Bijenvolken leggen het ook in USA af

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Het is dus bepaald niet langer een Chinese zaak.
Ook in Europa en de USA speelt dit nu.

In China wordt dit met menskracht ondervangen, alles wat vrucht én bloem
is, wordt handmatig bevrucht.

Gaat dat ook in Europa en USA gebeuren?

Groet / Cees

Fears for crops as shock figures from America show scale of bee catastrophe
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/02/food-fear-mystery-beehives-collapse/

The world may be on the brink of biological disaster after news that a
third of US bee colonies did not survive the winter

Disturbing evidence that honeybees are in terminal decline has emerged
from the United States where, for the fourth year in a row, more than a
third of colonies have failed to survive the winter.

The decline of the country's estimated 2.4 million beehives began in
2006, when a phenomenon dubbed colony collapse disorder (CCD) led to the
disappearance of hundreds of thousands of colonies. Since then more than
three million colonies in the US and billions of honeybees worldwide
have died and scientists are no nearer to knowing what is causing the
catastrophic fall in numbers.

The number of managed honeybee colonies in the US fell by 33.8% last
winter, according to the annual survey by the Apiary Inspectors of
America and the US government's Agricultural Research Service (ARS).

The collapse in the global honeybee population is a major threat to
crops. It is estimated that a third of everything we eat depends upon
honeybee pollination, which means that bees contribute some £26bn to the
global economy.

Potential causes range from parasites, such as the bloodsucking varroa
mite, to viral and bacterial infections, pesticides and poor nutrition
stemming from intensive farming methods. The disappearance of so many
colonies has also been dubbed "Mary Celeste syndrome" due to the absence
of dead bees in many of the empty hives.

US scientists have found 121 different pesticides in samples of bees,
wax and pollen, lending credence to the notion that pesticides are a key
problem. "We believe that some subtle interactions between nutrition,
pesticide exposure and other stressors are converging to kill colonies,"
said Jeffery Pettis, of the ARS's bee research laboratory.

A global review of honeybee deaths by the World Organisation for Animal
Health (OIE) reported last week that there was no one single cause, but
pointed the finger at the "irresponsible use" of pesticides that may
damage bee health and make them more susceptible to diseases. Bernard
Vallat, the OIE's director-general, warned: "Bees contribute to global
food security, and their extinction would represent a terrible
biological disaster."

Dave Hackenberg of Hackenberg Apiaries, the Pennsylvania-based
commercial beekeeper who first raised the alarm about CCD, said that
last year had been the worst yet for bee losses, with 62% of his 2,600
hives dying between May 2009 and April 2010. "It's getting worse," he
said. "The AIA survey doesn't give you the full picture because it is
only measuring losses through the winter. In the summer the bees are
exposed to lots of pesticides. Farmers mix them together and no one has
any idea what the effects might be."

Pettis agreed that losses in some commercial operations are running at
50% or greater. "Continued losses of this magnitude are not economically
sustainable for commercial beekeepers," he said, adding that a solution
may be years away. "Look at Aids, they have billions in research dollars
and a causative agent and still no cure. Research takes time and
beehives are complex organisms."

In the UK it is still too early to judge how Britain's estimated 250,000
honeybee colonies have fared during the long winter. Tim Lovett,
president of the British Beekeepers' Association, said: "Anecdotally, it
is hugely variable. There are reports of some beekeepers losing almost a
third of their hives and others losing none." Results from a survey of
the association's 15,000 members are expected this month.

John Chapple, chairman of the London Beekeepers' Association, put losses
among his 150 members at between a fifth and a quarter. Eight of his 36
hives across the capital did not survive. "There are still a lot of
mysterious disappearances," he said. "We are no nearer to knowing what
is causing them."

Bee farmers in Scotland have reported losses on the American scale for
the past three years. Andrew Scarlett, a Perthshire-based bee farmer and
honey packer, lost 80% of his 1,200 hives this winter. But he attributed
the massive decline to a virulent bacterial infection that quickly
spread because of a lack of bee inspectors, coupled with sustained poor
weather that prevented honeybees from building up sufficient pollen and
nectar stores.

The government's National Bee Unit has always denied the existence of
CCD in Britain, despite honeybee losses of 20% during the winter of
2008-09 and close to a third the previous year. It attributes the demise
to the varroa mite – which is found in almost every UK hive – and rainy
summers that stop bees foraging for food.

In a hard-hitting report last year, the National Audit Office suggested
that amateur beekeepers who failed to spot diseases in bees were a
threat to honeybees' survival and called for the National Bee Unit to
carry out more inspections and train more beekeepers. Last summer MPs on
the influential cross-party public accounts committee called on the
government to fund more research into what it called the "alarming"
decline of honeybees.

The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has
contributed £2.5m towards a £10m fund for research on pollinators. The
public accounts committee has called for a significant proportion of
this funding to be "ring-fenced" for honeybees. Decisions on which
research projects to back are expected this month.
WHY BEES MATTER

Flowering plants require insects for pollination. The most effective is
the honeybee, which pollinates 90 commercial crops worldwide. As well as
most fruits and vegetables – including apples, oranges, strawberries,
onions and carrots – they pollinate nuts, sunflowers and oil-seed rape.
Coffee, soya beans, clovers – like alfafa, which is used for cattle feed
– and even cotton are all dependent on honeybee pollination to increase
yields.

In the UK alone, honeybee pollination is valued at £200m. Mankind has
been managing and transporting bees for centuries to pollinate food and
produce honey, nature's natural sweetener and antiseptic. Their
extinction would mean not only a colourless, meatless diet of cereals
and rice, and cottonless clothes, but a landscape without orchards,
allotments and meadows of wildflowers – and the collapse of the food
chain that sustains wild birds and animals.

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