Disappearing bees, and other myths and conspiracies

[urbpan]

I've been feeling some pressure to write about the great bee disappearance even though I don't really know too much about it, and the fact that the mainstream media is all over it kind of turns me off. I do feel like my role is to straighten people out about the hype, and to correct some important misconceptions. The phenomenon is spooky, because the bees that are disappearing are just disappearing. They aren't dropping dead in their hives, they are flying away and leaving the hives empty.

Anyway, important things to know: We are talking about honeybees, semidomestic insects native to Eurasia that have been kept for honey production for millennia. Not any of the other several thousand species of bees, wasps, hornets, etc. (But then again, if those disappeared, it wouldn't be as obvious, because people don't keep them in semi-captive colonies.) So if you are worried about how wild plants in North America are going to reproduce without honeybees, don't, because those wild plants will be pollinated by whatever was pollinating them for the millions of years they existed before honeybees were introduced.

The big problem (and the reason that the corporate controlled media would bother to cover a story about an insect species' decline) is that honeybees are used to pollinate commercial crops. Hives are put in to trucks and driven hundreds of miles to farms, and allowed out to pollinate fields of melons, or orchards of plums or whatever crop needs a pollinator to 'bear fruit.' These large scale beekeepers are the ones who are finding big chunks of their (flock? herd?) animal collections simply empty. They are also the ones putting their bees through the stress of a ride on a truck, they are the ones feeding their bees high fructose corn syrup to make up for the fact that many crops are poor nectar producers, and they are ones exposing their bees to crops that have been given insecticides that make all parts of the plant poisonous including the nectar and pollen.

"Why are the bees declining?" begins to sound a little coy, if not naive. (If only someone would write a groundbreaking book about the dangers of widespread insecticide use...)

If you continue to be curious about the missing bees, please read this article: http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/display.php?id=1829

Comments

[droserary.livejournal.com]

From what I've read and heard, the phenomenon isn't as pronounced here in the Western US.

People also seemed to get into a panic about not having enough food. 1) We are now a net food importer (for the first time since the James River Colony... That tells ya something right there), so we won't be running out of food any time soon. 2) Many crop plants are anemophilous, or pollinated by wind. I spoke to a bee keeper friend of mine who doesn't seem to be too worried about all of this and actually sees it as a good sign--that perhaps the large commercial bee operations may be replaced by smaller, local ones that can promote organic use of their bees and further perpetuate the local foods movement. (There's an idea for you to write about: Local foods vs. organic food--if you had to pick, which should it be?)

[silvaerina-tael.livejournal.com]

preferably local *and* organic? That said, it's a good question. Trucking food in with the resultant costs of that in oil and gas, never mind packaging (at least from the perspective of living in Nova Scotia, where the bulk of our food is shipped from either Ontario and Quebec, if not further west, or the New England States at least) vs artificial fertilizer and hothouse plants, but less oil and gas waste. There there is also the infrastructure based around the vast amount of trucking, and the degradation of the environment based on that, with no incentives for rail usage.

[droserary.livejournal.com]

Excellent points. I prefer local and organic as well, but it's often the case that you can't find both.
I'm always reminded of this movement at the college my partner works at. The institution purchased an old building downtown (a dying downtown in a small community near Columbus, Ohio) and is turning it into a functional community building with available storage and kitchens that are up to FDA codes. Local farmers will be able to come to this location, store their goods, make their products, and then sell them to local businesses. The problem often was that big buyers like grocery store chains wouldn't sell their products (jams, jellies, etc.) because it hadn't been made in a kitchen that was up to FDA codes. So now the college is facilitating this new way for people to move their product from field to plate and also help the locals begin to think about where their food really comes from. It's truly fascinating.

http://rurallife.kenyon.edu/FFT/index.html

[silvaerina-tael.livejournal.com]

I'm very fortunate here in Halifax (Nova Scotia) that the farmer's market is both on a bus route and downtown so is also easily accessible. I can get meat, veggies, and fruit - so long as they are in season - at the market. The one exclusive organic store, is again, on an accessible bus route.

Now, if only I can convince my roommates to actually get up early in the morning on Saturday to go...

[ankhanu.livejournal.com]

I've heard the Halifax farmer's market is very good. I haven't been there though.

Unfortunatley, the local grocery stores are not very helpful to our local producers, causing them to lose a lot of crop. They won't put in orders for large quantities of produce early enough for the producers to harvest the orders and are too willing to go to imported products for lower costs (and generally quality), resulting in producers not knowing if an order will even be placed. I'm glad I'm not trying to make a living in agriculture :P

[silvaerina-tael.livejournal.com]

The Halifax market is huge, and very diverse, never mind labyrinthine. I'd have to check about whether the local groceries do that here as well. They probably get more money from the larger growers in Ontario and the New England States (incentives) than local. I remember reading a paper that states only 15-20%, if that, of food is grown in the Maritimes for the Maritimes. I found this rather disturbing.

[ankhanu.livejournal.com]

Sobey's seems to be particularly uncooperative in working with local producers, though Superstore isn't fantastically cooperative either, but a bit better. At least this is what I've gathered from working with a few growers on CB. The growers in the Valley and Truro might have an easier time, but I doubt it.

[silvaerina-tael.livejournal.com]

That's the feeling I got, which is why farmer's markets are rather big here. And with that article on the insecticides used on a lot of crops that bees pollinate, I'm even more leery of buying crops shipped from away, never mind the honey, and with practices I know nothing about.

[gigglingwizard.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for posting this! I garden and raise chickens at my home in Columbus. Next year I'll be looking to lease some land to expand our operations and get in on one of the local farmers markets. My wife and I have thought of all kinds of ways to boost profits by selling value-added products rather than just raw produce, chicken, and eggs, but the one thing holding us back is not having access to a commercial kitchen. This is a useful link you've posted. Thanks!

[droserary.livejournal.com]

No problem. If I understand correctly, the commercial kitchen is still in the planning phases and I'm not sure when it's scheduled for completion (as far as I know, rennovation hasn't even begun), but definitely get in touch with the folks at Kenyon. Their food services tries to use all local products as well. You might have something they need or beat the price of someone that already supplies it to them.

Also getting in touch with them will encourage Kenyon that there's interest in their Food for Thought campaign and the commercial kitchen.

Best of luck in your efforts!

[droserary.livejournal.com]

A more specific link that was buried in text might help explain the initiative in depth:
http://rurallife.kenyon.edu/FFT/Buckeye.html