Missing Bees are Something
You Never Wish to Experience!
Missing bees, disappearing bees, colony collapse disorder, honey bee deaths! What are the theories? What are the implications? What will happen if this continues? Make no mistake, this is serious stuff, the stuff of nightmares. These are nighmares nobody would want to become reality.
I don’t think there is anyone left on this planet that hasn’t heard a story or two or read a press release about our missing bees.
These stories and theories are quite confusing and at times even quite frightening especially when they point the finger of doom at us. The World will end they say, there will be no more humans left, our planet will die and those of us who survive will be starving as there will be very little food left for us to eat!
Strong statements indeed and only made worse by those who produce scaremongering stories about our missing bees.
Let's Discover a little more about our Missing Bees and the serious implications.
Disappearing Bees ~ Some of The Theories
What is Colony Collapse Disorder?
Some of the Reasons for Honey Bee Deaths
Honeybees ~ Bees and Neonictinoids
Dr Sanford explains His Thoughts
Phil Chandler Gives us His Veiw in our Beekeeping Forum
How Can We Help to Save the Honey Bees?
These stories and theories are quite confusing and at times even quite frightening especially when they point the finger of doom at us. The World will end they say, there will be no more humans left, our planet will die and those of us who survive will be starving as there will be very little food left for us to eat!
Strong statements indeed and only made worse by those who produce scaremongering stories about our missing bees.
There is an element of truth in some of these stories, some have even claimed that our missing bees are the reason our world is said to end in 2012! Please let’s get that statement into perspective.
The Mayan calendar does not state the world will end in 2012 it states the world will end as we know it! It does not state that missing bees will be responsible for this. And think back 50 years, is our world the same now as it was then? Of course the answer is no.
Those of you who can remember 50 years ago or who have grandparents to tell you their stories will know there were no such things as computers and mobile phones, well there were of sorts, but not for the daily use of just about all of us as they are now. The world has certainly ended as we knew it then!
A U.S inventor, Dr Martin Cooper invented the first mobile phone of sorts in 1973 and now, all these years later these mobile phones appear to be the main cause if you listen to all the theories, as to why we have missing bees!
It saddens me greatly to read all these reports especially the doom and gloomy ones which actually have a very damaging effect on many people. It saddens me further to have to write this article about missing bees especially as my website is written to promote the health and medical benefits of honey which are huge and things I am deeply passionate about.
Missing bees, and dying bees are not a new phenomenon. Indeed unexplained missing bees were first recorded in 1869 in the USA.
It has to be said that pesticides are strong contenders, Dimitris explains some very real concerns about the dangers of pesticides on his excellent website, well worth reading.
Over the next few years the decline and disappearance of bees continued as far a field as Australia. And in the early 1900s 90% of honey bee colonies were wiped out due to a complete mystery which has never been solved throughout the U.K. Canada and Mexico have also seen a decline of missing bees throughout the 20th Century
What Would Happen if All
the Bees Became Missing Bees?
Before our bees became inhabitants of the world as we know it some 200,000,000 years ago the world looked very different.
Of course there were trees and plants, nowhere near as many as there are now of course and these were pollinated by the wind and anything else around at that time that could fly.
There were no beautiful honey bee gardens, very little green pastures, not many animals and no human life at all. Be aware the world could look much the same again if missing bees became or becomes a reality.
Missing bees will mean for many and most of us living in a barren land, imagine those lush pastures and meadows and hope you see them for many years to come.
If those fields and plants were to disappear how would we live? What food will we eat? What clothes will we wear? What work will we do? I expect these are questions you have never considered before unless you are clued up to the importance of honey bees and the effects they have on our very own existence.
Perhaps many of you will be thinking there are other pollinators which will take over the bees jobs like birds and butterflys. Yes you are right to some extent, they do have a purpose and some are very good pollinators.
However, without bees these creatures will disappear too as there will be very little for them to eat. No food for them and they die too! The age old story about the Birds and the Bees will take on a whole new meaning.
Do you like to eat bacon? Funny question you may think but without bees there would be no crops to grow pig-feed. No pig-feed equals no pigs which equals no bacon!
