More buzz on the bees.

[Guest guest]

Stung By Bees

 

A mysterious ailment of honeybees threatens a trillion-dollar industry and an essential source of nutrition.

 

Rowan Jacobsen

NEWSWEEK

Updated: 11:52 AM ET Jun 14, 2008

 

For

3,000 years, farmers in China's Sichuan province pollinated their fruit

trees the old-fashioned way: they let the bees do it. Flowers produce

nectar that attracts bees, which inadvertently transfer sticky grains

of pollen from one flower to another, fertilizing them so they bear

fruit. When China rapidly expanded its pear orchards in the 1980s, it

stepped up its use of pesticides, and this age-old system of

pollination began to unravel. Today, during the spring, the snow-white

pear blossoms blanket the hills, but there are no bees to carry the

pollen. Instead, thousands of villagers climb through the trees,

hand-pollinating them by dipping "pollination sticks"—brushes made of

chicken feathers and cigarette filters—into plastic bottles of pollen

and then touching them to each of the billions of blossoms.

China's

use of human bees is only one of many troubling signs of an

agricultural crisis in the making. Bees the world over have been dying

from a mysterious syndrome termed colony collapse disorder, or CCD.

U.S. beekeepers lost 35 percent of their hives this winter, after

losing 30 percent the previous year. Similar but less well-publicized

losses have occurred in countries as far-flung as Canada, Brazil, India

and China, as well as throughout Europe. A recent survey of wild-bee

populations in Belgium and France found that 25 percent of species have

declined in the past 30 years. Several species of bumblebees common in

the United States as recently as 1990 have disappeared. In Britain, the

British Beekeepers Association has warned that honeybees could

disappear entirely from the island by 2018, along with £165 million

worth of apples, pears, canola and other crops they pollinate.

The

threat is vast. Most crops—87 of the world's 115 most important

ones—require pollination to develop fruits, nuts and seeds, says

agroecologist Alexandra-Maria Klein at Germany's University of

Göttingen. Those crops account for about $1 trillion of the

approximately $3 trillion in annual sales of agricultural produce

worldwide. They also provide 35 percent of the calories consumed by

humans each year, and most of the vitamins, minerals and antioxidants.

Every blueberry, cherry, apple, grapefruit, avocado, squash, cucumber,

macadamia nut and almond depends on the ministrations of a bee for its

existence. Even crops such as lettuce and broccoli need insect

pollination to produce seed for the following year's supply.

Colony-collapse

disorder is characterized by the sudden collapse of a full-strength

hive in a matter of weeks, with adults leaving the hive and not

returning, until the hive is deserted. "I found colonies that had just

stopped living," says Borje Svensson, a Swedish beekeeper. "They had

given up life without any sign of struggle." No one knows what causes

it, but theories abound. U.S. researchers believe a previously

little-known disease called Israeli acute paralysis virus is involved,

while Spanish researchers suspect a fungus called Nosema.

When France lost a third of its bees in the 1990s, beekeepers blamed

Imidacloprid, a new pesticide that had been used on the sunflower crop,

a honeybee favorite. France banned the use of Imidacloprid on

sunflowers in 1999 and expanded the ban to other crops in 2004, yet its

bees have not recovered. Despite this ambiguous evidence, many

beekeepers around the world continue to blame Imidacloprid—the

best-selling pesticide in the world, with annual sales of nearly $860

million. Others have pointed fingers at malefactors ranging from cell

phones to genetically modified crops, with little evidence. The leading

theory is that colony collapse is caused by a combination of viruses,

pesticides, the parasitic varroa mite, drought and stress triggered by

commercial colonies' overwork and poor nutrition.

The

meta-culprit is the shift to large-scale agriculture. When most farms

were small family affairs, pollinators came from nearby wildlands. But

the growth of massive industrial farms has put most crops out of the

reach of wild insects. So farmers need to supply artificially large

numbers of bees to pollinate their fields in the spring. The European

honeybee is the only pollinator that fits the bill: adapted for dense

living in tree hollows, it takes naturally to man-made wooden hives,

making it the only bee that comes in convenient boxes of 50,000 that

can be trucked from crop to crop. Wild insects such as bumblebees and

tropical flies still account for 15 percent of pollination, including

crops such as cacao (chocolate). Yet these wild insects are declining

worldwide due to loss of habitat and increased pesticide use. Farmers

the world over now rely almost completely on the European honeybee, one

of 20,000 species of bees. Many beekeepers now make more money from

pollination fees than from honey production.

The lack

of bees has reached crisis proportions in California's Central Valley.

