U.S. honeybee colonies hit a 20-year high

[Dr Hobbitstein]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/07/23/call-off-the-bee-pocalypse-u-s-honeybee-colonies-hit-a-20-year-high/

You've heard the news about honeybees. "Beepocalypse," they've called it. Beemageddon. America's honeybees are dying, putting honey production and $15 billion worth of pollinated food crops in jeopardy.

The situation has become so dire that earlier this year the White House put forth the first National Strategy to Promote the Health of Honey Bees and Other Pollinators, a 64-page policy framework for saving the nation's bees, butterflies and other pollinating animals.

The trouble all began in 2006 or so, when beekeepers first began noticing mysterious die-offs. It was soon christened "colony collapse disorder," and has been responsible for the loss of 20 to 40 percent of managed honeybee colonies each winter over the past decade.

The math says that if you lose 30 percent of your bee colonies every year for a few years, you rapidly end up with close to 0 colonies left. But get a load of this data on the number of active bee colonies in the U.S. since 1987. Pay particular attention to the period after 2006, when CCD was first documented.

But here on DU I was explicitly told that GMOs were eradicating the honeybees.... Next anti-science talking point?

[Orrex]

1. Monsanto won't pay you your kickback money if you keep this up.

Speaking of which, I haven't seen you at any of the shill meetings lately. What gives?


k/r!

[Dr Hobbitstein]

2. I've been busy.

Just got hired to shill for the BFEE, so I've had to make priorities.

[Igel]

3. The news wasn't complete.

They didn't tell you all the facts.

Take the facts about Gaza. In a series of wars and blockades, Israel's killed thousands of Gazas and, through disease and lower standards of livings, caused thousands more to die prematurely. It's genocide.

What's missing? Reproduction and context.

During this genocide, the population of Gaza's soared.

"In 2012 X% of bee hives died off." Meh. It's a problem, to be sure--all those prematurely active bees wandering out, weakened by sequential one-food diets, stress from being moved, pesticides, and parasites. (Of those, of course, we have to choose one. We can't have more than one cause for an effect. It's rhetorically impossible, it would appear. After all, it's not "causes and effect.&quot

But in saying the number that died off there's no mention of the number of new, baby hives that were produced. That omission of information, the absence of which should be butt-obvious, matters. That the butt-obvious absence was studiously ignored goes to either motivation or to cognitive ability. Which is better?

[Orrex]

6. If the overall number of colonies has increased, as stated...

then it would seem that new colonies must have come from somewhere, no?

[Herman4747]

4. Interesting that American Bees made a comeback...

...about the time Obama became president.

[Liberal Veteran]

5. They are intelligent mutant killer honeybees altered by GMO!

Soon they will start their takeover of the world.

[Terry_M]

7. Regarding your closing comment..

Did you read the entire article or just the paragraphs you quoted? It sure feels like you didn't read the rest.

It goes on and says the die-off is REAL. The number of human maintained bee colonies is continuing to go up but more effort is being put into maintaining those colonies because the die off means they have to employ new strategies.

The article also does not have any numbers related to wild colonies. It shows the number of human maintained bee colonies.

[Dr Hobbitstein]

8. The use of GMOs have not been

Linked to CCD. My comment was about one of the usual attacks on GMOs on this site. I did read the article. CCD was never limited to wild populations, and was first noticed in human kept colonies.

[SidDithers]

9. DU rec...nt

Sid

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

10. So, will Monsanto, et al, allow labeling that says "Contains GMO's but won't harm bees"?