With honey bees disappearing

[freyadog]

Do you change what you grow? some plants need bees and some don't. I was wondering if anyone knew which ones needed the bees and which ones didn't. I think tomatoes and squash do but what other do and don't. Carrots don't.

[guest56464]

I think the chili peppers do. That's the only thing that we grew last year. I made chili oil for my family as Christmas gifts with the chilis that we grew. This year we haven't started anything because we're most likely going to be moving in the summer.

[pita1213]

you can do the pollination yourself with a soft paintbrush. i've never done it, but i saw something about it on a gardening show a while back.

[baxjul]

I haven't changed anything yet, we'll see how it goes.

[annymoll]

We have the white clover in our backyard(Which is labeled "a weed-lol")Although there are not as many bees as I rememberfrom childhood, I see more and more here each year.We keep planting the clover seed. The bees help pollinate our fruit trees.

[Edna_E]

My mom used to pick one flower off the tomatoes and rub it on each of the others to make them work (do you call that fertilizing them?) It always seemed to work, and it might on other things too.

[kabin63]

There are other bees that pollinate as well as the honey bees. I don't know if you have others around you, but thought I would mention this too. I have heard of pollinating them yourself. I am not changing anything I grow, other than growing more than usual, hopefully.

[PhytoSolution]

I read recently that the use of cell phones is, apparently, bad for honey bees.

[JerryG]

Cell phones are bad for bees?? LOL! I have this image of a bee talking on the cell phone while flying around! Ha! Kind of like when you see inattentive drivers talking while they're driving . . But, THAT's not as funny!

[gmjinok]

I haven't changed anything. My first batch of green bell peppers is almost ready to be picked. Things are growing exceptionally well for me this year due to our drought being over.

[Tracy]

here is an article about them from my local paper. Basically they still are not sure what is going on, but if the bee population does collapse I personally feel that people will be in trouble. It is the smallest creature that can have the biggest impact.





Bees feel the sting; Disease, climate change latest threats to species
Ian Elliot

Saturday, May 26, 2007 - 00:00

Local News - Local beekeepers are keeping a wary eye on the progress of a mysterious and devastating ailment that is wiping out entire colonies of honeybees south of the border.

And while Colony Collapse Disorder - in which entire hives of bees literally vanish, leaving their honey behind - is not believed to have moved into Ontario, it is just the latest pressing threat that the $170-million-a-year industry faces.

And bees in eastern Ontario are an industry.

While residents may think the disappearance of bees means just another thing in the summer that won't sting them, the bees play an incredibly important role in pollinating not just agricultural crops such as apples, but also backyard and wild plants that depend on them.

And, due to a seemingly endless wave of diseases and invasive parasites, there is really no such thing as a wild honeybee in this part of the province anymore.

That fat honeybee poking around your roses or investigating the cherry tree in the local park will fly its pollen back to a hive maintained by a local hobbyist or one of the handful of large commercial beekeepers in the area.

"The wild honeybee? Its population has been devastated," explains Geoff Davis, whose Davis Apiaries on Highway 15 is one of the large local commercial operations with some 400 hives.

"They've become so weak with all the parasites and mites that they cannot typically overwinter anymore. Bees do get away from time to time and establish colonies, but they don't last more than two years in the wild - they get too sick."

Pests and disease present a constant threat to hives and, even in a well-managed apiary, deaths over winter are a constant.

Bill Lake of the Limestone Beekeepers Guild, which represents about 50 local hobbyist and commercial apiaries, said that winter mortality used to be about 10 per cent, but has crept up to about twice that.

But this year, beekeepers unwrapped their hives to discover that they had lost 30 per cent or more of their populations, and while the initial fear was that Colony Collapse Disorder had finally arrived, he said that other causes were to blame.

"I lost six or seven out of 28 [hives] and some people lost more - one fellow lost three out of three," he said.

"But it didn't appear to be Colony Collapse Disorder, it seemed to be more about the weather. We did an informal survey and some guys knew something was wrong even as they were putting their bees away for the winter."

However, the problem is of enough concern that on Thursday, the federal government pledged more than $130,000 to investigate the health of Ontario's hives.

