Bee Colony Collapse Disorder - Where is it Heading?

Craig Mackintosh | celsias.com

Here is an update to the brief bee story we did a few weeks ago. I’ve been keeping an eye on the Colony Collapse Disorder phenomenon that is causing a lot of furrowed brows in the U.S., as this may well become the biggest issue of 2007.

Things are getting dire on the U.S. agricultural front, and there are similar reports beginning to filter through from countries in Europe.

The sad mystery surrounding the humble honeybee - which is a vital component in $14bn-worth of US agriculture - is beginning to worry even the highest strata of the political class in Washington.

“Hillary Clinton’s got interested in this in the last week or so,” said David Hackenberg, the beekeeper leading the drive to publicise their plight.

“And she’s not alone,” he said. “There’s a lot of Congressmen have called…wanting to know what’s going on. It’s serious. - BBC

There’s still no concrete evidence about what is killing the millions and billions of bees around the country, but there are a lot of guesses.

The phenomenon is recent, dating back to autumn, when beekeepers along the east coast of the US started to notice the die-offs. It was given the name of fall dwindle disease, but now it has been renamed to reflect better its dramatic nature, and is known as colony collapse disorder.

It is swift in its effect. Over the course of a week the majority of the bees in an affected colony will flee the hive and disappear, going off to die elsewhere. The few remaining insects are then found to be enormously diseased - they have a “tremendous pathogen load”, the scientists say. But why? No one yet knows.

… The disease showed a completely new set of symptoms, “which does not seem to match anything in the literature”, said the entomologist.

… the few bees left inside the hive were carrying “a tremendous number of pathogens” - virtually every known bee virus could be detected in the insects, she said, and some bees were carrying five or six viruses at a time, as well as fungal infections. Because of this it was assumed that the bees’ immune systems were being suppressed in some way. - The Independent

There are as many theories as there are members of the panel, but Mr Hackenberg strongly suspects that new breeds of nicotine-based pesticides are to blame.

“It may be that the honeybee has become the victim of these insecticides that are meant for other pests,” he said. “If we don’t figure this out real quick, it’s going to wipe out our food supply.”

Just a few miles down the sunlit road, it is easy to find farmers prepared to agree with his gloomy assessment.

… Dennis van Engelsdorp, a Pennsylvania-based beekeeper and leading researcher… is adamant that it is too early to pin the blame on insecticides.”We have no evidence to think that that theory is more right than any other…” - BBC

Urban sprawl and farming also have taken away fields of clover and wildflowers, as well as nesting trees.

Pesticides and herbicides used in farming and on suburban lawns can weaken or kill bees.

Caron said a new class of pesticides used on plants, called neonicotinoids, don’t kill bees but hamper their sense of direction. That leaves them unable to find their way back to their hives.

… Because these bees aren’t returning to their hives, researchers don’t have a lot of evidence to study.

Those dead bees that have been found nearby have only deepened the mystery.

“They are just dirty with parts and pieces of various diseases,” said Jim Tew, a beekeeping expert with the OSU Extension campus in Wooster. “It looks like a general stress collapse.”

Similar disappearances have occurred over time. Tew said he remembers a similar phenomenon in the 1960s. Then, it was called “disappearing disease.”

“It was exactly the same thing,” he said.

But this one, Caron said, apparently causes hives to collapse at a much quicker rate and is more widespread.

Cobey said it could be from too much of everything: bad weather, chemicals, parasites, viruses.

“If you give them one of these things at a time, they seem to deal with it,” she said. “But all of these things, it’s too hard.

“I think the bees are just compromised. They’re stressed out.” - Columbus Dispatch

Whatever the cause, some farmers are getting desperate, to the point of not bothering to plant their crops.

“The squash crops that we grow have a male and female bloom, and the bee has to visit…to make it pollinate and produce,” he said.

