RT NewsUS honey bees have been dying by the tens of millions, with annual death rates of about 30 percent. With fewer bees to pollinate fruits and vegetables each year, ‘beemageddon’ may soon cause the collapse of the agriculture industry.
Honey bees pollinate more than 100 US crops, including apples, zucchinis, avocados and plums, that are worth more than $200 billion a year. Since 2006, about 10 million bee hives at an average value of $200 each have been lost in what scientists call the Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), according to a new report by the US Department of Agriculture.
There are currently about 2.5 million honey bee colonies in the US, which is a drastic decrease from the 6 million that existed in 1947 and the 3 million that existed in 1990. Last winter alone, the honey bee population declined by 31.1 percent, with some beekeepers reporting losses of 90 to 100 percent. In the previous two winters, beekeepers lost about 22 percent of their populations.
“Currently, the survivorship of honey bee colonies is too low for us to be confident in our ability to meet the pollination demands of US agricultural crops,” the USDA report states.
California’s almond crop, which blooms toward the end of winter, would suffer the most. About 80 percent of the global almond supply comes from the Golden State’s orchards, and 70 percent of the state’s crop is marketed overseas.
US beekeepers truck about 1.5 million out-of-state colonies to the almond orchards each year, which depend on the insect’s pollination. The colonies are tasked with pollinating about 760,000 acres of almond trees at the end of each winter. It takes 60 percent of all US bee colonies to pollinate the $4 billion crop.
Zac Browning, a beekeeper, told NPR that the almond orchards have become “ground zero in commercial beekeeping” and that many beekeepers drive over from their home base in the Midwest.
But with a bee shortage that gets worse every year, many of the almond orchards will never be pollinated, which could eventually cause a global almond shortage and economic consequences for the US.
The USDA knows how the agriculture industry will be affected by the large-scale bee die-offs, but does not know why exactly they are dying in such numbers. The report cites “multiple factors… including parasites and disease, genetics, poor nutrition and pesticide exposure”, while also citing last summer’s drought as a contributing factor.
“Undernourished or malnourished bees appear to be more susceptible to pathogens, parasites, and other stressors, including toxins,” the USDA report states.
During CCDs, surviving adult bees abandon their hives, leaving behind the queen bee, brood and food stores.
“Bees across the country are not in as good a shape as last year,” Eric Mussen, a University of California bee specialist, told the Christian Science Monitor. “When you stress them far enough, the bees just give in.”
After large-scale honey bee die-offs each winter, beekeepers try to restore their populations in the summer. But with the populations dropping so low, the economic ramifications are almost unavoidable.
The European Commission suspects that neonicotinoids, a class of insecticides chemically related to nicotine, might be responsible – at least partially – for the die-offs and the CCDs. Honey bees have also died off in unusually large numbers in Europe, prompting the commission to impose a two-year ban on neonicotinoids last month to give scientists time to review the chemicals’ impact on bee health.
But US officials have stated that they don’t have enough evidence to ban neonicotinoids. And with a drastically decreasing honey bee population, ‘beemageddon’ might be just around the corner.
“We are one poor weather event or high winter bee loss away from a pollination disaster,” Jeff Pettis, the USDA’s bee research leader, said in the report.
http://rt.com/usa/bee-pollination-disaster-food-959/
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I guess I’m going into the bee business too. I don’t want their honey (yet), but I have to find out how to keep ’em hanging around here so I’ll always have my own supply. They seem to like the apple trees.
One sentence: monsanto(one-satan) and chemtrails. nuff said.
hell gonna be burnin hot and bright for long time with all the vileness of these evil perpetrators, God willing.
GMO and other toxins – poisons as well, were the first thoughts that came to mind.
Then again, maybe it’s Bush’s fault…
Don’t forget another possible culprit: cell tower, and other radio interference. The compelling contentions I’ve read are that these interfere with bees’ use of Earth’s magnetic resonance for navigation — all the radio signals interfere with their ability to navigate. They get lost.
“Experiments dating well back to the last century have documented the phenomenal sensitivity of honeybees to electromagnetic fields. Bees use the earth’s magnetic field to navigate. Free-flying honeybees are able to detect static intensity fluctuations as weak as 26 nT against the background earth-strength magnetic field (average 500 mT) [7]. This has been demonstrated in experiments where individual honeybees have been trained to discriminate between the presence and the absence of a small static magnetic anomaly in the lab. Honeybees can also learn to distinguish between two 360o panoramic patterns that are identical except for the compass orientation. In this case, the difference was a 90o rotation about the vertical axis [8]. The most powerful cue to direction for the honeybee comes from the sky, but discrimination between patterns is possible in the absence of celestial information, as when the sky is overcast. Under those conditions, bees can use a magnetic direction to discriminate between patterns.