More than $105,000 is being provided to test methods to control the infestation of the hive beetle in honeybee colonies. The project will involve investigating the impact of pesticides and other residues on hives, and studying organic beekeeping management techniques - anecdotal reports from south of the border suggest that organically-kept bees are less susceptible to Colony Collapse Disorder.

The Ontario Beekeepers Association is also receiving $31,000 to study honeybee colonies that sustained high winter losses this past year to determine if there is a common cause for the higher-than-normal colony mortality rate.

The abrupt disappearance of bees in the United States, where pollination is a $15-billion industry, has also prompted congressional hearings there and calls for federal money to be spent to study what exactly is happening.

The speculation in Ontario, according to apiarists interviewed by the Whig-Standard, is that an unusually warm and prolonged fall and early winter may have tricked many queens into laying larger numbers of eggs.

When winter arrived in earnest, bringing with it weeks of below-freezing temperatures, the adult bees faced the challenge of keeping a bigger-than-normal "brood nest" warm - bees do that by flexing their wing muscles to generate body heat to warm the hive.

Once the adult bees had eaten the honey from the combs nearest the nest, they couldn't move to the next frame because they would have left the eggs and pupa exposed to the cold. That resulted in them starving, even though there was more food inches away.

It is a phenomenon reported by beekeepers across the United States and Canada.

Unlike Colony Collapse Disorder, which has been reported by beekeepers in at least 27 states and several provinces, the bees did not simply disappear from the hive, never to be seen again. Some states have lost 90 per cent of their bee colonies.

Brent Halsall, president of the Ontario Beekeepers Association, says he does not believe Colony Collapse Disorder has made its way to Ontario. Doug McRory, the provincial government's chief apiarist, told local beekeepers the same thing when he met with them earlier this month.

Davis said global warming may be one of the culprits, bringing unpredictable weather patterns, and expanding the range of bee parasites to insect populations that are unprepared to deal with them.

"My personal opinion is that global warming plays a role in this," he said.

While colony collapse remains a baffling mystery to scientists, and has been attributed to everything from parasites to chemicals used in agriculture to cellphone signals confusing the insects' migratory patterns, beekeepers suspect it may be related to the industrial practice of moving bees thousands of miles on an annual pollination tour and the resulting stress on the hives.

Both here and in the United States, farmers rent hives during the period their crops, such as apples, are in blossom. Beekeepers set up hives in orchards, the bees pollinate the plants and bring pollen back to be turned into honey. Then they are packed up and moved to the next crop as it comes into season.

Local beekeepers don't rent many hives and instead rely on products such as honey and beeswax from their colonies, as well as the sale of bees to set up other colonies, for their income.

"We don't do much pollination in this area," Lake said.

"But down in the States, you'll have guys who start in Florida and move all the way up to finish in Cape Vincent."

Not only does that travel stress the bees, but it exposes them to any manner of regional parasites and diseases that they bring back to their hives.

Some central Ontario beekeepers will rent hives to fruit growers in areas such as Prince Edward County or the Niagara region, but even they typically don't travel the huge distances that American beekeepers do.

But the threat of colony collapse is a concern for fruit farmers, said Len Troup, a peach and cherry grower in Niagara and head of the association that represents fruit and vegetable growers.

"We had some die-off, and in the spring, some of our members were very concerned if there would be enough bees this year," he said.

"But our blossoming period is just about over down here and we haven't had any problem getting bees."

The bees are crucial not only to tree fruit producers but to berry growers - rented hives are heavily used by blueberry and cranberry growers.

"They're important in all of horticulture," Troup said.

"The winds and birds will do some of it for you, but if you want to be assured, particularly if there's adverse weather, you need bees." Lake noted that over its short life, a bee will only produce one-twelfth of a teaspoon of honey, yet the combined effort of a hive of as much as 20,000 bees will reward a keeper with many kilos. And that is the attraction for many of the people whose hives dot the rural areas around Kingston.

"Bees are very interesting to watch and work with," he said, noting that honeybees in particular get a bad rap from people who think the insects are as prone to stinging as hornets or wasps when they are, in fact, docile. He noted that the act of stinging will kill a honeybee as it tears off the bottom of its abdomen.

"You can't get them to sting you if they're on a flower unless you try to step on them," he said.

"They're too busy with their jobs."