Flight Of The Honeybee

Scientists Scramble To Find Out Why Nature's Pollinators Are Vanishing

(CBS)  From their buzz to their stingers, bees often inspire fear.

CBS News correspondent John Blackstone put on a beekeeper's hood in order to get close to the bees Louise Rossberg keeps.

What we should be afraid of, Rossberg said, is that bees are disappearing.

"I worry every time I take a lid off, because you never know what you might find inside your hive," she said.

Her yard is littered with dead and empty hives. The bees in more than 700 of her 800 hives have perished. Beekeepers in 35 states have been hit by the die-off.

"This is an agricultural emergency. Yes, it is," she said.

Discovering what's killing the bees is a top priority. A national task force analyzing hive samples since February is looking at theories ranging from immune system disorders to global warming to pesticides.

"At this point I would say it is still a mystery," said Jeff Pettis, a research leader at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. "We have a lot of leads and a lot of ideas but nothing concrete at this point."

The die-off is focusing attention on the vital importance of bees. To bear fruit, most flowering plants need pollen moved from blossom to blossom. Nothing does that job as effectively as a bee. Pollination by bees produces 30 percent of our food.

Shop for fruits and vegetables and most of what you see comes from the bees. Pears and apples, avocadoes, melons and most berries. Without the bees we would have almost none of this.

Every nut in almond-grower Bob West's orchard has been visited by a bee. West needs tens of thousands of bees brought in by commercial beekeepers to pollinate his orchard.

"It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure it out," West said. "Without the bees, there's no almonds."

While honeybees raised by beekeepers are by far the most important pollinators, they aren't the only ones. Wild bees, like the bumblebee, have a role too. But wild pollinators have been in decline for years.

"I don't like to say that we have a pollination crisis, but I think the writing is definitely on the wall," said wild bee researcher Claire Kremen of the University of California, Berkeley.

Kremen is searching for ways to avoid that pollination crisis. She's is studying a patch of farmland planted with a rich variety of things wild bees love. Actually, in restoration ecology, they call it the field of dreams hypothesis, she says. If you build it, will they come?

The early signs are they will come.

"Yeah, it's buzzing out here," she said.

An indication, perhaps, that its time for us to start giving back to a creature that gives us so much.

[sbates8]

I'd like to know is this a national crisis or an international phenomenon?

[zoieolie]

Please tell us what is planted in the "field of dreams" so we can plant what helps bees in our yards and communities.

[nothappyatall]

"Nothing does that job as effectively as a bee. Pollination by bees produces 30 percent of our food.
"

The key word is "effectively" which translates to cheapest and most efficient, this in turn means that with no bees there are other alternate methods of accomplishing the same thing, it may cost more, it may take more time/labor, but that's all.

[tromba59]

newster1,

As it concerns honey bees, for now, "effectively" means "ONLY". Next year, it will still mean only. Next decade, it will still mean only.

Got any ideas?

[rafterman1]

I know this isn't funny because of the nation's food supply. But...

The bees are in hiding. They are waiting for just the right moment to strike and take over everything :)

[ccouloir]

This is international is scope but more acute in the U.S. One other possible cause is the genetically modified grains that generate toxins to control insects. These "natural" insecticides may be affecting bees. Bees are not very good at cell regeneration and thus sensitive to these toxins.

[tromba59]

This problem will be enormous if we do not figure it out very soon. As a hobbiest with about 20 hives, I know first hand how expensive establishing a healthy bee hive is. My bees just make honey and pollenate the neighbors' gardens. My loss would just be a few pounds of bees and what litle I make selling honey. The large commercial beekeepers would lose millions of $$'s of bees, rental contracts, honey revenues and possibly equipment.

[kings131313-2009]

my mom was louise rossberg on the story you just watched please let people know that the gov.ment should help for disaster relief fund? i have trying since january for help but they keep telling me to get a real job bee keeping is not a job whatever.oh the orange growers got help 15 million in 3 days i hate them.

