Is our selfindulgence killing the bees?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Stev0 @ Apr 17 2007, 04:28 PM) [snapback]424957[/snapback]</div>

You maroon's it's simple, God's given up on humanity and raptured the Bee's, sheesh use your critical thinking skills puleeeeze. <_<

Wildkow

p.s. BTW, this is alarming as well as the fact that frogs are disappearing also. Why can' the spitters disappear? I hate spitters. :angry:

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Apr 18 2007, 07:12 PM) [snapback]425674[/snapback]</div>

Unfortunately, evidence suggests that this is not the case as the wind blown pollen is also infected with BT. That's why I mentioned above that Monarch Butterfly larvae are being affected. Their caterpillars only eat Milkweeds as it contains a different toxin with which they've evolved and can ingest without harm. It's their defense mechanism against birds. Birds that ingest the Monarch caterpillar, know that they'll encounter an upset stomach from this meal and get conditioned to avoid this caterpillar.

Milkweed, though native, can be thought of as a weed as it's seed is attached to a silky parachute that can blow far away. These plants grow anywhere the seeds land and cornfields aren't exempt. Here's a link about the study that's been conducted which reflects that the BT wind blown corn pollen that lands on the neighboring Milkweeds is causing a threat to our butterfly.

http://www.gmo-safety.eu/en/archive/2004/314.docu.html

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(eagle33199 @ Apr 17 2007, 09:38 AM) [snapback]424600[/snapback]</div>

Well, I think we need to find whoever is selling these cell-phones to the bees and stop this madness! It's probably not the radiation killing them, it's the distracted flying. I didn't even know miniaturization went that far!

More seriously, background EMF has been proposed as a harmful source in a lot of things - leukemia, brain/bone cancers, etc - but not ever proven in people, or other mammals, let alone insects. There are so many other changes that have occurred in the last few decades that trying to pin this on cell-phones (which is very localized, even the towers) just through guilt by association is very irresponsible, IMO. They've had the mite problem, GMO crops which have been shown in certain cases to cause changes in insect populations, changes in bee-keeping (most U.S. honeybee hives are shipped south for the winter and the bees are kept actively producing honey instead of hibernating), etc. I put this theory on the too-implausible-to-spend-time-on list.

 

If it was found to be true that cell phone towers or such gave off the right wavelength to disrupt bee communications, I would gladly give up my cellphone. Not only for the sake of life (which we strive so hard to find elsewhere), but because these cursed devices have been both one of the greatest and one of the worst things to accept into my life

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Godiva @ Apr 18 2007, 01:20 AM) [snapback]425141[/snapback]</div>

G - seeing I'm at home today, did some 'net' investigating. Found out that experienced beekeepers don't want wild bees and they are a lot harder to remove once they've settled into a home, which these have. See http://denrig.com/bees.html
Thanks for the idea, I learned a lot, and might even want to "keep" bees some day. For now, I think I will leave them "B."

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Godiva @ Apr 18 2007, 05:33 PM) [snapback]425688[/snapback]</div>

The difference is that sonar operates by transmitting sound waves, and whales and dolphins communicate by sound. It's like someone shouting very loudly into your ear while you're trying to eavesdrop on a conversation on the other side of the room.

Radio waves, on the other hand, have never been clearly linked to biological processes. There have been studies saying yes, and studies saying no. It remains controversial and the answers are not known. But nobody has suggested a plausible mechanism whereby non-ionizing radiation might affect living creatures.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(SSimon @ Apr 19 2007, 09:01 AM) [snapback]426038[/snapback]</div>

As I said above, BT is a bacteria that kills leaf-chewing caterpillars. Butterfly larvae are leaf-chewing caterpillars. Bees and bee larvae are not. Thus BT will most definitely kill Monarch larvae. It will not kill bees. (Though according to Galaxee's post, it can affect them when combined with with a specific pathogen.)

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Apr 19 2007, 07:48 PM) [snapback]426450[/snapback]</div>

The bottom line is that we don't know.

Whales hear a cycles per second much lower than humans. Bees see in the ultraviolet, much higher than human sights. And I think we're all familar with dogs and dog whistles.

We didn't know about the sight of bees. Photographs were taken of flowers in ultraviolet to see what the bees might be seeing. Big surprise. A lot of flowers have "bulls eyes" on them, making themselves a pollination target.