“We’re going to have a hard time finding rental bees to aid in this pollination and if it’s as critical as it looks like it will be, I probably won’t even plant anything this spring.” - BBC

Huge monocrop farming systems and specialisations, and the spread of suburbia across natural habitat, are removing natural diversity. Bees have been lumped together in the millions, in a factory farm type environment not so unlike that of our chickens and other livestock animals. Many of these bees are transported across several states to perform pollinations in orchards and farms around the country. Today they are in contact with substances they shouldn’t have to deal with - pesticides, herbicides, antibiotics, and pollen from genetically modified crops. Researchers are scrambling to find answers, and as the spring season is upon us, time is running out.

Honey bees, which are not native to the U.S. incidentally (they were imported for crop pollination), are tasked with the pollination of approximately one third of all U.S. crops.

… scientists are very worried, not least because, as there is no obvious cause for the disease as yet, there is no way of tackling it. - The Independent

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Are Genetically Modified Crops Killing Honeybees?

Mercola.com

Harvesters in 24 states report hive population rates have mysteriously fallen 30% to 70%.

The honeybee population may be in grave decline around the United States. This is a serious problem, as almost 100 crops need honeybees to transport pollen between flowers, prompting fertilization and jump-starting the production of seed and fruit.

However, there may soon not be enough bees to transport a sufficient amount of pollen, as a result of colony collapse disorder; this is the catch-all name that encompasses a myriad of possible reasons why the honeybees are disappearing, ranging from a new infection to a compromised immune system.

Some economists have estimated this single species is worth as much as $14 billion to the U.S. economy. Moreover, pollinated plants may account for as much as one-third of the average American diet, and possibly the healthiest portion of it.

A German study may have identified a simple answer to the problem: The ongoing blight of genetically modified (GM) crops. When bees were released in a GM rapeseed crop, then fed the pollen to younger bees, scientists discovered the bacteria in the guts of the young ones mirrored the same genetic traits as ones found in the GM crop.

Dr. Mercola's Comment:

You are about to witness the first large-scale repercussions of the dangerous, world-wide, and unregulated experiment on your health with genetically modified (GM) crops. The problems that will result due to a loss of honeybees are much greater than a simple shortage of honey.

When this story hit the news a few weeks ago it is likely you heard about it, but very few people connected the dots, including me, until a few enlightened individuals pointed out the connection, and then the light bulbs clicked on.

The inevitable agricultural and economic catastrophe that will result is a stark reminder of how complex, fragile and interdependent our biosystem really is. The loss of one plant, one animal, one species can cause potentially devastating repercussions that can wreak havoc on the entire system for years, decades, or worse even permanently.

Genetic modification is, basically, playing fast and loose with this system, with no real idea what the results will be. It's taking parts out of a smoothly-functioning machine and replacing them with new, untried, and untested parts. Maybe they'll work better. But if they wreck the whole thing, there is no replacement. This is the only biosphere we have. Is it really worth the risk?

That is why it will be essential for you to take action and VOTE with your pocketbook. Avoid GM foods like the plague that they truly are. Recognize that they have the potential to destroy the human race. IF you realize that I am confident you will realize how serious this issue is and will act responsibly and appropriately.

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Electricity Infrastructure Starting to Buckle

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) - The increasing demand for electricity statewide is pushing thousands of miles of aging underground equipment to its limits, particularly in hard-to-reach spots under busy city streets, Connecticut utility officials said.

Waterbury, Stamford, Hartford and Meriden each have experienced downtown outages in the past seven months because of transformer explosions, underground fires and other equipment failures.

The state's two largest electricity providers, Connecticut Light & Power Co. and United Illuminating, both have multimillion-dollar projects under way to replace and upgrade equipment above and below ground.

CL&P is a unit of Northeast Utilities; United Illuminating's parent company is UIL Holdings Corp.

Officials from both companies said Thursday that demand for more electricity is driving the projects, although aging equipment is also a concern.

'Reliability is our primary issue,' said Mitch Gross, a CL&P spokesman. 'When customers flip the switch, they expect the power to be there, so we need to continually take the steps necessary to ensure it is.'

Yet working with transformers and other equipment under city streets can be difficult, costly and -- as evidenced this week -- dangerous and potentially lethal.

