What's Wrong With the Bees? A New Film, "The Pollinators," Seeks an Answerhttp://smirkingchimp.com/thread/peter-nelson/87131/whats-wrong-with-the-bees-our-new-film-the-pollinators-seeks-an-answer... Beekeepers are anxious about the alarming rate of the bee losses they face, which have been ranging from 33 to 50 percent annually and sometimes more. Not many businesses can sustain losses like this every year. ... Thirty years ago, losing 10 percent of one’s hives was alarming - now any commercial beekeeper would be happy to lose that few hives.
They know this is not a sustainable situation and are desperate for other solutions. ... Beekeepers are eager to get the word out about their plight because their current methods are unsustainable and we are in serious trouble if we don’t come up with answers to stem these losses.
If these beekeepers are worried, we all should be: our diet depends upon pollination for one of every three bites we eat.
... “We really have to create a system, a pattern of eating that supports the kind of diversity and regenerative farm practices that the landscape needs to be healthy”
... Every one of us can do things big and small to make it better. This topic is completely actionable and our own choices really matter. We vote with our dollars when we buy food and make a difference by deciding what we grow in our own landscapes. A green grassy lawns is a monocultures and food desert for bees. Asking questions about our food and learning where our food comes from, supporting local farmers, educating our children and working with our legislators to create pollinator friendly policies in our communities are all key components to changing this broken system.The answer is not going to come from the top, but is going to come from our own citizen actions on a grassroots level.
A national screening day for "The Pollinators" in the U.S. is taking place on Wednesday, November 6. Find a screening near you here. If there isn't a screening near you, find out how to request one here.-----------------------------
California Beekeeper Thinks 'Rewilding' Might Save Beeshttps://www.reuters.com/article/us-california-beekeeper/rewilding-one-california-mans-mission-to-save-honey-bees-idUSKBN1X31CE https://mobile.reuters.com/video/2019/10/24/rewilding-one-california-mans-mission-to?videoId=OVB2GP8Q3&jwsource=clOver the past 15 years, there has been a dramatic fall in the number of bees on the planets with 90 percent loss in some areas, a trend that's known as "colony collapse disorder." Now, a California-based apiculturist (beekeeper) has a new idea to help the long-suffering insects. He calls it "rewilding."
The apiculturist, Michael Thiele, describes his idea to Reuters. Instead of trying to control where bees live, Thiele says, let them form hives in logs above ground.
Once a hollowed-out log hive is attached to a tree, it becomes attractive to bee “scouts” looking for a nest site, who then alert their bee colonies to move into it.
Thiele's strategy won't single-handedly revive bees worldwide. But his anecdotal evidence is compelling: he tells Reuters that within days of making his log hives they become colonized. Thiele doesn't look to make honey off his colonized logs unless the bees move away or die.
His hives, he said, are both a conservation project and a personal mission.
“It’s almost as if honey bees make the fragility of life so palpable,” he said. “And as if they are really mirroring where we are on this time on this planet.”
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Pesticides Deliver a One-Two Punch to Honey Beeshttps://phys.org/news/2019-08-pesticides-one-two-honey-bees.htmlAdjuvants are chemicals that are commonly added to plant protection products, such as pesticides, to help them spread, adhere to targets, disperse appropriately, or prevent drift, among other things. There was a widespread assumption that these additives would not cause a biological reaction after exposure, but a number of recent studies show that adjuvants can be toxic to ecosystems, and specific to this study, honey bees.
Jinzhen Zhang and colleagues studied the effects on honey bees when adjuvants were co-applied at "normal concentration levels" with neonicotinoids. Their research, recently published in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, found that the mixture of the pesticide and the adjuvant increased the mortality rate of honey bees in the lab and in semi-field conditions, where it also reduced colony size and brooding.
When applied alone, the three pesticide adjuvants caused no significant, immediate toxicity to honeybees. However, when the pesticide acetamiprid was mixed with adjuvants and applied to honeybees in the laboratory, the toxicity was quite significant and immediate. In groups treated with combined pesticide-adjuvant concentrates, mortality was significantly higher than the control groups, which included a blank control (no pesticide, no adjuvant, only water) and a control with only pesticide (no adjuvant). Further, flight intensity, colony intensity and pupae development continued to deteriorate long after the application comparative to the control groups.
https://setac.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/etc.4515