I visited Hidcote Manor Gardens in Warwickshire earlier today. They have several honey bee hives and a notice board claiming three different reasons for the decline in honey bee colonies across the UK.
"The number of honey bee colonies in the UK has halved in recent years. This is probably due to:
1. The use of agricultural pesticides and chemicals;
2. Varroa mites, blood sucking parasite which seriously weaken or even wipe out whole colonies; and
3. Cold wet summers which prevent bees from leaving the hives to gather food."
I wonder how much evidence there is for the three possible causes and which might be having the most impact?
Ian Thomson,
this article is unbelievable. CCD has only been an issue since about 2006. Imidacloprin has been in use since 1990. They state it only took low levels of the pesticide to cause the CCD like death. Lower than is what is typically seen in the field!!!
The facts do not compute. Why would it not cause any significant harm for 15 years and then at LOWER CONCENTRATIONS than what is typical?!?!?! This study needs to be redone with better controls to find out what is really happening!!! Yes the neonicotinoid may be a contributor, BUT, something else must also be important!!!
How many times can scientists get bias confirmation and not follow through!!!
John Sayers,
There has been direct testing with neonicotinoids with bees. Unless the farmer is overspraying there should not be a problem. This is stupid as roundup and GMO's are designed to reduce the need for spraying!!! Spraying where bees are active is going to leave too much of the chemicals.
Still, I am amazed that beekeepers are not on farmers backs to NOT spray when they have their hives in the area. Recently there was a loss of a large number of hives in Florida. There were the usual accusations about the cause. Turned out the county was using both spray trucks and aerial spraying of insecticides to keep down mosquitoes. Seems the farmers were unaware that BOTH insecticides are TOXIC to bees and had not taken any precautions. Apparently the county had also not done anything special even though they must have known there are a number of commercial bee keepers in the area!!!
The county DID have all this information plus a spraying schedule on their website I easily found!!! I wonder how many of the problems with bees are due to people just NOT paying attention. Reading the posts by various people and scientists from Canada it appears they are all VERY aware of the various dangers and are actively trying to mitigate with weather, pesticides and the other issues.
The interesting facts on CCD include that it was first noted in the 1800's. Don't think Monsanto and pesticides were around!!! Their best argument is that the pesticides CONTRIBUTE TO CCD!!
13 June 2013:
Harsh winter hits honey bees: Number of colonies who did not survive up by a third
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2340682/Harsh-winter-hits-honey-bees-Number-colonies-did-survive-third.html?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490
Ian Thompson your link is much like some articles on "Climate". Blame something particularly if put out by rich greedy companies. The "Greens" love to blame so everyone goes back to being a caveman but themselves who will be the heroes.
This is from a wiki post "The IAPV was discovered in 2004, and belongs to the Dicistroviridae. It causes paralysis in bees which then die outside the hive. It can be transmitted by the mite Varroa destructor. These mites, however, were found in only half of the CCD colonies.[19]
The virus was also found in samples of Australian honey bees. Australian honey bees have been imported into the U.S. since 2004,[18] and until recently, it was thought possible that this is how the virus originally reached North America. Recent findings, however, reveal the virus has been present in American bees since 2002."
I can not remember what disease my bees had -I think it was a virus but not the same as that in USA or Europe probably local. Where I was living was mainly native bush and remnants of orchards that were not well looked after. We had about twenty citrus tees and assorted other fruit trees and never sprayed.
Here is the whole wiki post http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder You can not believe everything on wiki. You will know that there were 'green" editors such as William Connolly who removed any scientific fact he did not like and put in his own slant. He was supposedly banned but still pops up.
I put up a post on wiki (unrelated to environment) and had to battle to keep it to historical and correct technical facts by referring to actual original references. In the end I had to give up correcting opinions by individuals who did not understand the technology.