Bees Are Dying, Scientists Have Found Out Why

[Elvis Starburst]

What's this?! Bees are randomly dying due to a chemical?!
A jar of BEES will help solve that!

OT: Huh, this could get bad very fast if not sorted out soon. But then again, I'm afraid of the buggers, so I don't tend to really care about them that much

 

[kongajinken]

Why aren't the bees evolving immunity to this stuff? I thought insects were role models for evolution.

 

[KOMega]

Why aren't the bees evolving immunity to this stuff? I thought insects were role models for evolution.

We are experiencing a shortage of leaf stones at the moment.
Bees evolve with leaf stones.

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

These chemicals, found in widely-use fungicides previously believed to be harmless to bees, increase a bee's susceptibility to Nosema cerenae, a parasite that has been linked to CCD. Bees in colonies with high concentrations of those chemicals were three times as likely to be infected by Nosema.

It's unclear what, if anything, can be done to stop this impending beepocalypse, but it needs to be fixed - and soon.

....

How about we stop using the fungicides?

I mean, isn't that the obvious solution? If we stop using those specific chemicals, then the bees wills top getting Nosema cerenae as often and... no more CCD. Or less CCD.

Once we stop killing them, the population should bounce back (and, if not, I'm sure some sort of bee breeding program could be put into effect).

 

[Serinanth]

These chemicals, found in widely-use fungicides previously believed to be harmless to bees, increase a bee's susceptibility to Nosema cerenae, a parasite that has been linked to CCD. Bees in colonies with high concentrations of those chemicals were three times as likely to be infected by Nosema.

It's unclear what, if anything, can be done to stop this impending beepocalypse, but it needs to be fixed - and soon.

....

How about we stop using the fungicides?

I mean, isn't that the obvious solution? If we stop using those specific chemicals, then the bees wills top getting Nosema cerenae as often and... no more CCD. Or less CCD.

Once we stop killing them, the population should bounce back (and, if not, I'm sure some sort of bee breeding program could be put into effect).

Well we have a pretty good unintentional experiment going on right now. The EU has banned the pesticides in question, the USA has not. If European bee colonies start to recover and their losses drop I would say we have a smoking gun.

 

[___________________]

More jobs for everyone. Behold the rise of the pollinators.

 

[A'tuin]

In a related story; that honey you buy in stores is not honey, but sugar and food coloring.

Yes, and we all swallow 74 spiders every night without realizing it...

Seriously though, I've visited this bee farmer and tasted the honey pretty much straight off the hive. Later on I went to the supermarket (your average low-price store) and bought some cheap honey that had the sticker "made by *the guy I visited* ". The stuff tastes exactly the same as the stuff I saw coming from the hive. So if it's financially reasonable to sell organic honey at a low price near the Arctic Circle, it wouldn't make sense to sell water and sugar as fake honey in any warmer areas, where the growing season is a lot longer.