Jan. 24, 2008
What's Wrong With The Bees?
Steve Kroft Reports On The Mysterious Disappearance Of Bees
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What's Wrong With The Bees
Over the past year, some beekeepers have lost up to 90 percent of their hives. The losses could have serious effects because honeybees help produce a third of the foods we eat. Steve Kroft reports.
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If you want to grow fruits, vegetables or nuts in the United States on a commercial basis you have to have soil, sun, seeds, water, and honeybees -- millions and millions of honeybees brought in from all over the country to pollinate the crops. As correspondent Steve Kroft explains, honeybees are the unsung heroes of the food chain, crucial to the production of one third of the foods we eat. So when billions of bees began to mysteriously disappear last year, there was plenty of concern and no shortage of theories, blaming everything from cell phones to divine rapture. None of the usual explanations seemed to fit. Some of the nation's top scientists are trying to understand this phenomenon, but no one is more immersed in the mystery than the man who is widely credited with discovering it.
Lewisburg, Pa., has a population of 6,000 people and 88 million bees -- enough to sting every resident of New York, California, and Texas combined. The bees belong to David Hackenberg and his family, who have been keeping them for almost half a century.
"It's the most unique thing in nature there is. I mean you stick your head inside that beehive, and it's, you know, it's something about bees that just makes the rest of the world just seem to go away," Hackenberg says.
Hackenberg says he gets along with his bees "fine."
The bees make plenty of honey, but most of the money comes from loading 2,200 hives onto flatbed trucks and renting them to farmers all over the country. On the day we followed them, their services were desperately needed in Maine, where mile upon mile of wild blueberries were in bloom just waiting to be pollinated.
Thirty years ago, a good-sized blueberry farm was 500 acres; today, a large commercial operation can run to 10,000 acres and there are simply not enough honeybees in Maine to do the work. On average, Hackenberg and his bees log 60,000 miles a year on the road, wintering in Florida to work citrus and cantaloupe, then heading back north in the Spring for apples and cherries, maybe even to California for the almond crop. He's just a small part of an industry that pollinates 90 different crops worth an estimated $15 billion. And most people don't even know it exists.
"What happens when you pull into a gas station with a big flatbed of bees?" Kroft asks. "Are people nervous? People get scared?"
"Oh yeah, I mean, you get all of them things. I mean, you know, 'There's bees in that truck!' Most of the people in this country have no idea what it takes to put the food on their table," Hackenberg explains.
Hackenberg thinks bees are underappreciated. "Sometimes I think beekeepers are underappreciated," he adds, laughing.
The hours are long and the work strenuous. After a ten-hour drive to Maine, Hackenberg and his crew still had to unload the hives and position them in the fields. Even when he grabbed a few hours sleep in the cab of his truck, he wasn’t alone: most people would have trouble getting to sleep with a couple of dozen bees buzzing around, but Hackenberg never worries about getting stung.
"That's just part of the business, you know. It's like stopping for traffic lights in New York," he says.
He estimates he has been stung "thousands and thousands" of times. "I've had days where I might have had a hundred, 120 bee stings in one day," he tells Kroft.
Hackenberg says the body builds up immunity to the stings, while the uninitiated might end up in the hospital.
Produced By Andy Court and Keith Sharman
© MMVIII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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See all 147 CommentsStill cheaper than oil!"
;)
along with honey nut cheerios.. :''(
Just to clarify CBS,
Re: "Colony Collapse Jeopardizing Beekeepers"
If the bees disappear, they won''t be the only colonies to collapse. Will we invite a flood of Mexicans to come and pollenate our flowers for us?
Some researchers suspect cell phone proliferation as a cause for this phenomenon.
Others cite a possible link to the Franken-foods owned by argri-terrorist organizations like Monsanto.
Re: ""I think the problem is complicated," says Jeffrey Pettis, who is leading the efforts for the Department of Agriculture. "I don''t think it''s going to come down to a single factor. We''re not going to be able to pin all of these losses on either one factor or even maybe one combination of factors."
What an idiotic statement. Is it not possible to include an infinate number of factors into 1 combination?
Heckuva'' job!
Are we still talking about the bees, or is this another reference to illegal aliens working in the fields.
LawyerTom1,
Re: "we get contaminated food, contaminated toys, and bee viruses that impact entire major sectors of the agricultural segment of the economy"
Well, sure, if you want to put it that way...but we get a good deal on it!!! Cheap, cheap!!!
What the hell else are we going to buy with U.S. dollars?
Are we still talking about the bees, or is this another reference to illegal aliens working in the fields.
Uh, both. The average American is below average. Sad to say , but most americans can''t grow a flower or gut a chicken. And from the growth of the frozen food already cooked section at the grocer , they will soon be unable to cook. They lost the ability to reason on Aug 23rd 1988. It''s documented.
