Page 43 - 200806 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - June 2008

Last flight of the honeybee? 43 Last flight of the honeybee? 43 Last flight of the have disappeared. The first recorded another nocturnal delivery of east coast hives, Last flight of the Hackenberg says it's only the money that brings unexplained loss was in the US 150 years ago and ever since large numbers have vanished at him and his waning bees to California each year. honeybee? intervals throughout North America, Europe "I'd rather be back in Florida with my bees. honeybee? and Australia. An epidemic first reported on the They'd be feeding on the maple and willow. It's Isle of Wight wiped out 90% of honeybee paradise down there. Why would anyone come Continued from Page 40 colonies in the UK at the beginning of the 20th to this godforsaken place? But something's got Continued from Page 40 century. Then, as now, the main suspects were to pay the bills. I'm here for a $150,000 This is the Almond Board's profit-driven deficiencies in the bees' diet, pollution in the cheque." [] response to a potential shortfall of honeybees: to environment, pests and parasites and Some interesting facts about bees work even harder those that remain. Bees are mismanagement by beekeepers, but the killer Some interesting facts about bees being treated as a machine with no was never identified. consideration for their life cycle and When bees die, beekeepers can restock - Honey bees' wings beat 11,400 times per downtimes. And any machine pushed to its their hives quickly by buying a new queen who minute. limits and not well maintained will break. lays 2,000 eggs a day at her peak. Across the - Bees' flight speed averages only 15 miles per Environmentalists argue for world, most have chosen to fill their apiaries hour. conservation measures on land planted with with a type of honeybee renowned for its gentle - Bees possess five eyes. single crops that will both improve honeybee nature and prodigious honey production skills. - Honeybees can perceive movements that are nutrition and attract wild pollinators that could This race of bee, originally from Italy, now separated by 1/300th of a second. Humans can shoulder some of the honeybees' workload. dominates beekeeping. The downside is that the only sense movements separated by 1/50th of a Monoculture, the hallmark of modern honeybee gene pool has been diminished and second. Were a bee to enter a cinema, it would agriculture, covers much of the world's 1.5bn with it traits that may have helped bees fend off be able to differentiate each individual movie hectares of arable land. Single-crop plantations mites and other parasites, such as a new fungal frame being projected. and orchards can stretch for hundreds of bacteria, Nosema ceranae, that attacks its gut. - Bees cannot recognize the color red. kilometres. The advantages for the farmer are There are fears that mites are becoming - Honeybees' stingers have a barb which manifold: the crop blooms at the same time, can increasingly resistant to chemicals administered anchors the stinger in the victim's body. The bee be treated with the same pesticides and can be by beekeepers to kill them. Pettis says we are leaves its stinger and venom pouch behind and harvested together for maximum efficiency. But controlling too many bee ailments with drugs soon dies from abdominal rupture. for honeybees, pollen collected from one crop and a more organic approach is needed that - Africanized Honey Bees (killer bees) will does not provide a balanced, nutritious diet. includes stocking apiaries with locally reared pursue an enemy 1/4 mile or more. Scientists agree that malnourished bees are bees better adapted to local climate and - Honeybees communicate with one another by more susceptible to disease and pesticide environmental conditions. "dancing" so as to give the direction and poisoning, while the best-fed are the hardiest. Meanwhile scientists are hoping to use distance of flowers. Planting hedgerows of wild flowers the mapping of the honeybee genome to - A single hive contains approximately 40- would give honeybees a more varied menu. engineer in the laboratory a super bee that has 45,000 bees. While this has happened in Europe, US almond the resilience to withstand varroa but retains all Queen bees growers have proved resistant to the idea, the qualities of the Italian bee. Biologists will Queen bees concerned that the bees would make fewer visits tell you, however, that it will be only a matter of to the almond blossom if they had a choice. But time before a super bee breeds a super parasite. - The queen is the only sexually developed hedgerows would also provide food and habitat Geneticists also discovered that honeybees have female in the hive. for other pollinators such as butterflies, fewer genes providing resistance to disease than - The queen mates in flight with approximately bumblebees and solitary bees. There are 4,500 other insects. In particular, the number of genes 18 drones. She only mates once in her lifetime. wild bee species in North America that are responsible for detoxification appear to be - A queen can lay 3,000 eggs in a day. capable of pollinating myriad fruits and smaller, making it unusually sensitive to - Queens can live for up to 2 years. vegetables - some more efficiently than pesticides and poisons. Its large-scale - A queen can lay her weight in eggs in one day honeybees. disappearance across the US and high death and 200,000 eggs in a year. Could they prevent a pollination crisis if rates in Europe are signalling that industrialised - Fertilized eggs will become female offspring, honeybees become extinct? Only if they have farming makes demands on honeybees that are while unfertilized eggs will become males. somewhere to make a home in the orchards and not sustainable. fields, and something to eat after the single crop Central Valley has been described as a Drones Drones has bloomed. Monoculture deprives them on big brothel where billions of honeybees from all both counts. over the US can pick up a contagious illness and - The only function of drones is to mate with the The Xerces Society runs a pollinator take it home. It's spread by mites from infected queen. conservation project in northern California. to healthy colonies. And there are plans to Farms in Yolo County receive a mixture of expand Central Valley's almond orchards to the Workers Workers plants that flower throughout the year and nest point where, by 2011, they will require 1.6 blocks for wild bees, and they keep large areas million honeybee colonies for pollination. - The workers are sexually undeveloped of soil untilled for native bees to live on. They Despite around a third of all US females. say they have seen the return of native bees and honeybees being wiped out last year, and again - Life expectancy is approximately 28 to 35 benefited from their pollination services. But this year after beekeepers had restocked their days. final details being hammered out in a farm bill hives, the almond pollination has yet to suffer. Honey Honey on Capitol Hill look like trimming conservation Why? budgets and reducing financial incentives for - Bees have been producing honey for at least farmers to manage their land in a more There are two answers. The shortage of 150 million years. pollinator-friendly way. honeybees has pushed up the price of hive - The honeycomb is composed of hexagonal So growers will continue to be rentals for almond pollination to an all-time cells with walls that are only 2/1000 inch thick, increasingly reliant on honeybees to do a job high of $140 per hive, so more and more but support 25 times their own weight. once performed by a host of different insects. beekeepers are making the trip west, and the - Honey is nectar that bees have repeatedly Their profits now hinge as much on honeybees' Almond Board's requirement of two hives each regurgitated and dehydrated. availability to pollinate fields as they do on the containing 20,000-30,000 bees per acre to - In the course of her lifetime, a worker bee will sun and rain. This is why there is such urgency pollinate the almonds is excessive, but provides produce 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey. in solving the mystery of disappearing and a buffer should some of the hives be empty. - To make one pound of honey, workers in a dying bees. hive fly 55,000 miles and tap two million This is not the first time that honeybees As the sun rises over the almond orchards after flowers. []