The insects that literally make our food possible are dying off at an alarming rate. Honeybees are responsible for the pollination of 90% of the plants we use as food. A report out today states that the Honeybees in Great Britain are down to one quarter the number they should be and they seem to fair worse in America. There are two apparent reasons for the decline, pesticides and the destruction of the natural habitat. Some countries are passing laws to restrict the use of pesticides for GMOs but chemical companies are fighting hard to deny the effect. That and severe drought will have a great affect on crop yields in the near future.
Except those aren’t the only factors. Counting pollinators in nature is extremely difficult, so we don’t really know what the affect is on them. The numbers about decline are referring to the European hybrid bees. People have been buying them for decades. Everyone knows it is difficult to have them survive the winter. And they have known since the 90’s that the lack of genetic diversity in the population has made them susceptible to disease, like mites. THEY DID NOTHING ABOUT THIS. Now it’s a crisis.
I’m not arguing that pesticides are or are not a problem. It just bugs the crap out of me that Greenpeace keeps using scare tactics and not telling the whole story. Just look up the definition of CCD, it refers specifically to the European hybrid bees, bred by beekeepers. Greenpeace paints this as agri-business vs nature when in fact it is just part of agri-business.
I’m not arguing that pesticides are or are not a problem. It just bugs the crap out of me that Greenpeace keeps using scare tactics and not telling the whole story. Just look up the definition of CCD, it refers specifically to the European hybrid bees, bred by beekeepers. Greenpeace paints this as agri-business vs nature when in fact it is just part of agri-business.
Yes, pesticides are a problem as is environmental change, man made and natural but as you stated not the only causes of CCD. The fact that Greenpeace focuses on anthropogenic causes doesn't mean they're using "scare tactics" either. Their focus is on the chemical industry and the overabundance of pesticides used on the mega farms as a contributing cause of honeybee decline, emphasis on contributing decline. And this appears to be affecting European and American bees as well. I first read about the gradual decline in the 70's BTW and it doesn't appear to be improving.
Can't Jack
I’m not arguing that pesticides are or are not a problem. It just bugs the crap out of me that Greenpeace keeps using scare tactics and not telling the whole story. Just look up the definition of CCD, it refers specifically to the European hybrid bees, bred by beekeepers. Greenpeace paints this as agri-business vs nature when in fact it is just part of agri-business.
Yes, pesticides are a problem as is environmental change, man made and natural but as you stated not the only causes of CCD. The fact that Greenpeace focuses on anthropogenic causes doesn't mean they're using "scare tactics" either. Their focus is on the chemical industry and the overabundance of pesticides used on the mega farms as a contributing cause of honeybee decline, emphasis on contributing decline. And this appears to be affecting European and American bees as well. I first read about the gradual decline in the 70's BTW and it doesn't appear to be improving.
Can't Jack
It is only mega farms that are the problem. If you create an unnatural concentration of plants that need pollinators, pollinators won't just appear naturally. That's not a agri-business problem, we need the food. Unless we want to just die ourselves, that would solve a lot of problems. But Greenpeace is not going to say anything unpopular like, quit your rutting.
I think the only real long term solution is to get away from mono-culture farming. This would also mean a big change in what we eat as well as how we treat food like commodities. It will probably be considered some sort of disaster and a collapse of modern society, but eventually we won't have any choice but to replace all the carbon input into agriculture with human power. More people will have to live near food production and be involved in it, instead of driving by it with their boats on weekends. Oh the horror.
A rapidly mutating virus has leaped from plants to honeybees, where it is reproducing and contributing to the collapse of colonies vital to the multibillion-dollar agricultural industry, according to a new study.
Emerging and reemerging diseases that result from pathogen host shifts are a threat to the health of humans and their domesticates. RNA viruses have extremely high mutation rates and thus represent a significant source of these infectious diseases. In the present study, we showed that a plant-pathogenic RNA virus, tobacco ringspot virus (TRSV), could replicate and produce virions in honeybees, Apis mellifera, resulting in infections that were found throughout the entire body. Additionally, we showed that TRSV-infected individuals were continually present in some monitored colonies. While intracellular life cycle, species-level genetic variation, and pathogenesis of the virus in honeybee hosts remain to be determined, the increasing prevalence of TRSV in conjunction with other bee viruses from spring toward winter in infected colonies was associated with gradual decline of host populations and winter colony collapse.....
The problem I see with this crisis is that it seems to have been a crisis for a long long time. Now I personally put my trust in the scientists who tell us it’s a crisis. But somewhere there needs to be some PR about how a crisis can go on so long and still be a crisis. I can just hear the schmucks at Fox saying how can this be a problem if it’s been going on so long…blah blah blah, you know the song and dance.
Good point CuthbertJ. It is definitely not sudden. It was in fact predicted 20 years ago. The neonicitinoids is a new twist and I think some people saw that as an easy slam on the chemical companies, giving this “crisis” new energy. I don’t mind the constant barrage of DANGER! DANGER! so much, we all gotta get our donations, but be honest about what you could have done 20 years ago, or for that matter how this how this should something funded by agri-business. Beekeepers aren’t doing their thing out of charity last I checked.