It won’t stop there because the complete disappearance of bees will mean no crops for any animals to eat! Take a nice juicy joint of beef which many of us take for granted on Sundays for our roast dinner. Forget it in the future, no crops equals no cattle equals no beef equals no milk equals no cheese equals no yoghurt and even no burgers! And so it continues!
You can forget your juicy apples and pears unless you are able to continuously pollinate your own fruit trees by hand and what’s to say that fruit will be there in the morning! Those neighbors around you will be hopping into your backyard as soon as your back is turned to pluck the very food from your mouth.
There will be a few bananas and pineapples around but could you grow them? and if not could you afford them if they ever came to a shop in town!
Take a look at blueberries, pumpkins and cherries now don’t they look luscious in their pretty fields and in perfect rows on the shop shelves....not if the bees go missing. These crops are virtually dependant on the plant pollination efforts of our bees.
These foods are eaten worldwide, we can almost all afford to eat them and they bring in vast incomes for the farmers who grow them as well as the honey bee farmers who rent their bees to them.
Explore this a little further with me; imagine just the decline of the blueberry a delicious little fruit we make into pies or milkshakes. How are we to do this without milk or even the cooking fats needed to make the pastry? The answer is of course we won’t be able to.
I will bet that most of you like to add a dollop of ice-cream to that pie. There won’t be such a thing as ice-cream and those of us who manage to survive will have very different stories to tell when we are older......"I remember when......!
Your food shopping trips will become boring, maybe you are thinking we will be able to replace our dairy milk with soya milk, wrong again, those protein rich beans won’t be around either. Vegans won’t touch animal products of any kind and that is to be respected, however our little bees are responsible for their diets. What will the vegan eat?
What will vegetarians eat? Most of our vegetables are again pollinated by our bees. This is something most of us tend to take for granted but missing bees will soon put a halt on that. One of the saddest thoughts for me personally is gone will be the benefits of eating honey.
Many years ago I invented my own form of honey diet, this relies almost solely on the fruits of the bee’s labor and will like many other things we take for granted become a distant memory.
You won’t even get the chance to mull all this over with a cup of coffee as the honey bee is the main pollinator here too. What little coffee there will be available will be so diminished in quantity that you’ll probably have to save for quite a while to be able to afford to buy some!
What Will be Left to Eat
if the Bees go Missing?
Missing bees will leave us very little to eat. There will be fish of course but can you imagine how expensive that will be if it comes to a shop in your town? There will be corn and wheat so you would have plentiful bread but what will you spread on it? A banana maybe but will you be lucky enough to find and afford one?
Perhaps corn fritters are your thing, if you’re lucky enough you may still find some walnut or olive oil to fry them in but that’s it, there will not be any other type of oil available!
Imagine when the kids ask you “What’s for breakfast?” and you are likely to give the same answers day in and day out “Oats and water” “What’s for lunch?” “Bread or toast”, dry of course. “What’s for dinner?” “Pizza base or dried pasta” are likely to be the answers you will give.
There will be nothing for you to put on top of that pizza base, nothing to make a tasty sauce just as the bees go missing so will almost everything you eat with them.
Recipe books and websites will become a thing of the past unless some bright spark can write one with the title “100 Ways to Use your Corn or Wheat” along with that will go their income, their passion and even Mother Google will suffer.
There are literally billions of websites who promote not just recipes but also a huge amount of products which are solely here because our bees pollinate the materials needed. Google and all the other search engines will also see a huge decline in their income but will no doubt see a huge amount of new websites spring up with the “History of this, that and the other”
Why will Missing Bees
have an Effect on what we Wear?
Take a look at the labels on your clothes and chances are most of them will contain cotton. Treasure that pair of jeans you are wearing for they will be no more. Your cotton sheets and towels, all gone because without the bees which pollinate the cotton crops they will all be history.
Ok you may think, well there is always wool. Wrong again, there will be no sheep to make our wool and no more lamb chops or roast leg of lamb. Dreadful, the implications of missing bees I hope you are beginning to understand, are shattering to mankind.
