The Plight of the Honeybee.
In the "as if you needed another reason to worry" department, we now get to add the plight of the honeybees. It's true. We may not have to fret about global warming, peak oil, the bird flu, mad cow disease, fundamentalist terrorists, nuclear proliferation, or George W. (wait... I guess that one's redundant). Word is that if bees go extinct then human life will disappear within four years. This reportedly originated with Albert Einstein... a hell of a physicist. But is it true? For those answers we have to turn toward biologists.
Bees are what is referred to as a "keynote" species. They are essential pollinators of wild flowers, oil seed rape, strawberries and apples, etc. These plants, in turn, sustain many other animals. Eventually the impact makes its way up the chain to us humans. This is an elementary sequence oif reasoning that is sadly not universally understood or accepted.
Why is this happening? Some atttribute the threat to farming practices. Others blame the parasitic mites that target our honey-producing friends. Those mites (both Varroa jacobsoni and Trachea mites) have virtually killed off all wild honeybees. They are also becoming resistant to chemicals that protect Apis mellifera, a commercially domesticated version of bee. Other people speculate that the environmental noise of cell phones is somehow affecting bee populations. These folks suggest that the signal radiation is interfering with their inherent navigational system, and that affected bees are unable to find their way back to the hive.
All of this is especially alarming because the bees have weathered extreme environmental circumstances before. When the Earth was clobbered by an asteroid 65 million years ago, and a harsh cycle of cold temperatures resulted from the dust that rose to obscure the sun, the dinosaurs went extinct- but the bees survived. They are a remarkable resilient animal. It is wise to consider their well-being as an indicator of the general well-being of all living things.
What hope do we have to confront the problem? Well... genetic scientists are stuudying the DNA structure of the surviving bee populations for answers. We also need to confront our ideas of land management in order to preserve natural habitat for hives.
Maybe we'll be relegated to tapping the plants by hand so that they can experience artificial population. Of course this will require an extensive temporary workers program, because clearly Americans "won't be willing" to do that type of job- at least for the starvation wages that agrobusiness will be willing to pay. There are people that shrug off the importance of bees, and point out that 2/3rds of the food we eat is not dependent upon the specific pollination activities of bees. That perspective seems a bit pollyannaish to me. Even if literally true, does that mean that we shouldn't take substantive steps to remedy the situation?
Remember... if we save the bees, our job is still unfinished. We have our hands full with the impending mass extinction of life's diversity. See this link for more details.
Bees are what is referred to as a "keynote" species. They are essential pollinators of wild flowers, oil seed rape, strawberries and apples, etc. These plants, in turn, sustain many other animals. Eventually the impact makes its way up the chain to us humans. This is an elementary sequence oif reasoning that is sadly not universally understood or accepted.
Why is this happening? Some atttribute the threat to farming practices. Others blame the parasitic mites that target our honey-producing friends. Those mites (both Varroa jacobsoni and Trachea mites) have virtually killed off all wild honeybees. They are also becoming resistant to chemicals that protect Apis mellifera, a commercially domesticated version of bee. Other people speculate that the environmental noise of cell phones is somehow affecting bee populations. These folks suggest that the signal radiation is interfering with their inherent navigational system, and that affected bees are unable to find their way back to the hive.
All of this is especially alarming because the bees have weathered extreme environmental circumstances before. When the Earth was clobbered by an asteroid 65 million years ago, and a harsh cycle of cold temperatures resulted from the dust that rose to obscure the sun, the dinosaurs went extinct- but the bees survived. They are a remarkable resilient animal. It is wise to consider their well-being as an indicator of the general well-being of all living things.
What hope do we have to confront the problem? Well... genetic scientists are stuudying the DNA structure of the surviving bee populations for answers. We also need to confront our ideas of land management in order to preserve natural habitat for hives.
Maybe we'll be relegated to tapping the plants by hand so that they can experience artificial population. Of course this will require an extensive temporary workers program, because clearly Americans "won't be willing" to do that type of job- at least for the starvation wages that agrobusiness will be willing to pay. There are people that shrug off the importance of bees, and point out that 2/3rds of the food we eat is not dependent upon the specific pollination activities of bees. That perspective seems a bit pollyannaish to me. Even if literally true, does that mean that we shouldn't take substantive steps to remedy the situation?
Remember... if we save the bees, our job is still unfinished. We have our hands full with the impending mass extinction of life's diversity. See this link for more details.
posted by Merge Divide at 9:47 PM
2 Comments:
Insightful.
Thanks.
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