Almonds, for years the most profitable crop in the state, expanded in

acreage from 550,000 in 2005 to 615,000 in 2007, and are expected to

reach 800,000 by 2010. These high-density plantations require more than

two hives per acre—which means a bumper crop of almonds will soon call

for nearly 2 million hives of bees. That's as many bees as currently

exist in the entire United States, yet just a third of what existed 60

years ago.

Paying for those bees has sapped almond

growers' profits. Joe Traynor, a "pollination broker" who matches

almond growers who need bees with beekeepers looking to rent out their

hives in the Central Valley, has watched the cost of pollination soar

in recent years. "When I started in 1960, the price for honeybee

rentals was $3 per hive. In 2004 it was $60 per hive. This year it was

$160 to $180 per hive." Those runaway prices have made pollination

expenses spiral to 20 percent of a California almond farmer's annual

budget—more than fertilizer, water or even labor. In 2008, for the

first time, the price for almonds fell below growers' cost of

production. "They're really caught in the middle," says Traynor. "It's

getting to be more and more of a hardship."

Because

crops are now global commodities, their prices are set by the world

market; farmers can't easily pass on cost increases to consumers.

Instead, as their profits disappear, they go out of business or switch

to more profitable crops. That reckoning day may soon come for almonds

and many other bee-dependent crops. According to Bernard Vaissière, a

pollination specialist with the French National Institute for

Agricultural Research, we wouldn't even know if we were currently

experiencing reduced yields due to suboptimal pollination, because

there is no previous baseline to measure against. "Insect pollination

has been totally overlooked as a production factor in Europe until very

recently," he says. "Pollinators were taken for granted, just like the

air and the light. So if there is a yield loss, it will be attributed

to anything but pollination deficit. But there has been a definite

increase in pollination-rental fees in many parts of France." Prices of

many of the major insect-pollinated crops have soared in recent years.

Farmers manage to get their crops pollinated, but at greater expense.

Governments

have done little to solve the problem. In June 2007 the U.S. House of

Representatives held an emergency hearing on the status of pollinators

in North America and allotted $5 million to honeybee research in the

ensuing farm bill, but the funding was cut a year later. Earlier this

month the U.S. Department of Agriculture made $4 million available to a

consortium of universities for research. On April 22, calling on the

British government to provide £8 million in emergency funding, British

Beekeepers Association president Tim Lovett said, "CCD has not yet

crossed the channel from Europe, but we are urging the government that

it needs to be prepared should this happen. Does the government want

the nation to go without honey on their toast, not have homegrown

strawberries to go with cream, and even put their own crusade for the

public to eat five portions of fresh fruit and vegetables at risk?"

Jeff Rooker, Britain's Food and Farming minister, responded that the

government didn't have the funds to help.

That leaves

beekeepers scrambling to keep the world in fruits and vegetables. "We

can't stand another bug or virus or pest," says Mark Brady, president

of the American Honey Producers Association. "Right now the industry is

like crystal. It's that fragile. One slip and it will shatter."

 

 

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/141461

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[Guest guest]



Crops that grow through pollnation by bees are under threat, world over. This phenomenon is going on since 3 to 4 years now and most alarmed are American farmers who now import bee colonies in their orchards. The Chhinese have given us a solution. At least in India, we can emulate the Chinese.

Rajinder Sandhir

 

-

Jagannath Chatterjee

; newindia ; Agriculture ; agri ; Agri

Wednesday, June 18, 2008 7:32 PM

[HealthyIndia] More buzz on the bees.

 

 

 

 

 

Stung By Bees

 

A mysterious ailment of honeybees threatens a trillion-dollar industry and an essential source of nutrition.

Rowan Jacobsen

NEWSWEEK

Updated: 11:52 AM ET Jun 14, 2008

 

For 3,000 years, farmers in China's Sichuan province pollinated their fruit trees the old-fashioned way: they let the bees do it. Flowers produce nectar that attracts bees, which inadvertently transfer sticky grains of pollen from one flower to another, fertilizing them so they bear fruit. When China rapidly expanded its pear orchards in the 1980s, it stepped up its use of pesticides, and this age-old system of pollination began to unravel. Today, during the spring, the snow-white pear blossoms blanket the hills, but there are no bees to carry the pollen. Instead, thousands of villagers climb through the trees, hand-pollinating them by dipping "pollination sticks"—brushes made of chicken feathers and cigarette filters—into plastic bottles of pollen and then touching them to each of the billions of blossoms.the world over now rely almost completely on the European honeybee, one of 20,000 species of bees. Many beekeepers now make more money from pollination fees than from honey production.