In the past two years, nearly one third of the nations honeybees have died off. Formally known as colony collapse disorder, the vanishing of America’s bees is puzzling farmers and scientists from coast to coast. Many believe the plight is due to pesticides, herbicides, land development, dwindling food supply and a new virus that seems to evade the immune system of honeybees.
Bees don’t just make honey; they play a vital role in the pollination of our fruits and vegetables. According to the US Department of Agriculture, approx. one third of our diet comes from insect pollinated plants and honeybees are responsible for more than 80% of that pollination!
So here’s what you can do to help:
- Replace some of your lawn (or put containers on your balcony) with flower beds.
- Keep your garden as organic as possible! Avoid using pesticides and herbicides. Click here for eco-friendly alternatives.
- Plant native species, which bees love – for example: mint, daisies, strawberries, raspberries, lavender, salvia, asters, sunflowers and verbena.
- Choose plants that flower at different stages in the growing season to provide a constant supply of food for the bees.
- Create homes for the bees – Many of the wild bees you may encounter in your backyard make their homes in the soil or holes in trees. You can encourage bee-residents by providing nesting blocks.
- Eat Haagen Dazs Vanilla Honey Bee Ice Cream to help raise money and awareness about bees (they also sell really cute T-shirts!)
Interesting facts about honey bees:
- When a honey bee returns to the hive, it gives out samples of the flower’s nectar to its hive mates. Then it performs a dance that identifies the distance, direction, quality, and quantity of the food supply. The richer the food source, the longer and more vigorous the dance.
- An average worker bee will only make 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime.
- One honey bee colony can produce 60 to 100 pounds of honey per year.
- To produce 1 pound of honey, honey bees must visit 2 million flowers and fly 55,000 miles.
- An average hive can hold about 50,000 bees; a combination of drones (male bees) and worker bees (non-queen female bees).
- A queen bee can live for 2-5 years, a worker bee 1-4 months and a drone 40-50 days
Read More:
Haagen Dazs Help the Honey Bees
Mysterious, Massive Disappearance/Death of the US Honey Bees
Honey Bee Die-off Alarms Beekeepers, Crop Growers And Researchers
27 Comments
June 4, 2008 at 4:26 am
http://goesdownbitter.wordpress.com/2008/06/04/bees-disappear/
If you have any information to share with the Bitter Hinterlands readers, please feel free to share.
October 3, 2009 at 12:19 pm
As soon as I looked into the plight of the Honey Bees, one thing stood out to me immediately. The beekeepers are continually poisoning the bees with deadly smoke to “calm” them and they have been doing this for generations. Engulfing bees with smoke is a very dangerous, primitive method that has never been changed and I believe the accumulative effect of doing that has finally caught up and is taking it’s toll on the bees. Below is a reply I received from my first inquiry to a local beekeeper:
“There are about as many different materials used in smokers as there are beekeepers. I use pine needles because they are handy. The smoke does calm the bees and I use it any time I go into a hive.”
Pine needles? I can’t even name all the toxins in pine needle smoke. Of course it calms them, they are poisoned into a semi comatose state. Has anyone ever heard of anesthetizing any other animal with smoke? A veterinarian would be sued for medical malpractice. Beekeepers completely fill the hive with this smoke several times a year. The smoke is also getting into the honey, by the way.
But, wait, it doesn’t stop there. When I visited the USDA site and read of their ongoing study of the bees’ plight, I discovered the following:
1. The USDA smokes the bees to sedate them while they do studies to see what is making them sick.
2. They wonder why the bees just abandon the hives and disappear. Wouldn’t you if you were continually being poisoned and your hive is growing bacteria and who knows what else?
3. They have now discovered that smoking bees might kill mites. The USDA is considering recommending smoking bees even more to combat mites. Of course it kills mites, smoke kills just about everything, including bees. Would they recommend this method for ridding their children or their puppies or birds of mites?
So, there is a healthy second hand smoke? Wait til the tobacco industry hears that smoking pine needles is good for living things. And being completely engulfed in it has a “calming” effect.
