"Honey bee depopulation syndrom"?

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Stop eating them.

From what i can read it only affects bees with a European origin. Bees with an African orgin are unaffected. And birds, wasps and other forms of insects also pollenate plantlife.

So basically: no, nature wont collapse.

I remember seeing on Catalyst (Australian ABC science show) that the hive collapse may have a link to a form of mite that was attacking honey bee's, hence the Australian populations are relatively unaffected (some evidence of spread of the mites in Northern QLD).

But their too tasty!

specially babyes

Probable cause is illness due to pesticide overload of MERIT- Grub control containing Imidacloprid which is a Neonicotinoid. These are banned in Italy, Slovenia Germany and restricted in France but Bayer the manufacturer in Germany sends us all they can make. Who the fools?

I agree. We humans are ruining everything.

I photograph insects, and I have noticed a huge decline in the number and variety of insects, birds and gastropods over the past ten years. I blame some part of it on the introduction of enclosed wheelie bins for rubbish collection.

I am not sure about the role of pesticides because it seems hard to credit that what we do now is worse than what we did in the past. Other changes in agriculture, especially the introduction of monocultures of commercial varieties (far more uniform than plain species monoculture) must be destructive too, along with the removal of thousands of miles of hedgerow, bund and stonewall.

On the other hand, we do have a fox and cubs living right beside us in the city, and she seems to feed very well from the restaurant bins.

Another issue, but how much it is relevant is hard to nail down, can me GM crops.

Many GM (genetically modified) crops include factors like natural pesticides so they can withstand consumption by insects, but there are real issues about the cumulative effect on humans, and what about insects that come in contact with those crops. In an effort to protect a crop from insects that do harm, we could be poisoning the beneficial ones as well.

If the worst happen we will have to pollinate ourselves by technological means. As a result we will have a much smaller variety of plant life to eat. I hope the bees make a come-back. We need them a lot more than they need us.

ruveyn

I am not sure about your 90% figure. Since roughly 10% of plants pollinate abiotically (e.g. wind pollination), that would mean that bees would represent almost the entirety of biotic pollination. Mosquitos are pollinators, for example.

In any natural system (although bee pollination of food crops in North America is highly aritificial!), the presence of an abundant food supply (nectar) with no competition (colonly collapse) is going to foster a vast increase in population of other consumers of that supply. I would be interested to see some work on pollination success of food crops where bee colonies are not introduced at the flowering stage.

That being said, there is no question that bees are the most effective pollinators out there, and their loss would be enormously disruptive.

i just wish it was wasps our cellphones are wiping out.


m.

lol ..

i don't get why we can't all become beekeepers and repopulate the bees?