By Joe Mohr •
June 26, 2009
Colony Collapse Disorder is still with us
…though not getting the same press it did the last couple of years. According to a joint survey conducted by the Apiary Inspectors of America and the Agricultural Research Service’s Bee Research Laboratory, 29 percent of honey bee colonies vanished between September 2008 and April 2009. That number is better than previous years…but not much.
I think it’s time to give back to the insect that has given us so much over our lifetimes (they pollinate 1/3 of our food supply). Here are 5 things you can do to help the bees:
1. Provide bees with a safe beneficial place to thrive.
Leave a patch of wildflowers and plants for bees to enjoy.
Leave the dandelions in the ground. Dandelions are probably the most beneficial flower for bees in the early spring. Check out this info from the Daily Green for a list of other plants bees love.
Make a bee post for bees to reside. Drill a variety of holes up to a half inch in diameter into the side of a thick piece of untreated timber. Attach a roof to deflect rain, smooth down the entrances to the holes thoroughly so there are no sharp splinters, and attach it to a sunny wall or fence. Keep the post in a dry, cool place in winter and bring it out in March. (Another bee house idea is shared here).
FYI, don’t build bee homes with new fence posts from home and garden centers. They are unsuitable because they have been treated with chemicals. Speaking of chemicals…
By Tina Casey •
June 2, 2009
Abandoned land mines have been called “the worst form of pollution on earth.” They kill up to 20,000 people every year, and according to one recent study it will take 450 years to find and clear all of them. That estimate might be too optimistic, because new mines can be laid as fast as the old ones are cleared. Ridding the world of land mines sounds like a Sisyphean task of epic proportions. Or is it? Enter DARPA (the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency) and the humble bee.
By Lisa Wojnovich •
May 31, 2009
Honey bees are disappearing. The story has been in the news on and off since 2006, but for one reason or another, most people have paid little attention. And the situation is significantly dire.
By Kay Sexton •
May 19, 2009
Forget the disaster movie scenarios of tsunamis, changes in the Earth’s magnetic core, the arrival of aliens or the mutation of some native species to giant size—our biggest risk is that we lose those small, aerodynamically impossible, stripy creatures so famous for their eccentric flight and delicious honey as well as their wax.
By Kay Sexton •
May 5, 2009
It’s still not clear what is killing the bat populations, but what is known is that bats with WNS wake up more frequently from their winter hibernation which means they use up their fat stores, forcing them to leave the caves to seek food before the insect populations are around so that they simply starve to death.
By Kay Sexton •
November 29, 2008
Summers have been more silent in recent years because the bee population has been falling at an alarming rate – in Britain it fell by a third between last year and this, and right across Europe the decline is similar and disturbing
By Jerry James Stone •
November 9, 2008
A UK Professor Hopes His Genetically Modified Worker Bees Can Help Stop The Colony Collapse Disorder That Is Grossly Effecting the UK Economy
Last week 140,000 protesters from the British Beekeepers Association (BBKA) marched on Whitehall demanding $8-million in emergency funding from the Department for Environment to tackle alarming rates of bee decline. The decline has cost the UK economy about $54-million in the past year alone.
But British scientist
Francis Ratnieks — and the UK’s only professor of apiculture – is pioneering research that he hopes will assuage the hardship
beekeepers have been experiencing with
colony collapse disorder.
By Tara Benwell •
September 19, 2008
The honey bees are dying off around the world, and yet still many people have never heard of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). This week the Italian government banned several pesticides that are thought to be linked to the honey bee decline. More research (funding) is required to find out exactly what is causing the disappearance.
During Honey Week on our sister site, Meridith Melnick wrote:
“One-third of the food we consume comes from pollinators. Bees are responsible for pollinating almonds, apples, soft fruit, and berries among other crops. Without them, we will lose more than honey (a tragedy in its own right!), we will lose a large portion of the biodiversity we now enjoy on our plates.”
By Jennifer Lance •
August 28, 2008
30-90 percent of bee colonies have been dying over the past two years. Europeans are banning the pesticide clothianidin to protect their bee populations from “Colony Collapse Disorder” (CCD), yet the FDA, which approved the pesticide in 2003, refuses to release public documents of studies conducted by clothianidin’s maker Bayer CropScience on the chemical’s impact on bees and the environment. Last week, the Natural Resources Defense Council filed suit [...]
By Beth Bader •
July 1, 2008
© Kuleczka | Dreamstime.com
We’ve got some sweet posts for the week ahead. This week is Honey Week at Eat. Drink. Better. in tribute to bees and all they do for us, including that delicious honey. To kick it off, I want to share a cool bee fact and a recipe.
Did you know?
- California’s almond orchards are the location of the largest pollination event annually. Nearly one million hives (about 50 percent) of the US honey bees are brought to the almond orchards each spring.
- The apple crop in just New York requires about 30,000 hives.
- 50,000 hives each year are needed for Maine’s blueberry crop.
- According to the USDA, one-third of our diets rely on insect-pollinated plants. 80 percent of this pollination is done by bees.
Recipe for Honey Curried Cauliflower follows the jump.
Häagen-Dazs has given $250,000 to researchers studying colony collapse disorder, the mysterious condition causing large numbers of bees to simply disappear. The grant isn’t sheer altruism, though: Häagen-Dazs says 40 percent of its flavors depend on the bee’s specialty, pollination.
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons user Abrahami.
