute than a big ol' bumble bee viewed through a nice HD screen .... but if that sucker is in my presence it can't die quick enough!
I guess the bee keeping scientists will end up kicking the "fuck the insects" scientists asses, all the while shouting "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?".
Bees are some bad ass mother fuckers!
Captcha: Numa numa ...been awhile since I thought about that!
I guess the bee keeping scientists will end up kicking the "fuck the insects" scientists asses, all the while shouting "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?".
Bees are some bad ass mother fuckers!
Captcha: Numa numa ...been awhile since I thought about that!
This is something I've been following lightly for a long time. It's rather frightening.
I'm not a hippy or anything, but I'm fine with less pesticides and such for food. I understand that a certain quota has to be maintained, but less chemicals won't hurt anyone. Except maybe the farmers in their income...
I grow lots of my own vegetables. A spot on it? I either cut it off, or shrug and eat it anyways. Bugs on my plants, mould on the soil? Lots of natural ways to get rid of them that take very little effort.
A little more effort on the farmer's part will help a lot.
I'm not a hippy or anything, but I'm fine with less pesticides and such for food. I understand that a certain quota has to be maintained, but less chemicals won't hurt anyone. Except maybe the farmers in their income...
I grow lots of my own vegetables. A spot on it? I either cut it off, or shrug and eat it anyways. Bugs on my plants, mould on the soil? Lots of natural ways to get rid of them that take very little effort.
A little more effort on the farmer's part will help a lot.
Essentially as far as I know, bee farms require adjacent agricultural farms or plant life on the same scale to be sustainable. It is not just the bees but the devastation on crops in general that do not get pollinated as frequently by other animals and insects. Even if you mass produce bees in a closed off environment you still need them to pollinate crops that are otherwise toxic to them and thus crops die. Once again, as far as I know, this has already happened in places in Europe and thus the EU was willing to listen to independent studies and follow through with their advice because the effects were already visible.Doclector said:
that's already been done, killer bees were an attempt to make a mild tempered bee that was more resilient... they got the theoretical offspring of bee-terminator and bee-hitler instead... on the plus side, they're VERY resilient, so partial success I guess?teqrevisited said:
Stop using PESTICIDES! Plenty of evidence suggest that the benefits of gmos and pesticides are middling at best and nonexistant at worst. We have countries that are producing more without pesticides. Countries that have gone full organic and flourish because of it.
It's good they discovered something, though the revelation that it's not just a single factor... well that is like a huge "duh" moment. Very seldom, if ever, is a single factor a cause for anything. People seem to like to think that's not the case, but people have a far far over reacting sense of cause and effect. Also, Bee's are the single biggest polinator, but they themselves are not responsible for all the polination. Other insects spread the pollen, birds, the wind... lots of things. Not saying that this isn't important, just saying that, like the scientists discovered themselves, a single factor is not responsible for pollination.
Also, I saw on the page 1 comments that someone mentioned that famous Einstein idea that if all the bees died, there would be 6 years left for humans on the planet. I would like to point out that Einstein's area of expertise was never biology, ecology, pretty much not an expert at anything involving bee's or the environment.
Edit: Just a point of interest. A single population of bees could potentially be enough to undo the damage, so as long as they don't all die, we're in pretty good shape. So that means fixing the problem. If we stop whatever pesticides are mostly responsible (and of course whatever other factor that we have the ability to change), the bee population could make a comeback in pretty short order. Obviously not as fast they dropped off, if only that were possible. There is even the potential to artificially expand the population. For instance, when a new Queen is grown and is sent off to start another hive, they take a sac of sperm with them (essentially). You could grow a queen and harvest sperm from a male source. Then release the new queen in a previously unpopulated area. It is really only feasible because bees are not genetically diverse creatures. For instance, the various classes of bee and ant society are just alternate phenotypes of the queen (genetically identical). The way the genetics work in bees is the queens DNA is completely dominant. Their DNA typically has what is called a genomic imprint marking all the active DNA as being from the queen... from what I have read and understood it to be at least. I could be wrong.
Also, I saw on the page 1 comments that someone mentioned that famous Einstein idea that if all the bees died, there would be 6 years left for humans on the planet. I would like to point out that Einstein's area of expertise was never biology, ecology, pretty much not an expert at anything involving bee's or the environment.
Edit: Just a point of interest. A single population of bees could potentially be enough to undo the damage, so as long as they don't all die, we're in pretty good shape. So that means fixing the problem. If we stop whatever pesticides are mostly responsible (and of course whatever other factor that we have the ability to change), the bee population could make a comeback in pretty short order. Obviously not as fast they dropped off, if only that were possible. There is even the potential to artificially expand the population. For instance, when a new Queen is grown and is sent off to start another hive, they take a sac of sperm with them (essentially). You could grow a queen and harvest sperm from a male source. Then release the new queen in a previously unpopulated area. It is really only feasible because bees are not genetically diverse creatures. For instance, the various classes of bee and ant society are just alternate phenotypes of the queen (genetically identical). The way the genetics work in bees is the queens DNA is completely dominant. Their DNA typically has what is called a genomic imprint marking all the active DNA as being from the queen... from what I have read and understood it to be at least. I could be wrong.
This is America. We will have a robust screaming match in which Fox News proclaims this to be liberal propaganda and that bees dying is cyclical and that in the 70s people thought the bees were becoming overpopulated, and nothing will get done because the act of inaction requires no effort (except for the mental backflips it takes to get there).Agayek said:
Yes, but The Doctor saved the day and they're still leabing. Ungrateful buggers.tehpiemaker said:
And I'm still mystified by their final message to mankind: So long, and thanks for all the fish.
What? Bees don't eat fish!
To quote some of the greatest philosophers of all time[footnote]The Kids In The Hall[/footnote], "to change would mean...To make an effort."Phrozenflame500 said:
That's not going to happen, so we're all screwed.
Science is the only thing awesome enough to be the problem, the method and the... possible?... solution all at the same time.grey_space said:
Though seriously science get on this NAUW! My honey needs to be made! Dem bees needs to pollinate! We're risking a mass extinction of flora and Honey Loops!