Missing Bees and Medicines
The medical benefits of honey are amazing, without the honey they too will disappear and there are many dozens of plants and herbs we use and take for granted, all pollinated by our bees.
An example is the drug Digitalin, this is used as a preventative for heart irregularities and comes from the foxglove flower. And what about St Johns Wort which many people swear helps to calm them and helps with depression.
The May apple is used by extracting Epipodophyllotoxin to turn into medications which treat some skin cancers and even warts.
The herbal industry is huge, this will go missing along with many medicines and natural cures we all depend upon......all gone if the bees go missing.
I could write a book about this but will settle for an article as there are many wonderful books which will take you through far more than I can write here. I urge you to buy them and read and digest them just as I have to truly understand what horrors are awaiting us if all our bees were to go missing. An Open Invitation for you to write in with your comments is awaiting you. Let me know your thoughts, your theories, and your stories. Correct me if you think I am wrong; add any further relevant information you may have, let me know how you think we could save our bees or even just agree with me. It will be good to hear from you and you will be helping too.
To continue reading, skip past this open invitation but please pop back to write your contribution to me.
Tell me the implications Missing Bees will have for you or Just Your Thoughts
Did you realise our bees are in such trouble? Were you aware of the implications to us all in a world without bees? Share your thoughts with us.
What Other Visitors Have Said
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So after having read just about every theory and story going about missing bees I believe it is time to put everything into perspective and examine the possible causes and reasons for missing bees, what the implications could be and how we can all help to stop disastrous things from happening to us!
Missing Bees # 1 ~
Mobile phones and mobile phone masts
Take a trip to a 12 story high hotel in the East village, Harlem and probably everyone will tell you where to find David Graves an urban beekeeper. He keeps a large collection of beehives on the rooftop of that hotel. He is totally convinced that mobile phone masts are the sole reason for his missing bees and the reason for disappearing bees.
He argues and there may well be a whole lot of truth in what he says that radiation from mobiles and mobile phone masts mess up bee’s navigation systems. So convinced is David and there are many more who agree with him, he refuses to believe that his theory may be untrue.
Missing bees have been observed in many parts of the United States where mobile phones range from fair to poor. Interestingly this is not the case in parts of Asia where there are high density mobile phone bases. In Europe, missing bees appear to be mainly in the southern parts of the continent.
In the United Kingdom and many other countries mild to moderate cases of missing bees appear to occur. This is despite the fact that their mobile coverage is at least as good as that found in rural parts of the United States of America and other areas where disappearing bees has been at its worst.
An in-depth study at the Landau University in Georgia has found that bees refuse to return to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby. Dr Jochen Kuhn, who carried this experiment out, said this could provide a clue to a possible cause of missing bees.
An excerpt from Wikipedia about missing bees states:
In May 2010, two researchers from Chandigarh's Panjab University published a study alleging to find significant changes in honeybee behavior as a result of the placement of two functional cell phones of GSM 900 MHz frequency inside the hive.
The study was immediately criticized for systemic errors, primarily based on the low sample size (four colonies). Criticisms also noted that the researchers mischaracterized the electromagnetic environment of areas where CCD has been reported and drew a false comparison to the electromagnetic environment of India.
Missing Bees # 2
Bad Beekeeping
Beekeeping is becoming increasingly popular again as many of us have taken on board the seriousness of the situation, that of missing bees.
Unfortunately there are practices amongst some beekeepers which are unacceptable; these could include feeding their bees the wrong diet, like feeding them high fructose corn syrup. Why feed them this? It is just poison! Beekeepers that use this should be aware they are going to have many missing bees on their hands and serve them right.
Over-dosing honey bees on antibiotics to stop and prevent them from contracting bee diseases is yet another stupid practice involved in bad beekeeping.
Antibiotics are to be used to treat diseases, not to prevent them. We as a society have also become resistant to antibiotics as they get prescribed so frequently they very often do not work any longer. This is where my passion with the medical benefits of honey and amazing Propolis has me almost salivating.
If you are a new to beekeeping please treat these tiny creatures with respect, if you look after them they will look after you.
