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Per Harvard study, it's pesticides. Our friend Monsanto strikes again.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ocnjgirl
Yes when someone makes a thread about some new "gift" congress gave Monsanto, everyone leaps on and defends them..."Business should get to do what they want! Blah to regulation!!"
your link implicates neonicotinoid pesticides, and you implicate Monsanto.
I see a potential problem here: Monsanto doesn't even make neonicotinoid pesticides
I just had a hive of approx. 50,000 removed from our wall by professionals. I didn't want to kill them. I have many plants the bees love and we get along just fine. Hate to see any killed for no good reason.
I think pesticides are responsible for at least a small amount of a lot of "newer" diseases (e.g., chronic pain, autism, inflammatory diseases) but no one is going to do the research on this.
I think it may be impossible to do that research. There are so many new chemicals coming out yearly and we are exposed to so many things that don't occur in nature, how can we really tease out which affects us and how? For example: They don't even have any good research on the effects on unborn children of anything more complicated than alcohol exposure, solo, or smoking. What can we expect if the mom is on multiple prescriptions? What if she's mixing aspirin with cigs, alcohol, pot and meth? What if she gets clean of everything except meth for the last 3 months of her pregnancy? Now add the latest ant bait, lawn spray and the Round-Up you use on your sidewalk and you start to go all googly-eyed just thinking about how they might be combining or how and what those combinations do to you.
If they can't figure that out -- and those are pressing needs because we all pay to keep those thousands of damaged kids alive -- how can they figure out all of the possible factors that might go into colony collapse? Bees are well-studied as insects go, but they're still nothing like humans and we mostly study humans.
I wonder how much of the problem is poor nutrition, as they keep saying. I see plenty of bees in my garden at the same old flowers, but none of them are honeybees. I have carpenter bees, bumblebees, green metallic bees -- they are all doing perfectly fine. Aren't they getting the same nutrition from the same sources?
Isn't it possible that these honeybees are going through strain failure through inbreeding? I have no idea how inbred honeybees are, but they are farmed of course and that lends itself to inbreeding.
Plenty of bees in China, there are lots of wilderness and undeveloped land there. Well, eventually they may get developed too but definitely more wilderness there. A lot more natural farms and plantations in China than US where rice is still farmed the old fashion way there.
Plenty of bees in China, there are lots of wilderness and undeveloped land there. Well, eventually they may get developed too but definitely more wilderness there. A lot more natural farms and plantations in China than US where rice is still farmed the old fashion way there.
Corn, rice, and wheat do not need to be pollinated by bees. They use wind pollination. Only crops that flower need pollinization.
honey is the natural cure for many ailments. the pharmaceutical companies are killing bees off to maintain a healthy profit.
WHAT?
I have followed this phenomenon for several years because I have an uncle who raises honeybees, and we have discussed several theories he has. However neither he nor any source I've read/heard has made the claim you did.
The pharma companies have bigger fish to fry than to try to wipe out honeybees. As a matter of fact, they along with the rest of this country would suffer incredible hardships if honeybees were to be wiped out, and it has nothing to do with their honey production. Instead it is related to pollination of crops which is a vital role the bee plays in food production. Heck there are now companies getting big bucks shipping truckloads of bees to farms because the local bee population has dwindled to the point of needing to pay for bees to be brought in.
So if you have a link to a reputable source about your comment, I'd be very interested in reading it. Otherwise, it sounds like another tinfoil hat conspiracy theory to me.
I need to ask a question, why are honey bees so vital if they are not native to The United States? How did crops become pollinated before the honey bees arrived? I understand modern agriculture is relatively new in the grand scheme of history etc.
I need to ask a question, why are honey bees so vital if they are not native to The United States? How did crops become pollinated before the honey bees arrived? I understand modern agriculture is relatively new in the grand scheme of history etc.
that's a good question actually.
a great many of the crops that we now consider important to US agriculture evolved and/or were bred in areas of the world that honeybees are native to (Europe and asia mostly) so those plants evolved with honeybees as their pollinators (ex: apples, almonds, cherries, oranges).
on the other hand, plants like tomato that are native to the Americas didn't evolve with honeybees around, so they use wind and bumblebees (or other native bees) to accomplish that.
also, honeybees are the only bees that can be easily managed by humans and moved from one crop to another. that's why you sometimes hear of a semi-truckload of millions of bees getting into a wreck on the interstate - they are trucked all over the country to fertilize all kinds of stuff.
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