Asteraceae
Arnica
If bees see in ultraviolet, there's no telling what other higher or lower waves might effect them. Maybe the extremely low electromagnetic waves do have an effect on them. A lot more research needs to go into what bees "hear". Assuming it's pesticides or mites or fungus may be convenient for us, but the bees are still dying.

At Cornell Univ. honeybees in a hive relocated into a new building became disoriented. After extensive research ruled out other causes, someone noticed the hive was next to the building's electric transformer. The bees were confused by 60 hz magnetism strong enough to interfere with homing and communication to gather nectar and pollen. (http://www.ratical.org/ratville/RofD4.html)

Maybe we need to look at homing pidgeons and sea turtles too. Don't they use electromagnetic fields for navigation?

Now the study that is often cited had to do with cordless phone base stations, not cell phones. That means...we don't know if cell phones or their towers have any effect. Now I'm not advocating taking down all of the Cell Phone towers and outlawing cell phones. I'm saying not to dismiss the possibility out of hand.

BTW the Navy still denies their sonar is killing whales and dolphins.

 

My dad raised bees for a number of years. He's in a nursing home now. But the thing is that there was a "mite" infestation that would settle in the bees abdomen and from there it grew larvae? Not sure what, but he said it gave them diarrhea. He said that he gave them something to help with that but as far as I know the bees kept dying.

Just to note, we lived about 1 house away from the powerlines which were outside.

I don't know if this had anything to do with it or not.

But I have also heard that if it is because of the "radio waves" from wireless communication, that it is confusing the bees about how they should return "home" to their hives.

If that's the case, then the bees are not getting their "food" because they need to "eat" so to speak at "home." So in this case, many would not be getting the nourishment to sustain their lives.

A normal bee would live about 6 weeks. A queen bee can live for a number of years, but if the workers are not making the "royal jelly" for the queen bee, there will be no reproduction in which she will lay eggs.

The eggs must also have the "royal jelly" in order to survive.

I just think that between the "waves" of communication and the "pesticides" have a lot to do with the demise of thousands upon thousands of bees.

I think it's a wake up call to all of mankind that they have sorely neglected a God-given responsibility.

How can it be rectified? I don't have the answer.

One thing that I do know is, that once we have passed a certain point, we might not be able to return to life as we once knew it to be.

 

Can GM crops be responsible?

 

I think our selfindulgence is killing alot of things, I think were going to see a decline in a lot of things, and i aslo think in a few years were going to have to make a really big decision's as a human race. Its to bad Our government(s) are going to try and keep our minds busy with some terrorist attack or some other war, because if they didnt, we would be were we would need to be as a human race right now. Its funny how our governments / leaders who are supposed to be representitives of the people act no way in favor of the people what so ever. funny aint it... :mellow:

 

Might as well bring this thread back with the answer - pesticides

U.S. News - Neonicotinoid pesticides tied to crashing bee populations, 2 studies find

 

Through the retrospectroscope this makes a lot of sense. Chemicals that kill lots of different insects but happily leave another insect population unharmed is no trivial feat. I suspect the bees were not killed outright by the insecticide because they are quite a bit larger than most of the pests, but that hardly made them invulnerable.

The generic name of the pesticide suggests a chemical that acts to disrupt the nervous system. In mammals it is the parasympathetic system. Why are the queen bees are more affected than the workers ? Elucidating that mechanism would add a lot of credence to the theory.

 

There is also a new thread on this in ENVIRONMENTAL section.
If you get NETFLIX you can instantly watch a 2011 "documentary" Vanishing of the Bees. More or less the bee-quivalent of Who Killed the EV.

At the risk of over-simplifying, France "arbitrarily" banned this pesticide in the mid-90's when the bees showed a problem. Here in USA, EPA tends to approve these things based on out-dated tests, and the burden is on public to observe a problem and then scientific probable cause is required before we act. So it looks like now have 2-3 studies now starting to make the proof. Gotta luv the transmitter bee.

I actually thought the film Vanishing of the Bees was worth a watch, more of a scientific contribution than Who Killed the EV. But keep in mind honey bees are non-native so to some extent this is mainly a problem for bee-keepers, who always had the issue of their commercial honey bees being exposed to pesticides in farmlands. But it could also be more than that.