Missing Bees # 3 ~
Pesticides and Insecticides
This is the scariest reason for missing bees that I have come across Imidacloprid, remember that name, write it down and check anything you may be tempted to use in your honey bee gardens.
Steer well clear of this pesticide which is nicotine based and according to Dave Hackenberg who is credited with discovering CCD, this pesticide breaks down a honey bees immune system which means many dying bees.
This particular pesticide which gained a license in the USA in 1994 is found in just about everywhere where plants such as lawns, sunflower fields and even apple orchards are grown. Just imagine what this must be doing to our bees, is it any wonder then that there are so many missing bees!
The manufactures of Imidacloprid deny rigorously that its product is responsible, however in France and Italy they beg to differ. They have studied this pesticide and discovered it disorientates bees, impairs their memories, communication dances and messes up their nervous system causing all kinds of disorders.
So concerned are the French this pesticide was banned in 1999 until further studies have been carried out. It is perhaps best and makes far more sense to be completely natural in our own gardens and with our lawns. So what if there are a few weeds, these are an amazing source of nectar for our bees and your apples will be far healthier and tastier too.
Perhaps the scariest information I have come across which concerns the uncontrolled use of pesticides and has more missing bees than anywhere is in southern Sichuan, China. We all know that our bees are responsible for most of our plant pollination but in this part of China where the bees are now missing their pear pollination is done by hand!
Whole families who depend on the fruits of their labor, in this case pears, are reduced to using feather dusters to collect and distribute pollen to keep these pear trees going! How long can they keep that up? It has been estimated that one colony of bees can pollinate 3,000,000 flowers a day
Can you imagine families from the USA or Europe getting up each morning and working their socks off all day never managing to match a colony of bees with their feather duster efforts. The cost involved if human workers were to be employed to carry out this vital service has been put at $90 BILLION USA DOLLARS or £64 BILLION POUNDS STERLING! Yikes!
Missing Bees # 4 ~
Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus
This was first discovered in Israel in 2004 and was at first thought to be the breakthrough to discovering the reason for missing and dying bees. It is now more favored as a symptom rather than a cause of CCD.
However it has been found in 96% of bee hives affected by missing bees and CCD. This discovery was made by one of the vast amount of research teams worldwide; this particular team is made up with researchers from the Pennsylvania State University, Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture and the Columbia University. This took place in 2007 and is seen as a huge breakthrough into the cause of our missing bees.
Although this is a virus which has been identified there are many more organizations who are seeking other as yet unidentified viruses which have mutated into what some call an HIV type of disease. Could it bee that our missing bees have AIDS? It could be and it could happen, after all a few years ago it didn’t exist in humans did it!
Missing Bees # 5 ~
Varroa Mites and Other Mites
These varroa mites are so destructive to our honey bees they cause Deformed Wing Virus and Acute bee paralysis virus, which have both been implicated in CCD.
Just like we are susceptible to catching head-lice these mites attach themselves to our bees and spread disease after disease are believed to weaken bees intestines and they become defenseless in fighting these off.
This mite originated from the Asian honey bee to the European honey bee which is not as strong in its abilities to fight infection off. There are many treatments available for these mites and they cannot be blamed solely for our missing bees.
More Possible Reasons for
Missing Bees
There are many reasons for disappearing bees and dying bees, some are altogether quite simple for example weather conditions. Bees cannot fly in the rain so if we have a particularly wet and rainy period this will stop them leaving their hives to forage. If they can’t do this they fail in their efforts to collect nectar which they make into honey.
As there are many wild bees they will of course starve without their diet of the honey they make. It may be these bees are not susceptible to CCD, nobody really knows if they are affected too, but how interesting would that be if we were to know that these bees go missing also.
Some think that additives to fuel with which we drive our cars and most forms of transport rely on are also to blame. Perhaps so, after all these weren’t around millions of years ago when those solitary bees began to pollinate our wonderful planet. The opposite to missing bees happened then, they flourished as the lack of pollutants did not stand in their way.
Scaremongering maybe a word you wish to use after having read this article, it is not a word I would choose myself. This article has been written purely to inform you of the seriousness of missing bees and you are of course very welcome to add your own thoughts and comments. Write Your Own Article
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