The bees’ waggle dance on the honeycomb, which tells hive mates where to find food, can also be misdirected by anomalies in the earth’s magnetic field or very weak pulsed magnetic fields at about 250 MHz applied in the correct direction [9]. Bees can even learn to detect very low levels of extremely low frequency alternating electromagnetic fields [10].
But mobile phones have been around for close to 20 years, so why now? There has been a recent change in cell phone technology that coincides with the current crisis. At the beginning of the present century, 3G (third generation) mobile phone systems became publicly available, leading to a surge in popularity of mobile phones, and many more phone towers [11]. Bees are disappearing in North America, Europe and also Australia, wherever mobile phones are greatly in use. Stay tuned.”
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/MobilePhonesVanishingBees.php
HERE IN SOUTH AMERICA WE ARE WATCHING THIS TOTALLY
EVIL MONSANTO MARCH TO CONTROL OUR FOOD SUPPLY…AND,
INDEED, THE FOOD SUPPLY OF THE WORLD TO REPLACE
THE COLLAPSING PETRODOLLAR, ET AL…
HERE IN PERU, WE EXPORT MORE ORGANIC FOOD THAN ANYONE
ELSE IN THE WORLD…AND OUR PERUANO GOVERNMENT HAS
LEGISLATED A TEN YEAR EMBARGO AGAINST THE GROWING AND
HARVEST OF ALL GMO FOODS. THE GMO CORPORATIONS WILL NOT
SURVIVE HERE IN PERU…
EN CIERTO, BECAUSE EN PERU WE ARE A POOR NATION AND CULTIVATE OUR FOOD SUPPLY IN A LABOR INTENSIVE CULTURE THAT TAKES GREAT PRIDE IN OUR CENTURIES OLD INCA TRADITIONS…THERE ARE NO JOHN DEERE TRACTORS HERE IN
OUR INCA VILLAGES…
BUENO, WE WILL NOT LOOSE OUR 10,000 YEAR OLD INCA CORN NATURAL SELECTION HAND CULTIVATION OF OUR GRAINS AND CORN, ETC…
TO A BS IDAHO, USA CORPORATION…ET AL…”MONSANTO”
WE WILL NOT LOOSE OUR CORN TO ANOTHER CORPORATION LIKE THE NESTLE’S CORPORATION
DEVALUATED THE PRICE OF LATIN AMERICAN COFFEE TO THE
VIET NAM CHEAP CORPORATE COFFEE… “PRICE DROP” OR BETTER SAID PRICE COFFEE MARKET ASSASSINATIONS VIA MAFIA STYLE…CORPORATION MARKET CONTROL FOR PROFIT…
IN NORWAY, SWEDEN, FINLAND WE HAVE SAVED ALL THE NATURAL
SEEDS IN FROZEN CAVES TO SAVE THE WORLD AGAINST THE
“MONSANTOS.”
WE ARE CULTIVATING “SUPER-BEES” WITHOUT THE AGGRESSIVE “AFRICAN INFLUENCE.”
96% OF ALL MEDIA IS CONTROLLED BY SIX JEWISH CORPORATIONS…
THE PEOPLE NEED TO SURVIVE HERE WITHOUT THE TREAT OF STARVATION FOR THEIR FAMILIES…ETC.
THE CONTINENT IS CATHOLIC…
NO MORE JEW CORPORATIONS CONTROLLING SOUTH AMERICAN GOVERNMENTS…
SUPPORT ARGENTINA, BOLIVIA, BRAZIL, CHILE, PERU,
VENEZUELA, URUGUAY…OH, LOVE URUGUAY. ETC.
I WATCH FOR PARAGUAY WITH THE 173,000 ACRE BUSH CABAL
ESTATE CONTROLLING THE MAJOR UNDERGROUND AQUIFER AND THE BUSH’S PRIVATE MILITARY “SANCTUARY…” IN PARAGUAY…
ENEMIES OF THE SIMON BOLIVAR REVOLUTION:
YOU CAN RUN, BUT YOU CANNOT HIDE HERE…LIKE AGUSTO PINNOCHE…
YOU WILL ULTIMATELY FALL…
GRACIAS POR LA LIBRA FORUM AQHI…
VAYA CON DIOS
“The USDA knows how the agriculture industry will be affected by the large-scale bee die-offs, but does not know why exactly they are dying in such numbers.”
You lying bast@rds!!! You know EXACTLY what’s killing those bees, and what’s worse, you’re doing it INTENTIONALLY!!!
http://www.fromthetrenchesworldreport.com/bayer-cropscience-and-bee-deaths/36276/