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nafex - Re: [NAFEX] Bee shortage hypothesis

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  • From: "Lon J. Rombough" <lonrom@hevanet.com>
  • To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Bee shortage hypothesis
  • Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2007 09:37:27 -0700

Inbreeding might contribute. But there are a lot of other factors that haven't been taken into account, which is why I think the "scare" is a false alarm.
Here are some:
Bees have to defecate in flight. On warm winter days, they fly to void themselves. With the changeable weather in much of the country, enough could have been caught outside by a sudden change that the hive would be weakened by loss of workers enough that it couldn't keep itself warm well enough and would be killed as cold weather returned.
Early warm weather before there was anything blooming would spur bees into using their stores to start brood production, then be caught short when the cold returned, leaving them to starve.
Large numbers of hives are frequently "stored" in big yards where the close proximity could allow disease to spread more readily.
Dry fall weather could easily have left a lot of hives with low winter stores.
I kept bees long enough to know that it's not unusual to lose as many as a quarter of the hives even in a normal winter. In an abnormal year like this one, the percentage is bound to be higher. One good spring coupled with careful management and you can build back about all you lost in a hurry. The "news" stories are bad reporting, as far as I'm concerned.
-Lon Rombough
Grapes, writing, consulting, my book, The Grape Grower, at http://www.bunchgrapes.com Winner of the Garden Writers Association "Best Talent in Writing" award for 2003.
For even more grape lessons, go to http://www.grapeschool.com
For growing supplies and more; http://www.grapegrowersolutions.com

On Apr 16, 2007, at 9:17 AM, Thomas Olenio wrote:

Hello,

I just watched a television show on honey bees. Bees navigate based on
visual clues. They were able to confuse bees with confusing, repeating
geometric designs in their flight path.

Possibly if a bee were to buy a cellular phone, carrying it home would be a
problem. Ha, ha, ha. I won't even get into their text messaging issues.

I am not going to rush to judgment, and will wait for verified, accredited,
accepted, scientific findings.

Just out of curiosity... How many hybrids, mono cultures of commercial
honey bees are out there? Could we just have a hybrid bee population that
has a weakness to some new bee disease?

For example... Think of all the health problems that have been inbred into
pedigree dogs by humans. Would man do that to commercial honey bees too...?
Sure we would, if there was a dollar in it.

Go for the simplest answer first. A) new disease, B) Inbred
imperfections/weakness.

Later,
Tom




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