That was news to me. The bees are dying.

I wonder if it is cyclical.
I wonder if it will affect tobacco crops. Maybe not. Tobacco is a leaf not a fruit.

I knew that frogs, salamanders and spotted owls were on the run.
But bees?

CBS bee news

Penn State bee article

Guerrila forum on bees

Too many people are hunting them for the pelts

So, where are all of the dead bees? The articles say they have disappeared, but where did they go?

I think that have been 'raptured'.

But then again again it could effect the seed production of tobacco plants...Of cigar tobacco plants...Of Cuban cigar tobacco plants...it started in Cuba and it spread northwards...could it be...hmmmm

quote:

Originally posted by P.A.D.R.E.:
Too many people are hunting them for the pelts

LOL!

Weren't the Killer Bees supposed to invade the US 30 years ago and wreak havoc on our lives? Or was that just a clever SNL skit (and one of my favorites).

Why doesn't Al Gore make a documentary about how mankind needlessley killed off the killer bees?

Einstein was quoted as saying basically: no bees=no plants=no animals=no man, not sure about how relevant this is today, but it's amazing how much bees do (they are busy!); and the amount of bees we're talking about disappearing is in the 10's of billions, so where are all of the little dead bees. You'd think we see them somewhere...so where did they go?

With the advent of self-pollinating crops & all these genetically engineered crops who knows? Big down side of self-pollinating crops is the $$$ price tag. Also, with all the herbicides, fungicides, & pesticides sprayed down something may finally have happened. This could just be the unintended consequence of genetically engineered crops & all those chemicals.

Where did they go? My guess is they dropped dead while out of the hive while pollinating & the birds and other insects got them.

http://aginfo.psu.edu/news/07Jan/HoneyBees.htm

This story made the network news tonight. It's serious. Commercial beekeepers, who supply bees to farmers and fruit growers, say their hives have about half the number of bees as normal. But no dead ones.

USDA fears prices for U.S. grown apples, pears, peaches and other tree fruit will soar as a result, along with those for vegetables.

Others think the remaining bees will just work longer and harder to take up the slack from the missing ones. Seriously.

If they can't seem to find any carcasses maybe the bees found new homes instead of the bee keeper hive, nah its just aliens abducting them.

I admit it. It's all my fault. I can't even begin to count the number of dead bees I've fished out of my pool this summer.

I guess my pool has become the Bermuda Triangle of bees.

Any possibility that they were abducted by the Iranian revolutionary guard?

Recent article I came across.....still no answer though.

The bees are dying

This message has been edited. Last edited by: burns81,

It is potentially a very serious problem. It's really nothing to joke about.

The "why" they are dying off is less important than the question of "what can be done to reverse the trend".

The problem is cell phones.

To me, the strange part about the article is that it states the phenomenon started in the U.S. and spread to Europe.

If it's cell phones, how did it start in the U.S. where the population is spread out (compared to other countires) and the cell phone use is much lower?

I think it more likely that it was noticed first in the U.S. then other countries started paying attention.