Disappearing Bees Threaten Ice Cream Industry

Disappearing Bees Threaten Ice Cream Industry

Guardian   |  John Sterlicchi   |   February 25, 2008 02:36 PM


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The collapse of US honeybee colonies this year is set to devastate America's multibillion dollar agriculture and food industries.

Last year about 750,000 of the 2.5m hives in the US were wiped out in mysterious circumstances, and already this year the American Beekeeping Federation says there is evidence from its members that losses will be even greater this year.

For the first time individual businesses have stepped forward to give money to try to speed up the process of finding out, first of all, what causes colony collapse disease (CCD) and then eradicating it.

Häagen-Dazs, the ice cream making subsidiary of General Mills, gave a total of $250,000 (£127,000) to two university research teams and Burt's Bees, the personal care products maker, made a undisclosed grant to create the Honeybee Health Improvement Project, a research task force.

Keep Reading


Read more about why bees are dying.

Read more about the history of Burt's Bees, another company directly affected by the disappearance of bees from America.


 
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Oh brother! We're in the middle o Global Cooling and the Goracle is still selling the "honeybee meme".

Carbon offsets anyone?

    Favorite    Flag as abusive Posted 12:00 AM on 02/27/2008
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Albert Einstein predicted that if something eliminated bees from our planet, mankind would perish within 4 years. Smirk all you want. It will not change the fact that as bees go, so go the food crops and other plants on which we depend. We are part of nature. Not above it.

    Favorite    Flag as abusive Posted 10:30 AM on 02/27/2008

don't suppose sub-prime jumped from housing to hiving do ya????

    Favorite    Flag as abusive Posted 08:10 PM on 02/26/2008
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Seems the karma generated by our greed did, and beyond.

    Favorite    Flag as abusive Posted 10:33 AM on 02/27/2008

There was an interesting bit on 60 Minutes this past Sunday regarding hive die-off and CCD. There is some thinking that it might be due to a new pesticide that is nicotine based and interferes with an insect's ability to navigate.

Of course it probably isn't true because we have the assurances of the tobacco industry that nicotine has no ill effects.

    Favorite    Flag as abusive Posted 04:40 PM on 02/26/2008
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Well, I'll just have my next cone without bees and get chocolate sprinles on it instead.

    Favorite    Flag as abusive Posted 03:10 PM on 02/26/2008

It might be that all the worries about global warming, war in Iraq, etc will be moot because if the bees go away---there goes our ability to raise food and then---we go away too!!!
This seems to be a pretty pressing issue....

    Favorite    Flag as abusive Posted 12:17 PM on 02/26/2008

wake up robotic scientists!!!!
we have robots to build cars, sell cars, welcome you and give you a tour, even vaccuum our floors!!
Hurry up and
make some "RO-BEES"!!!

    Favorite    Flag as abusive Posted 12:11 PM on 02/26/2008

I read a short article on line several months ago about CCD. It appears as if the main reason why so many hives are collapsing all at once is because of the Almond industry.

Every year about this time, bees are trucked into southern california to polinate the almond crops.

There are bee from all over the US brought in.

So if one hive has a problem, suddenly all the hives have the same problem.

Want to stop this, either stop eating almonds or have only bees brought in from the west coast only.

This is the equivelent of having Typhoid Mary at a kissing stand.

    Favorite    Flag as abusive Posted 09:55 AM on 02/26/2008
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"Typhoid Mary at a kissing stand"

Also a great description for Bush.

    Favorite    Flag as abusive Posted 10:34 AM on 02/27/2008
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Last season, the major bee keepers were forced to replace large portions of their stock mid-season. If you think that you're worried, talk to a farmer who depends on bees...which is many/most of them.

The commercial bee industry is messed up because the industrial agriculture industry is messed up. Those bees eat nothing but a single food item for weeks at a time, then they get trucked somewhere and start eating another single food item.

God forbid they get into Bt corn (corn is mostly wind pollinated, but that doesn't mean that bees don't visit it) where every cell is a pesticide.

We'd all be well served to plant as large a garden as our yard will support this summer. The harvest festivals of fall might not be what they used to be in the near future.

And everyone should start praying that Monsanto/US government's terminator gene doesn't break loose as fast as the Bt gene did.

    Favorite    Flag as abusive Posted 07:59 AM on 02/26/2008

Buzz, buzz, if the colonies are collapsing, find out who's kicking over the hives. Are there any, um, fast-spinning windmills, nearby?
Anyone spraying methyl-whatever on their lawn or garden? Bees do OK in nature, are they being OVER-kept etc? Nature, leave it be, and it'll take care of itself. Hu-mans can't resist the urge to fiddle though. They should go study a natural colony to figure this'n out.

    Favorite    Flag as abusive Posted 07:29 AM on 02/26/2008

What continues to go unreported is the fact that the majority of losses due to CCD have been limited to commercial "gypsy bee" operations. Loading hundreds of hives onto a flatbed trailer and then hauling them thousands of miles to a strange, unfamiliar locale cannot possibly be good for the bees.

Human life will be very hard indeed without the gracious help of the honey bee. Perhaps it's time we gave a little more thought to their "quality of life".