On Wednesday, a Long Island man working for a CL&P contractor was killed when a transformer exploded while he was performing routine maintenance below a downtown Waterbury street.

Authorities said Thursday it does not appear related to an underground explosion and fire in October -- the sixth such incident in downtown Waterbury in about 18 months -- but that it highlighted the difficulty and dangers associated with upgrading the systems.

A spokesman from the state Department of Public Utility said Thursday they will investigate the incident, in which 34-year-old Elias Anchundia, of Lake Grove, N.Y., was killed and another worker was injured.

The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration also is investigating.

A second, smaller explosion occurred late Wednesday in the same area where Anchundia was killed, but no injuries were reported.

CL&P has almost 22,500 miles of distribution lines -- about 5,600 miles of which are underground, primarily in urban areas -- and almost 276,400 transformers in the 149 towns and cities it serves.

It has a $3 billion, multiyear project in the works for everything from trimming trees around power lines to upgrading transformers and substations.

Since July, underground explosions and equipment failures have caused outages in Stamford, Meriden, Hartford and Waterbury.

In October, a spliced wire in an underground cable in downtown Waterbury caught fire and caused an explosion that rattled windows, knocked out power, sent a manhole cover flying 30 feet into the air and destroyed a car.

CL&P plans to spend about $10 million over the next three years to replace the downtown power grid, which includes about six miles of cable and 24 transformers.

'In my opinion and the mayor's opinion, they've been very diligent about coming to the table and trying to address the problems and concerns,' Joe Geary, the city's director of operations, said of CL&P.

Gross, the CL&P spokesman, said the utility has major upgrades in the works for Stamford, Meriden and other cities in addition to ongoing projects in smaller communities throughout the company's coverage area.

United Illuminating, which has approximately 320,000 customers in 17 towns from Fairfield to North Branford, recently added new equipment to isolate problems on particular lines.

The items, called 'reclosers,' prompt a temporary outage in a small area rather than letting it cascade to other, larger areas and potentially cause fires, explosions or large-scale outages.

UI spokesman Al Carbone said that while the vast majority of its equipment is overhead, reaching the underground lines in New Haven and Bridgeport can be challenging.

The company has a $120 million upgrade program planned over the next three years to inspect all equipment and replace the aging, outdated items before problems occur, Carbone said.

'We're seeing in many areas that demand is growing, and it's going to grow even more in the next five to 10 years,' he said.

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Depression II: The Destruction of the Middle Class

One could say, perhaps, that the creation of the Federal Reserve was perfectly legal. After all, a token number of congressmen signed off on it during its enactment on the Christmas Holiday of 1917. It even got past Woodrow Wilson's desk. An act giving the power to coin money from the congress and to the privately owned federal reserve.

Many have spoken out against this dispicable atrocity, but sadly, the issue has died down. The people's capacity to forget is quite amazing indeed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Congressman Louis T. McFadden "Mr. Chairman, we have in this country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks. The Federal Reserve Board, a government board, has cheated the Government of the United States and the people of the United States out of enough money to pay the national debt. The depredations and the iniquities of the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks acting together have cost this country enough money to pay the national debt several times over. This evil institution has impoverished and ruined the people of the United States; has bankrupted itself, and has practically bankrupted our government. It has done this through the defects of the law under which it operates, through the maladministration of that law by the Federal Reserve Board, and through the corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control it. Some people think the Federal Reserve banks are United States Government institutions. They are not government institutions. They are private credit monopolies which prey upon the people of the United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign swindlers; and rich and predatory money lenders. In that dark crew of financial pirates there are those who would cut a man's throat to get a dollar out of his pocket; there are those who send money into states to buy votes to control our legislation; and there are those who maintain an international propaganda for the purpose of deceiving us and wheedling us into the granting of new concessions which will permit them to cover up their past misdeeds and set again in motion their gigantic train of crime."

Quote:

Originally Posted by Congressman Charles A. Lindbergh Sr., 1923 "The financial system has been turned over to the Federal Reserve Board. That Board asministers the finance system by authority of a purely profiteering group. The system is Private, conducted for the sole purpose of obtaining the greatest possible profits from the use of other people's money"

Why wasn't such an important banking bill passed with all congressman in attendance?