LOL
I wonder if what you have said about pesticides isn''t the real culprit. For example, in a fields around my house, I watch them first spread something in the ground to find fungus. Then when the plants begin to sprout, they spray at different times pesticides, as well as herbicides. Then, using the sprinkler system, they spread some kind of sulfur fertilizer on the ground, which is the most disgusting thing I have ever had to smell. Finally, after all this when it comes time to harvest the crop (potatoes), they kill the top plant with herbicide so as to make the harvest easier. I''ll tell you, farming has got so much krapp being sprayed on plants, you really have to wonder how it is affecting us and the environment. What is happening to bees should be a warning.
LOL
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Posted by MCVett at 08:57 PM : Oct 28, 2007
I know this isn''t a laughing matter....but geez your comment made me laugh!!
Has this honey been analyzed and tested for contaminants? If one were to take some of this honey and put it into a healthy hive, would the bees avoid it? Is this honey being sold anyway? I had honey at breakfast this morning.
How many cultures do this?? Each spring when bees swarm, it is the older of the two that go. Leaving the younger in the hive. Your report spoke not a word about how you manage and retreve the new swarms each year or how you care for the "Queen" She is the HEART of the hive. The worker and drone exist only for her, there can be only "one Queen." If she dies, the others leave, when swarming and she is killed the others go back to the hive. That is how you strengthen your hive, if need be. I dislike the idea of "shipping" hives cross country, however necessary. I am suprised the bee tolerates this. I suggest the farmer purchase a supply of KELLY hives
and place them all around the property and let the bee do the work. Be sure and buy plenty of extra ones, including the Stack-able caps where the hive will produce Honey in the 1 pound "square" really-1 # each] and
the population will double yearly. But please, hire people to retreve all new swarms and care for your hives. Stop seeing the bee as a slave and let it do what it loves doing, and that "Queen" will keep you in millions of bees forever. AND FOR GOD''S SAKE, LET UP ON THE PESTICIDES. If man destrories the bee, you can forget about "Global Warming"
Some chemical indutries have played with nature...and nature doesn''t enjoy these games ...
Chemical dependency breaks down the immune system, little by little. Without our natural immunities people will die from the common cold. Be dirty, folks.. It can save yer life.
The question is "Where Have the Bees Gone?".
Unusual numbers are being found above the altitude one would normally expect ~ circling communication towers as reported by a few courageous crewmen that work on the mountaintops in the southwest.
I imagine if bees do this long enough, they die, and their little bodies are scattered to the winds, never to be found. The solution may simply involve changing the transmitting frequency out of what appears to be the 1800 to 2000 range & refitting receiving devices. Unfortunately that would involve large companies, government bodies, and a yet another cell phone scare. $$$. We seem to have the Midas Touch here.
I can''t remember how many years it took (15 or more?) to prove what was killing the dolphins before it was admitted to be a consequence of our sonar & undersea military practice. We''re dealing with very much the same principle. We don''t have that long this time to skirt the evidence, as we are endangering the world food supply.
And no, I''m a common sense farm lady ~ (to my knowledge, I''ve never been abducted by aliens :) And this latest bit of diversion-science has gotten me worried enough to make my first post to any "blog".
Next, my congressman; sigh.
Yup, {{{okinup}}}, that''s probably it. And then swarming up above the No Bugs Anymore Zone on a mountaintop, which is somewhere around the 60 foot high mark ~ to uhmm, hug the 200-300 foot high tower? A last goodbye to their surrogate Queen?
LOL
Richard Owner Black Cat Honey
Please, do let this subject drop out of sight.
Pat
Although this has nothing to do with bees, it is a grave statement about people. I remember my grandma had a tiny garden in her backyard in the city. That itty-bitty plot of land produced more fruits and vegetables than I thought possible. She canned everything! And it was good! In just two short generations we have lost it. We have become so dependent on processed and pre-cooked foods that we can''t currently survive any other way. And it''s killing us. My advice to us all, stock up on those (toxic) canned foods now, and start researching on how to do-it-yourself. Big Brother is not going to save us...he is too busy monitoring our boring phone conversations to look up and see that soon there won''t be anything to monitor.
I will wait for scientific research rather than listen to your common sense. Common sense was the basis for the dark ages and believing the world is flat. We have brains and we ought to use them to figure out the truth rather than react based upon prejudice and emotion.
This past decade we are seeing releases into the environment that we have never before seen on this planet. Genetic engineering involves the artificial transfer of genes from one organism into another, bypassing the protective barrier between species. Scientists admit that unintended consequences may occur due to the lack of precision and specificity in the DNA sites on different plant chromosomes where the inserted genes randomly end up. According to the prominent biologist Dr. Barry Commoner, "Genetically engineered crops represent a huge uncontrolled experiment whose outcome is inherently unpredictable. The results could be catastrophic."
Please contact me for more info.
Laurel Hopwood, Chair, Sierra Club Genetic Engineering Committee
lhopwood@roadrunner.com
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