Are Montana's Honey Bees Dying? (Libby: mortgage, house, living)

[lesliegrace]

I keep hearing and reading that an unusual number of honey bees are dying in Europe and the United States, and that since bees are extremely important for crop pollination, this could have an adverse effect on our food supply.

From what I've read, experts are not sure about what is killing the bees. It could be a mite, a virus, a new and potent insecticide, or something called "colony collapse disorder."

Are y'all noticing a shortage of honey bees in Montana?

[MontanaGuy]

Here's a really strange article on the subject. I find it very hard to believe but it's interesting.
By Geoffrey Lean and Harriet Shawcross
Published: 15 April 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/enviro...cle2449968.ece


It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world's harvests fail...

[GiftShoppeGuy]

Well, you know....

A couple of good sun spots/flares would take good care of all of this wireless phone nonsense in pretty short order.

I've got a buddy over in Libby, and his bee's are fine... he loads up the semi every season and hauls 'em off to California for a while, and then brings them home for the winter...

Man-o-man it must be a slow news day for these goofy scientists to be coming up with such rediculous notions.

I always just somehow had it in my head that "teens" caused senility.... not wireless phones.

There are many more bugs in this world that can pollinate if the bees ever decided to take the day off.

Bees are only a small portion of the pollinating public.
There are birds, wasps, flies, beetles, moths, butterflies, bats, humans, wind, water, and a few others I can't quite think of right now......

As soon as these guys start wondering where all of the birds, wasps, flies, beetles, moths, butterflies, bats, humans, wind, water and "Bees" are going, then I might get the notion to listen to what they have to say.

And what's this "colony collapse disorder" crap??... Sounds like something off of a late night cialis commercial or something.....

Hey..... here's a tip....

"The Bees Are Just Fine".......

As an added bonus, one might be happy to learn that you can prove anything you want to prove when you're testing in a controlled environment, heck, even pigs can fly under controlled conditions.

I've never had much trouble swatting a bee away from my wireless out here in the real world.

It's going to take more than just one bug going away to convince me that there is more to this than some greedy scientist looking to get financing for worthless research.

And that, my friends..... is where the bears do the dookie....

[lesliegrace]

MontanaGuy,

Thanks for sharing this interesting article. It is hard to believe that mobile phones could be affecting bees! My first thought was that some new, potent insecticide was the culprit. Here in Southeast Texas, the county sprays for mosquitoes, so I figure that might be also killing bees.

When I first read that genetically modified food could be causing the problem, I thought it was a silly idea. Then I read an explanation about how the crops have been altered to make them insect resistant, and scientists theorize that somehow the bee immune system is being weakened.

Hopefully the scientists will figure out what is triggering this problem and eliminate or alter it so that it won't harm the surviving bees.



GiftShoppeGuy,

I think the beekeepers who discovered that half of their bees had disappeared without a trace might disagree with you! Maybe this problem hasn't reached Montana's bees, and hopefully it won't. The East Coast of the U.S. seems to be pretty hard hit as well as Texas and California and I'm sure other states as well. I read a CBS News article on the Internet that said that twenty-two states had reported problems, but I couldn't find a list of the affected states. Fox News articles from February also discuss these problems affecting bees and beekeepers. Affected states mentioned in the Fox article include Pennsylvania, California, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, and Texas.

[MontanaGuy]

I agree that the article I posted seemed very far fetched but apparently people are actually studying this seriously. It is true that the honey bee population has been decling for about fifty years (long before cell phones) so I suspect the cause is natural. I just posted that article because it was so weird I thought it was interesting. I agree that some scientists have apparently figured out a way to make a living by studying something that belongs in tabloid newspapers. I do hope someone gets some serious ideas about the cause of the problem though because pollination depends on it.

[JoeJoeMan]

Humm....I'd be willing to bet that nothing will every come of this whole business about the bees disappearing. That it's all just another one of the, "oh no - would be disaster" stories..........remember the bird-flu, how about the haunta-virus (did I spell that right), or AIDS would destroy the world as we know it, or the comet hitting the earth, I'm sure you can add some more.....
The media loves this stuff, and will making a mountain out of a mole hill with little or no provocation......actuall I think if one were to dig deep into these stories you'd probably find in back of alot of this stuff and press releases is some scientific group or corporation(s), that is getting rich off of this, because study it and get grant money or have some supposed new drug on the horizon, and want their share prices pumped up.....
I guarentee nothing will ever come of this latest bee scare thing, mark my words, actually mark it in writing on your basement wall so that everytime you read it for the next 20 years, it reminds you not to fall for any of this crap that the media, scientific community, corporate america or politicians are always throwing at you.

[GiftShoppeGuy]

So I was up late doing server stuff and was having a rather odd day when I came across this thread.... I couldn't resist... and the rest is history.

Fact of the matter here is that regardless of whether or not this is true (I doubt very seriously it is true), folks need to understand that the largest money making engine in the world is the "exploitation" of the "human condition".

Humans are frail and insecure, and our society as a whole has already got this figured out. If it aint broke, limp, sick or going extinct, we're not gonna make any money on it.

Whether it be Bees, Cancer, Comets or any other problem or disease, you can be sure that there is always going to be someone standing there with their arm out and their leg up to turn a profit from it.
Chances are pretty good that we already know the cause of the bees going away, if in fact they really are.... but we better milk it for all it's worth..... there's billions of dollars to made there that's for sure.
Bees could be going extinct for all we know, and it's a darn good thing too (sarcasm), because some scientist out there needs to make another mortgage payment.

There are reasons why we will never find a cure for cancer and they all have dollar signs attached to them.

We already know the answers and have the cures to most of the questions and illnesses being presented to us these days, but God forbid we let the rest of the world in on it, lest we be run off to the poor house for spilling the beans.

We arrogant humans seem to think we got it all buttoned up when it comes to this planet of ours. Little do we know that this planet can shrug us off like a good dog gone bad if the notion ever suited it. Heck, we've got trouble enough just trying to control ourselves, much less attempting to control our environment.

Nope.....

There is just too much money to be made off of our fears and infirmities.

[MontanaGuy]

JJM, first I just wanted to say I'm sorry for a few of the remarks I made on that Montana Culture thread. I think we both got a little wound up and I regret sounding rude. I see they even deleted most of it.
Anyway, I agree that some of these stories make good headlines and a few of them are greatly exaggerated. This honey bee situation does seem to pose a legitimate concern though because we need them to pollinate plants and it's being reported from a number of different areas. I do think the bird flu story was one that got blown out of proportion and it was mainly a concern in parts of Asia but there's always some new threat on the horizon that sounds like it could destroy civilization as we know it. That's the problem with the news, magazines and the media in general. They're basically businesses that have a product to sell and if they market it effectively they're going to make more money even if it scares alot of people.

[mtnlady]

See this recent article
http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2007/03/11/news/business/25-bees_x.txt (broken link)

[lesliegrace]

Thanks for sharing the interesting article, mtnlady. I was sorry to read in the article that Montana is one of the states that is affected.

I hope that JoeJoeMan and GiftShoppeGuy are right and that no crisis exists.