I am amazed that the smoke thing just goes right over their heads. Too bad it’s not going over the bees’ heads. I’ve seen a lot of blundering of wildlife in my day but, this has to bee one of the worst. Any dentist can tell you that bacteria love a smoker’s mouth. And, if you add sugar to that you have the perfect environment for bacteria to thrive in. What? The bees are being overrun with bacterial infections? Hard to fathom.
Has anyone sat in a smoke filled bar some night and then have to wash it out of your hair and your clothes? Not to mention coughing your head off for a couple of days. Now, imagine all the tiny little hairs on a bee’s body collecting all that oily smoke residue and them not beeing able to wash it off. Or, worse yet, having to lick it off. Plus, the effect that breathing smoke would have on their tiny little respiratory systems. They passed laws nationwide to protect us from second hand smoke. I am totally amazed and dumfounded.
Here is a suggestion:
QUIT POISONING THE BEES WITH SMOKE AND WONDERING WHY THEY GET SICK!
October 5, 2009 at 2:44 pm
I just found this…..
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/04/30/forest-fire-toxin.html
April 30, 2009 — Scientists have discovered a new class of chemicals emitted from burning pine trees. From a family of compounds known for their ability to alter human DNA, the findings could change the way we look at the impact of forest fires on public health.
Alkaloids are commonly found in nature; plants produce them to help bolster the structure of leaves and pine needles, and they can be key nutrients to the right organisms. Many are prized for their beneficial effects on humans, while a select few, like morphine and caffeine are downright addictive.
But in high enough doses, alkaloids can be potent toxins.
Now Alexander Laskin and a team of researchers from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington have discovered close to 100 different alkaloids in microscopic smoke particles lofting up from laboratory-simulated forest fires.
“When roots, leaves and needles get burned, these chemicals can be released without modification into the atmosphere,” Laskin said. “They can be translated as aerosol particles hundreds or thousands of miles. It is possible that there is an impact on humans, animals, and that they get into the groundwater.”
June 4, 2008 at 11:29 am
Check out “Every Third Bite”, a documentary about declining bee populations and local honey producers by the Meerkat Media Arts Collective in NYC.
http://meerkatmedia.org/
June 4, 2008 at 12:12 pm
ah-ha! an excuse to plant hoards of mint plants that my father cannot fight!
dancing bumblebees sounds so poetic.
June 4, 2008 at 12:36 pm
This is great information! We’ll definitely be planting things for the honeybees this summer. We had quite a few in our garden last year, and now I can gear certain plants toward attracting them. Thank you!
June 4, 2008 at 1:41 pm
June 4, 2008 at 4:21 pm
You can also help in another way that I don’t think I saw mentioned!! If you go to http://www.greatsunflower.org you can sign up to help solve the disappearing-bees problem. They’ll send you a packet of sunflower seeds, you plant them in your yard (or wherever) and then do some 30 minute “watching for bees” sessions once they’re mature. It helps them research bee activity around the country. I just got my seeds in the mail today ^_^ I love the idea that I can grow sunflowers AND help bee research at the same time.
June 4, 2008 at 5:10 pm
Bees are dying also here in Europe
In Spiegel International you can find good articles on the subject. It seriously worries me…
“Bees in the German state of Baden-Württemburg are dying by the hundreds of thousands. In some places more than half of hives have perished. Government officials say the causes are unclear — but beekeepers are blaming new pesticides.
By Andrew Curry
You can download the complete article over the Internet at the
following URL:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,552556,00.html
June 4, 2008 at 7:44 pm
Let’s all do something to help out our lovely bees!
June 8, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Hi,
A note to let you know about this article, a current issue being addressed by the Earth Vision project -
“Why the Bees Are Dying”
Using spiritual ecology to bring environmentalism to the next level, the EV project has several current newsworthy items.
