Bye-bye Bees.

Today, C-Span broadcast the hearings of the Agricultural Subcommittee on Horticulture. The topic of discussion was the disappearing honeybee population.

One thing that struck me right off the bat, was how SCARED one of the scientists looked. Her voice was literally shaking and the tension came right through the screen.

Now people who study insects are generally meticulous, and (though I'm very much generalizing here) tend to be shy -- studying bugs does require a certain willingness to overlook society's tendency to disregard such a profession as trivial, small, or worse, icky, because you are compelled by the shear power of your own curiosity.

So I am sure that the particular woman in question was nervous at speaking before such a public forum, but the fear in her voice went beyond that. She was scared about the crisis itself. DEEPLY afraid.

When the meek and the gentle get so scared they come out of their cocoon to beg for help -- I pay attention.

And if what scientists are seeing now is a real trend, we could be in a world of hurt VERY fast.

Not just here, but in Europe as well, honeybee populations are disappearing.

This is profoundly significant. Species extinction is something which happens both naturally through the processes of evolution, and suddenly due to man's interference, or through catastrophic environmental impact to a species habitat.

While all species are intertwined to some extent, bees are uniquely important in one regard. They are a LYNCHPIN to human agriculture.

Just as coral reefs are critical to the survival or a wide range of ocean species, so bees are critical to the survival of other lifeforms.

Namely OURS.

Now I hate that almost every environmental issue must be framed in such selfish terms. I would prefer we gave a damn out of pure compassion for life more broadly. But nothing so motivates as one's own survival, and ours may be under very serious, and very RAPID threat by this.

This is not a crisis we can ignore for decades like global warming. In truth, we really can't ignore that one EITHER, but I digress. Indeed, our willful ignorance regarding that problem, may be contributing to this one.

Bees are critical to over 90 food crops within North America alone, and literally HALF the honeybee population in North America has disappeared over the last 35 years.

Albert Einstein worried about nuclear war, but the prospect of honeybees dying off scared the hell out of him.

He said that if honeybees were to die off, without the pollination benefit they provide, humans would be dead just a few years later.

More information:

The London Times (U.K.)

Dave Hackenburg, a Pennsylvania-based beekeeper since 1962, lost 2,000 colonies — around 60 million bees — over a period of three weeks. Currently in Florida with his remaining hives to pollinate citrus trees, he estimates that CCD has cost him up to £350,000 in lost income and the cost of restocking. He said: “It’s the worst thing I’ve seen in 40 years. It worries me a lot, because honeybees are like the canary in the coalmine — if something’s bothering them, it’s a warning to us humans too."

....

Montana Kaimin

California almond growing, according to Bromenshenk, is a $2-billion industry, and is completely reliant on bees for pollination. Almond growers pay around $135 to lease one hive. One-fifth of the 1.2 million hives needed for almond pollination come from Montana.

This year almond growers in California had to scramble to get enough bees, and some even had bees flown in from Australia.

....

The Register (U.K.)

Beekeepers across 24 US states are already reporting "heavy losses" to "Colony Collapse Disorder", which has in recent years hit hard in Greece, Italy, Poland, Portugal, and Spain.

....

The Telegraph (U.K.)

Now in Spain, hundreds of thousands of colonies have been lost and beekeepers in northern Croatia estimated that five million bees had died in just 48 hours this week. In Poland, the Swietokrzyskie beekeeper association has estimated that up to 40% of bees were wiped out last year. Greece, Switzerland, Italy and Portugal have also reported heavy losses.

German bee expert Professor Joergen Tautz from Wurzburg University said: "Bees are vital to bio diversity. There are 130,000 plants for example for which bees are essential to pollination, from melons to pumpkins, raspberries and all kind of fruit trees - as well as animal fodder - like clover.

"Bees are more important than poultry in terms of human nutrition. Bees from one hive can visit a million flowers within a 400 square kilometre area in just one day.

"It is not a sudden problem, I has been happening for a few years now. Five years ago in Germany there were a million hives, now there are less than 800,000. If that continues there will eventually be no bees."

In addition to other insect populations hostile to honeybees invading their territory due to climate change, there is a pesticide component to this. Imidacloprid and fipronil, the active agent in the pesticide brands Regent, Schuss, Jumper, Métis, Texas, & Zoom, have now been banned in France because of this mess.

Fipronil (otherwise known as Termidore) in particular is used in flea collars, and for killing termites, but recently it has also been approved for use against ants and is being used much more broadly than ever before. What makes it so deadly against social insects -- unlike other pesticides -- is that it can be passed from individual to individual like a contagious disease. It's designed to be a slow killer to maximize the number of individuals exposed. We know from studies with ants, that it can be transfered at least ten times. It's designed to wipe out 'colonies' of insects, and it may now be wiping out insects we like.

Yet over the last 5 years, the Bush Administration has progressively cut funding for research into this.

One commercial beekeeper testifying said, "We don't need this money next year, WE NEED THIS MONEY NOW. Next year, there may not be anymore honeybees left."

We've seen our national security at risk simply because of a reliance on foreign sources for our energy. Can you IMAGINE how vulnerable we'd be if we had to rely on say, Communist China for our national FOOD SUPPLY?

Guess the so-called "security administration" never thought of that one.....

And ironically, as pointed out earlier, that's not even the worst-case scenario. The worst case scenario is a WORLDWIDE mass bee extinction, that threatens the food supply of the PLANET.