fuck

was just saying to my grandmother (I tend to her garden every week, she’s 85…) that I haven’t seen a bee all spring long…

Hederer says. Its sad, but true: There always has to be a huge catastrophe before people start to use their brains.

i like hederer

Flowers’ Fragrance Diminished by Air Pollution, University of Virginia Study Indicates

April 10, 2008 — Air pollution from power plants and automobiles is destroying the fragrance of flowers and thereby inhibiting the ability of pollinating insects to follow scent trails to their source, a new University of Virginia study indicates. This could partially explain why wild populations of some pollinators, particularly bees – which need nectar for food – are declining in several areas of the world, including California and the Netherlands.

I posted this a while back in the thread about Beagle17’s article

Research into dead bees gets $250,000 sweetener

(I’m gonna c/p the whole article ‘cause I think you need a subscription… I have one for free)

By Jonathan Birchall in New York, Financial Times

Published: Feb 19, 2008

Häagen-Dazs, the luxury ice-cream brand, has become the first big food company to fund research into honey bee “colony collapse disorder”, the mysterious syndrome blamed for the destruction of about 25 per cent of the US bee population since late 2006.

The brand, owned in the US by Nestlé, is making a $250,000 (€170,000, £127,500) grant to university researchers in California and Pennsylvania. It is also launching an advertising campaign – and a new flavour – aimed at drawing wider attention to the issue and its potential threat to food production.

Katti Pien, of Häagen-Dazs, said that almost 40 per cent of the brand’s flavours were dependent on bee pollination, and could be threatened by CCD. Bees pollinate ingredients in about a third of the food consumed by Americans.

“Ice cream is a small part of it. The bigger issue is the food supply for the whole country,” she said.

Bee colony collapses started occurring in the US in late 2006, with adult bees abandoning hives before the hatching of a new brood. While scientists have yet to explain the phenomenon, the range of theories advanced range from viruses or fungi, environmental factors such as genetically engineered crops, to electromagnetic waves from mobile phone towers.

An estimated 1,500-2,000 professional beekeepers rent out hives to growers during the blossom season for crops ranging from almonds to apples. A typical professional beekeeper operates 2,000-3,000 hives, and will transport bees in trucks across different states according to the season.

The industry is trying to establish whether the outbreak is a cyclical phenomenon – similar to periods of bee die-offs in the past – or a substantial threat. Their task is made more complicated by the fragmented nature of beekeeping and the resulting lack of data.

Troy Fore, of the American Beekeepers’ Federation, said “a number of food companies are watching the situation closely”.

A spokesman for General Mills, the world’s sixth-largest food company, said the “issue is concerning, and General Mills is working with others in the industry to better understand what is happening . . . we are monitoring the science and we are eager to learn more”. An official for Kraft also said that CCD was “a growing concern” for the food industry.

Mr Fore said that “what we’re hearing right now is people having as much losses as they did last year, and you can’t keep on suffering those kind of losses”.

However, Richard Waycott, head of the California Almond Board, said that bee colonies currently deployed for the almond blossom season suggested “bee health is somewhat better than last year”. The almond board, representing growers who are entirely dependent on bees for pollination, is co-ordinating national research efforts on CCD.

He estimated that at least 1.3m hives were deployed in northern California for this almond blossom season, more than half the estimated US total of 2.4m hives.

i like hederer

me too

“was just saying to my grandmother (I tend to her garden every week, she’s 85…) that I haven’t seen a bee all spring long…”

While we are with the anecdotal evidence, apparently there have been plenty of wasps, but no bees to be seen here in central Europe. Lots of wasps would indicate that insecticide isn’t the problem, wouldn’t it?

I heard there’s a coming plague of wasps, hornets and mosquitos, because of the winter we had here: long and wet but not really cold

the tropical institute here in Antwerp discovered a tropical species of mosquito here in Belgium this summer (Japanese?, can’t remember)

btw, my comment about the bees in my grandmother’s garden wasn’t meant to be proof of anything, it was just the first thing that popped into my head when i read the article.