Vanishing honeybees mystify scientists It really makes me think about the hanging string that unravels the quilt. One-third of the U.S. diet depends on pollination and most of that is performed by honeybees. Not that we'll starve but it shows how our food supply can be susceptible to the smallest of things. Kind of a worry, Michael
There's a thread about this already, sort of. It's about the theory that cellphones are killing off the bees.
I heard about that. Very scary, isn't it? I guess two possible theories as far as what's responsible for it are cell phone radiation ( http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/wildlife/article2449968.ece ) or genetically modified crops ( http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,473166,00.html ). Whatever's causing I hope it's either figured out and stopped or somehow the bees adapt, because otherwise we're screwed. Einstein said that we would have four years to live if bees went extinct and I think he was correct.
CCD has since spread to Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. And last week John Chapple, one of London's biggest bee-keepers, announced that 23 of his 40 hives have been abruptly abandoned. Other apiarists have recorded losses in Scotland, Wales and north-west England, but the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs insisted: "There is absolutely no evidence of CCD in the UK." The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the world's crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, "man would have only four years of life left" Most research on cancer has so far proved inconclusive. But an official Finnish study found that people who used the phones for more than 10 years were 40 per cent more likely to get a brain tumour on the same side as they held the handset. It's like reading a Sci Fi?
Uh oh, if they all die out sometime next year in 2008... four years later would be 2012 and we all know what that means! - N
verroa maybe? they got that in the north island a few years back and it dealt a serious hit to their honey and bee industries.