[sharilyn3]

I am deeply disappointed by the lack of true investigative journalism on this story of bees dying. I have spent easily 40 hours research on this disaster called "Colony Collapse Disorder" in the US and "Mad Bee Disease" in France. It is a new worldwide occurrence. The bees are not dying from mites as happened in the 1980"s (National Geographic story).
The common factors that I have found are pesticides containing neonicotinoids. Go to the MAAREC.org website, click on Colony Collapse Disorder, click on "Protecting Honey Bees From Chemical Pesticides." The pesticides known to be highly toxic to bees and other pollinators are named. Bayer Corp Science sells their products which contain neonicotinoids in most countries. Check out their website for the impressive list. France banned only one of Bayer's products, Gaucho, as far as I can find and that was only for sunflowers and corn because the beekeepers proved it was fatal to bees. France uses the same pesticides that are used in California.
Please check the labels of your rose spray or garden products; if it reads highly toxic to bees, that means it also kills other pollinators, wasps, hornets and hummingbirds.
No bees means no nuts, no fruits and many missing vegetables. Please tell every grower you know to go to MAAREC.org and watch their power point presentation so they know how to protect the pollinators.

[themartyred]

not that you know me from Adam, but I had a vision of mass animal/nature death last fall w/o hearing anything about this, and it was worldwide and caused much duress. I just put faith in God and understand man's ways have harmed so much. Why can't people just love who they want, people not be used for slavery/slave wages, govt's not rip us off to promote the corporate profits and live and let live?

[themartyred]

and Sharilyn is right, this should be GIGANTIC news, but bee death isn't as exciting as Justin & his girlfriend getting back together for a day to attend Shrek 3! The news seems to only give little articles to things like gov't bungling, natural disasters etc, and tons to crime TV and celeb life.

[itwasntme000]

Posted by themartyred at 04:55 AM : May 08, 2007

You are aparently the one who reads the celebrity news. How else whould you know about brit going to watch shrek 3??? aparently that news interests you for some reason....

as for the bees ef'em just clone some cows, we can live off prime rib.....

[pensacola8-2009]

I recall the stories about miners using caged birds in the mines to give clues about depleting oxygen levels by seeing a bird's behavior become irratic and fussy. Dying bees are giving us a clue about something. This type of die-off concerns me. It reminds me about the Irish potatoe famine.

[talkingham]

Don't expect any news reporter to do any hoemwork anymore. They just write what they are told. Some people think that the immense increase in microwave radiation to to cel phone towers throughout the countryside might ber scrambling their navigation systems- that would be too unpopular to repoort.

[itwasntme000]

talkingham
god do i wish that was true. I friggin hate cell phones. At the college i went to it seemed like 80% of the girls were on a cell whenever possible outside of class. (while driving/while walking 20 feet between buildings during a 10 min break between classes they had to call someone every day) and the guys were almost as bad dont get me wrong. A phone belongs at home. People need to get away from them for awhile.

[tuckyvan]

Check out www.pollinator.org for wealth of information on pollinators and what you can to to help protect pollinators and their habitat. BEEcome a pollinator partner! Help celebrate international pollinator week, June 24-30, 2007.

We may need to rely on the scientists to address CCD, but each of us can help the world of pollinators ourselves!

[toldyouso21]

Also, sometimes seemingly healthy colonies become ill and the complete hive collapses in about two weeks.

http://www.psu.edu/ur/2005/bee
mite.html
Posted by george2221 at 07:42 PM : May 07, 2007


Funny how you are so sure of the cause but all the experts are stumped. I would say...maybe...maybe not. The presence of the mites could not explain that not only are the bees disappearing, but if there is a die off or colony collapse, there are few to NO dead bee bodies to expalin this. Scientists have said that in other collapses, the bodies were everywhere--now they can't even find dead bees. So..... did the mites eat the entire bodies?

That aside, the disappearance has been noted in Europe and S. America also.