Will Mankind Be Extinct In Four Years If We Lose Our Honeybees?
by Karin Kloosterman, Jerusalem, Israel on 06.18.07
Like most things in fashion – Crocs, reality shows, bad rap music - give it a few months and you will find it in Israel. Is the bee colony hype reported here on TreeHugger, just that? According the Jerusalem Post, Israeli beekeepers and the Agriculture Ministry's Beekeeping Division are making plans and provisions for an outbreak of Colony Collapse Disorder - that they report, has resulted in the mysterious deaths of 2.4 billion bee colonies and 10 billion bees in the US.
Citing Albert Einstein's saying to the effect that mankind would become extinct four years after honey bees disappeared from the face of the earth, Haim Efrat, head of the Beekeeping Division, said he'd rather sound the alarm than be complacent. "I don't mind if I turn out to be wrong and I say it clearly: We have Colony Collapse Disorder here in Israel. Though we are not even close to the problem they face in the US and Canada, tomorrow morning we could wake up to a severe case of the phenomenon."
Dan Weil, the honey and bees information manager at Kibbutz Yad Mordechai, the biggest honey producer in Israel, says, "Besides the threat to honey production, the bee is know to be the main pollinate insect in nature, and without its services, as much as third of the crops we consume might collapse as well - foods such as almonds, corn, wheat, avocado, watermelon, apples, pears, cherries, seeds and more.”
There are a variety of reasons why the bee populations may collapse. One of the most unusual reasons is that the bees' orientation skills can be thrown off due to interference with magnetic fields. Israel is one of the most dense countries in the world for cellular and magnetic fields.
Are we in trouble?
Israeli health food stores pride themselves on Israeli-made honey. A bio-organic kibbutz (Sde Eliyahu) where this TreeHugger once worked also prides itself on bees: it produces the Bio-Bee biological control product to aid fertilization of crops and minimize the use of pesticides. While the kibbutz and its company is totally legit, Bio-Bee bootleggers are everywhere in Israel – sticking their Bio-Bee stickers on heavily pesticized strawberries to mislead the public to believe that the goods are bio-organic. Honey production, crops and even Eco-Tourism relies on the bee industry in Israel (see the Honeybee guesthouse).
So far, reports the Jerusalem Post, Israel's honey and bees have suffered only slight damage. But beekeepers and the specialists at the Agriculture Ministry are worried. In recent years, they have reported a reduction of 25-30 percent in annual honey production. In addition, starting in the spring of 2005, there have been several reports of weakened beehives that displays symptoms compatible with CCD. ::Jerusalem Post
too bad einsten most likely never said that!
Maize (corn) isn't pollinated by honeybees, and neither is wheat. They are wind pollinated. Please check your facts.
Colony collapse might be a product of media hype rather than actual real world events.
Please read the following links (the first one is a summation of the rest). It's short and to the point, from a respectable source (www.thestraightdope.com)
Straight dope article debunking several of the current theories (including the cell phone one).
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mvanishingbees.htm
Same site, discussion thread about above article.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=422266
wikipedia article about same:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_Collapse_Disorder
As far as I'm aware, grains like wheat, rice and corn are pollinated by wind. In fact, the instructions on the seed corn packet I used say to put them close together so they pollinate themselves.
Now, some fruits and veggies will go extinct, along with a lot of flowers, but we'll still have food.
this is seriously serious.
There is, however, doubt as to whether Einstein ever said anything about bees:
page on snopes
I'm still not convinced this "four years" quote is from Einstein; http://www.snopes.com/quotes/einstein/bees.asp
and when you used the word "unusual" to describe the magnetic field/cellular phones theory you were right. There's very little evidence for the cell phones killing bees, and if there were, bees in higher cell phone/capita areas would be getting hurt worse, but Europe has much lower levels of CCD than rural America.
Also (since I've heard this theory a lot) when the bees leave the hive from CCD, the honey is not immediately pillaged. in normal colony deaths the honey is taken by other bees and animals very quickly. With CCD, the honey is left for a much longer time - as if the animals can tell there's something wrong with the honey. This wouldn't make sense if it were cell phones (since it wouldn't really leave any traces) but if it were a fungus or a virus it just might.
How sad a life it must be to always think the world is coming to an end imminently.
According to the National Geographic (the article on the 400th anniversary of Pilgrims) it was noted that honey bees didn't come to America until they were brought here from Europe. Wind, rain and other insects did the pollination. If that is the case, then some crops will fail and others will do just fine.
I grow maize myself, and it *is* wind-pollinated. I've seen this with my own eyes. Bees do not land on its tassels or silks, and it does not produce nectar.
Please make the correction if possible.
The deaths of honeybees are terrifying regardless.
Einstein was a mathematician and a physicists not a naturalist, not a botanist, not a horticulturalists, not a farmer, not a biologist.. If a person whose expertise was in Olympic weightlifting made a sweeping comment about subatomic particles I would be equally dismissive. (Note: I am not saying that we should be dismissive of such speculation by someone with a qualified background.) It may just be "time" for the honeybees to go extinct - but let's not hasten it and let us make sure that we are not the cause. Not all insect or animal species live forever.
The quote has been inappropriately attributed to Einstein, though I've read it's more likely some Frenchman said it.
With regards to Colony Collapse Disorder, it's very harrowing to hear people dismiss it as sensationalist. The only theory that made it into the mainstream news sphere was that of cell phones, and only because it directly affects mindless consumers. "Oh, my cell phone might be contributing to this honeybee problem? Well I hope they fix this soon, because I need to be able to text my Top 5! LOL :-)"
What you don't hear the media talk about are the more complex, and far more dangerous forces that people accept as fine. Pesticides, genetically-modified crops, sprawl and development. Don't dare talk about the stuff people should actually have to deal with, it might give them a headache.
Some crops may pick up the slack if bees fall off, but I like my flowering, pollinating biodiversity very much, thank you.
Hmm, I'm not convinced that electromagnetic radiation is causing this problem. My wifi router is situated in my office. Less than 5 meters away there is a beehive in the base of an oak tree. The wifi signal is strong there, but the bees seem very happy and never have any problems finding their way home at night. (perhaps they surf the web at night! :-) I suppose you could describe this as expirementation in the field!