Why is the United States government borrowing money from this Federal Resreve bank and paying interest when the Constitution of the United States gives CONGRESS the express right to coin money? It seems to me as if the constitution, in allowing Congress the power to coin money, is therefore giving the people the right to INTEREST FREE money. Any government that would forego the use of interest free money, opting instead to have interest charged and paid for in tax receipts is OBVIOUSLY comprimised.

Have not our rights been comprimised by this SETUP of the American people. President Andrew Jackson fought to rid this nation of the Bank of America, but the ability to coin money fell, once again, into the hands of private credit monopolies. Upon his death Jackson had the inscription "I Killed The Bank!" carved onto his tombstone.

Everyone's upset about what is happening since 9/11, and I think that this is rightly so. George Bush's administration has spent such a massive sum of money that the US foreign ~8 trillion dollar debt ceiling is estimated to be reached this March. Coincidently, the Federal reserve has announced that it will no longer publish the money supply figures in March. This means that there will be now way for Dollar holders to determine the amount of dollars in supply.

I believe that the Fed is trying to cause a Dollar collapse; a depression, the likes of which will make Depression I look like a CAKE WALK. If you look at the price of Gold, these days, you will see that it is repeteadly making 25 year highs. Commodities, in general, are running up to new highs every day.

One law of economics that I have always lived by is, "there is no such thing as a free lunch." Benjerman Bernanke, the new Federal Reserve Chairman believes, however, that with a printing press, all of our problems can be soved. Yes, I kid you not, the Federal Reserve is in the hands of this man now and, as of March, we will have no way of tracking any further abuses.

Consequently, I predict that the US Dollar, which has already fallen ~30% since 2002, will collapse and be worth less than half of what it is currently worth. If you simply look at the amount of money that has been put into the system you can see that, without higher and higher levels of foreign dollar purchses, the US dollar will collapse.

Unfortunately for America, the foreign governments, saturated with useless US Dollar reserves, are opting to increase their gold and non-dollar holdings. This spells the perfect disaster for the super wealthy to profit from simply by moving their assets into gold, silver, base metals and resource stocks.

The time has come to prepare for a Weimer Republic style disaster in America. Protect your family by purchasing silver coins; coins which have generally been able to purchase a week worth of groceries during a depression. Prepare yourself, or you will be stuck in this country without any legs to stand on.

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Mystery surrounds floodwall breaches

Times Picayune | September 14 2005

One of the central mysteries emerging in the Hurricane Katrina disaster is why concrete floo dwalls in three canals breached during the storm, causing much of the catastrophic flooding, while earthen hurricane levees surrounding the city remained intact.

It probably will take months to investigate and make a conclusive determination about what happened, according to the Army Corps of Engineers.

But two Louisiana State University scientists who have examined the breaches suggest that a structural flaw in the floodwalls might be to blame.

"Why did we have no hurricane levee failures but five separate places with floodwall failures?" asked Joseph Suhayda, a retired LSU coastal engineer who examined the breaches last week. "That suggests there may be something about floodwalls that makes them more susceptible to failure. Did (the storm) exceed design conditions? What were the conditions? What about the construction?"

Ivor Van Heerden, who uses computer models to study storm-surge dynamics for the LSU Hurricane Center, has said that fragmentary initial data indicate that Katrina's storm-surge heights in Lake Pontchartrain would not have been high enough to top the canal walls and that a "catastrophic structural failure" occurred in the floodwalls.

Corps project manager Al Naomi said that the Corps' working theory is that the floodwalls were well-constructed, but once topped they gave way after water scoured their interior sides, wearing away their earth-packed bases. But he said some other problem could have caused the breaches.

"They could have been overtopped. There could have been some structural failure. They could have been impacted by some type of debris," Naomi said. "I don't think it's right to make some type of judgment now. It's like presuming the reason for a plane crash without recovering the black box."