    Favorite    Flag as abusive Posted 02:48 AM on 02/26/2008
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Wasn't it Albert Einstein who said that human life can only survive about 5 years after the extinction of the bees. Odd, that, how the timing coincides with all those oracles and ancient prophecies of 2012 as the "end of the world."

    Favorite    Flag as abusive Posted 09:27 PM on 02/25/2008


Ouroporos?

    Favorite    Flag as abusive Posted 02:49 AM on 02/26/2008

Not just ice cream it's 1/3 of all the fruit and vegetable crops. BTW what's happening with the creeping northward of the africanized honeybees anyway?

    Favorite    Flag as abusive Posted 06:36 PM on 02/25/2008

Africanized honey bees have moved as far North as they are going to. As usual, there was a real threat, but not as big as some chicken littles would have you believe.

The bee collapse doesn't hve to be the end of the world, we just need to adapt, there were crops here before we brought european honey bees over.

Environmentalism is the ultra conservative value, trying to keep things the same so that we can go on living the lifestyle we have become adjusted to. Nature will find a way, maybe not so accommodating to humans though.

    Favorite    Flag as abusive Posted 09:43 PM on 02/25/2008

With a little knowledge and a lack of understanding how little, you just made a statement 80% in error, and 100% wrong projection/prediction. Main reason the bees were brought was to increase the crop yield per acre to support a population of less than a million colonist and slaves. Now we are about 300 million strong, and have laid waste to about 50% of our farmable acreage. Without bees, we can't produce sufficient food for people and livestock. African bees are less efficient pollinators than European bees for some reason.

    Favorite    Flag as abusive Posted 11:51 PM on 02/25/2008
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Is anyone starting to catch on yet? The whole argument about pollution, is DILUTION. That there is so much fresh water; that the oceans are so vast; that there is so much arable land; and that the atmosphere is almost endless that we could safely apply and dump our industrial poisons because they are diluted to the point of having no impact. No longer. The planet is saturated with industrial poisons.


Mercury contaminated SUSHI (all samples tested in New York were contaminated) is evidence that the oceans themselves, our immense open cesspit, is contaminated. That our fresh water systems are nothing more than open sewers. That the earth's precipitation systems -rain and snow- deliver to us poisoned water.


Virgin fallen ARCTIC snow tests full of pollutants. A recent water study in America showed ALL water samples, including well water from underground sources to be contaminated with a common gasoline additive.. Fire retardants, plasticizers and up to 50 other chemicals are found in random and targeted blood samples of ALL folks across North America. ALL FOLKS have contaminated blood.


Our entire environment is contaminated to the point that all American civilians are contaminated. That new-car-smell? That is what is in our and our children's bloodstreams.


*

And we wonder where cancer comes from? Why does an ever loving god allow children to die from cancer? Let me tell you a secret here: if we don't give a damn, god doesn't either. In fact the Bible has an end-time curse for those who "destroy the earth." And that is you and me, our mothers and neighbors, our bosses and their bosses, and of course the assholes we elect to our government WHO ARE PAID TO CARE.


America was built upon the economic model of EXCESSIVE CONSUMPTION and we spread our culture throughout the world. All this consumption demands excessive chemical manufacture, application, consumption, and dumping to create the goods that we use and throw away. We are to blame. We must end this culture of consumption before the monsters of Energy Scarcity and Climate Change do it for us. Or before the Earth becomes so poisoned as to destroy more life than it sustains.


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Dying bees are a harbinger of things to come? It is grow-up time kids...... We need to switch from an unsustainable growth economy based upon excessive consumption to a Recycling economy ready to meet the challenges of Climate Change and Energy Scarcity. Sacrifice is necessary.


Staggering Levels Of Mercury Found In Sushi

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/01/23/staggering-levels-of-merc_n_82856.html

    Favorite    Flag as abusive Posted 05:46 PM on 02/25/2008
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Great comment; this truly sums it up.

    Favorite    Flag as abusive Posted 02:00 AM on 02/26/2008
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Well leaving out the gods, the bibles and the end-times stuff, otherwise I agree with your assessment 100%. :-)

    Favorite    Flag as abusive Posted 02:16 AM on 02/27/2008
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Ditto on that. Religion is part of the problem, including the religion of Capitalism, but you've got the science right.

    Favorite    Flag as abusive Posted 10:37 AM on 02/27/2008
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This is a direct result of the frankenfood projects and mutated pesticides needed to allow them to grow. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

And don't forget about that seed vault that Bill Gates built in the artic.

    Favorite    Flag as abusive Posted 05:20 PM on 02/25/2008
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I can't wait for the Republicans to begin the "hoax" campaign like the one they started to protect BIG OIL from the reality of global warming.

I can just see Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) trying to protect the CHEMICAL INDUSTRY with some outrageous nonsense:

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/03/21/gore-boxer-inhofe/

    Favorite    Flag as abusive Posted 04:44 PM on 02/25/2008
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It won't matter. Life depends on life. Lies will only stretch so far. Beyond perception there is reality. Even the Republicans are subject to the laws and push back of nature.

    Favorite    Flag as abusive Posted 10:41 AM on 02/27/2008
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