To access them, visit:
Current Environmental Issues (on the Earth Vision site)
Thanks for your attention,
Josef Graf
Earth Vision + Insight21
answers for the 21st Century
http://www.evsite.net + http://www.insight21.net
June 16, 2008 at 4:10 pm
[...] honey bee. As many of you know, bees are crucial to the pollination of fruits and vegetables. Click here for more info and some good recommendations for what you can do to provide a friendly environment [...]
June 16, 2008 at 5:42 pm
[...] facts and has some good recommendations for what you can do to provide a friendly environment for wild bees, who may have to step in to do the work of the vanishing European [...]
June 23, 2008 at 1:29 pm
[...] out The District Domestic for more on the plight of the honey bee and what you can do to [...]
June 26, 2008 at 5:57 am
Save The Bees of Blue View Lane
http://www.savethebeesshirts.com
Wearing our distinctive logo contributes to our scholarship fund, and supports research into this serious problem with the bees.
Our unique logo also sends a message of concern for all environmental issues from Global Warming to Silent Spring.
July 2, 2008 at 10:39 am
[...] T-shirts for FREE! Jump to Comments A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about The Plight of the Honeybee and talked about ways to help prevent their dying off. Well, Haagen Dazs has sent some t-shirts my [...]
June 30, 2009 at 6:20 pm
I would love a free bee t-shirts I am a Master Gardener and I help the public with questions and education. My garden is a pollinator garden. I would love the shirt to wear and share at the public displays we do, thanks
August 18, 2008 at 9:21 am
Check out our site for fantastic Save The Bees Shirts
And read the linked blog for bits on bees, books, videos, ditties, photos and more. Also articles on green issues generally, solar,wind, etc.
Save The Bees
Wear Our Logo
Support a Student’s Scholarship
And Bee Research
http://WWW.SAVETHEBEESSHIRTS.COM
September 23, 2008 at 2:26 pm
[...] facts and has some good recommendations for what you can do to provide a friendly environment for wild bees, who may have to step in to do the work of the vanishing European [...]
June 25, 2009 at 12:04 pm
Please do not use pesticides on your garden or lawn. The bees are suffering from extreme disease overload and their autoimmune systems are shutting down. When our autoimmune system shuts down we suffer from HIV/AIDS and multiple sclerosis to name just a few of the diseases.
Dr Reese’s upcoming book is “The Incomparable Honey Bee”, Rocky Mountain Books
June 26, 2009 at 10:51 am
i work with my grandfather in the largest commercial apiary in north carolina. we see the problem is mostly chemicals and bad beemanship. pesticides and chemicals that are in them kill bees and that is the problem there is no way to deny that. jsut last week some had 6 hives die out because some one but a oil based sollution with there fungicide, the fungicide wouldnt have harmed the bees but the sticking sollution which prolongs the fungicides presence does and killed about half of his bees. bad beekeeping is to blame on the fact that people dont know how to take care of bees, or the public dont know that bees are so vital. most cant tell a yellow jacket from a honeybee and its sad so thats another reason. sorry for my gramatically atrociousity.
June 30, 2009 at 10:02 pm
Great Blog! Cheers!!!
July 16, 2009 at 9:52 pm
I’ll be stoked for you to have a look at my new book The Incomparable Honey Bee, Rocky Mountain Books. It will be out in Oct 2009. Cheers and keep up the GREAT work! Dr Reese
http://DrReese.wordpress.com
July 21, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Hi Dr. Reese-
I’d love to check out a copy of your book. Please let me know how I can get my hands on a copy when it comes out.
Thanks!
Sarah
July 21, 2009 at 4:58 pm
Hi Sarah — It is due out in the fall, last I heard was 1 Oct. If you let me know your mailing address I’ll make sure you get a copy.
Cheers, Dr Reese
July 21, 2009 at 10:54 pm
Hi Dr. Reese-
That sounds great.
My address is:
Sarah Meyer Walsh
1300 35th Street NW Suite 1
Washington, DC 20007
Thanks again!
Sarah
September 21, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Dear Sarah — here’s a You Tube of the Incomparable Honey Bee!!! What do you think??? Dr Reese
PS please share it — T H A N K Y O U