Officials long had warned about the danger of levees being topped by high water from a storm surge. Absent topping, floodwalls are supposed to remain intact. (more...)

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blogger in the heart of the hurricane devastation

An individual in the heart of New Orleans is publishing a blog. The company that he works for was able to keep net service up using diesel power; they have a fiber-optic cable buried deep beneath the streets. Pictures are posted, although alot of the servers appear to be over-burdened or down; live video feeds are also available.

see his liveJournal

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They Knew What to Expect

Virtually everything that has happened in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina struck was predicted by experts and in computer models, so emergency management specialists wonder why authorities were so unprepared.

"The scenario of a major hurricane hitting New Orleans was well anticipated, predicted and drilled around," said Clare Rubin, an emergency management consultant who also teaches at the Institute for Crisis, Disaster and Risk Management at George Washington University.

Computer models developed at Louisiana State University and other institutions made detailed projections of what would happen if water flowed over the levees protecting the city or if they failed.

In July 2004, more than 40 federal, state, local and volunteer organizations practiced this very scenario in a five-day simulation code-named "Hurricane Pam," where they had to deal with an imaginary storm that destroyed over half a million buildings in New Orleans and forced the evacuation of a million residents.

At the end of the exercise Ron Castleman, regional director for the Federal Emergency Management Agency declared: "We made great progress this week in our preparedness efforts.

"Disaster response teams developed action plans in critical areas such as search and rescue, medical care, sheltering, temporary housing, school restoration and debris management. These plans are essential for quick response to a hurricane but will also help in other emergencies," he said.

In light of that, said disaster expert Bill Waugh of Georgia State University, "It's inexplicable how unprepared for the flooding they were." He said a slow decline over several years in funding for emergency management was partly to blame.

In comments on Thursday, President Bush said, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."

But LSU engineer Joseph Suhayda and others have warned for years that defenses could fail. In 2002, the New Orleans Times Picayune published a five-part series on "The Big One," examining what might happen if they did.

It predicted that 200,000 people or more would be unwilling or unable to heed evacuation orders and thousands would die, that people would be housed in the Superdome, that aid workers would find it difficult to gain access to the city as roads became impassable, as well as many other of the consequences that actually unfolded after Katrina hit this week.

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Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen?

By Will Bunch
Published: August 31, 2005 9:00 PM ET

Even though Hurricane Katrina has moved well north of the city, the waters may still keep rising in New Orleans. That's because Lake Pontchartrain continues to pour through a two-block-long break in the main levee, near the city's 17th Street Canal. With much of the Crescent City some 10 feet below sea level, the rising tide may not stop until it's level with the massive lake.

New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been working with state and local officials in the region since the late 1960s on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.

Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside.

Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.

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Bush Administration cut funding for NOLA flood control in 2003

The president is directly responsible for the loss of New Orleans, La. He scrapped the funding for levy repair/enhancement so that the money could go for his worthless war of terror. The president does not care enough to visit New Orleans and has thus far failed to send enough military personnel to evacuate the starving/dying people who remain trapped in the city.

A large chunk of the United States is now in ruins and the effort to rebuild New Orleans will take years. It will take several months just to drain the water from the city. Millions of people are displaced; I estimate, that well over 150 Billion dollars worth of damage was done although some are claiming only 40 billion.

The United States will have to go into enormous amounts of debt to remedy this situation; this will surely send the US dollar sliding to new lows and gas prices are probably going to reach $5/gallon within the next six months.

From the 6/6/05 New Orleans CityBusiness:

In fiscal year 2006, the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is bracing for a record $71.2 million reduction in federal funding…The cuts mean major hurricane and flood protection projects will not be awarded to local engineering firms. Also, a study to determine ways to protect the region from a Category 5 hurricane has been shelved for now.

[snip]

Landrieu said the Bush administration is not making Corps of Engineers funding a priority. “I think it’s extremely shortsighted,” Landrieu said. “When the Corps of Engineers’ budget is cut, Louisiana bleeds. These projects are literally life-and-death projects to the people of south Louisiana.”

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