[ExI] bees again

spike spike at rainier66.com
Wed Mar 6 03:51:45 UTC 2013



-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike

>...but I now suspect honey extraction could be harming the bees.  I will have more data today, for I am going back over to Sunnyvale to visit some of my index trees.  I think the problem might be more localized, and I have a suspect, which I will share this evening...spike


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OK well, here we go.  I have been going around doing local bee counts, and my preliminary conclusion is that bee counts are definitely way down this year, but it might be localized.  Sunnyvale and Palo Alto both seem low on bees, but I don't have much data on those locations.  Here about 10 miles east of Sunnyvale, I would estimate bee counts down half an order of magnitude at least, possibly most of an order of magnitude, but I will have more data when the ornamental pears blossom and my own ornamentals in the backyard in a couple weeks.

The evidence on the imidacloprid theory is ambiguous because it is crazy hard to isolate variables.  We have a very subtle theoretical effect where we cannot fully isolate a control group.  The theory that imidacloprid interferes with bee navigation causing the bees to lose their way, fail to find their hive and subsequently perish of exposure is complicated by the strong possibility that a small exposure to the stuff may be nearly as harmful as a double dose.  It doesn't actually poison the bees, so the amount necessary to cause the bees to lose their way may be too low to detect.  

Furthermore, there is huge money at stake, and politics up the kazoo.  For instance, Bayer makes crazy big money selling imidacloprid.  Beekeepers are making good money this year extracting honey.  Recall a few thousand dollars is a lot of money to a typical beekeeper.  A few tens of thousands, a cool fortune.  But what occurred to me is that bees are used to smuggle dope up from Mexico.  I didn't read of it anywhere, but I figured it out.  Perhaps you have seen a picture of a flatbed truck hauling bees:

http://www.uproxx.com/gammasquad/2010/05/worst-death-ever-car-crash-with-a-flatbed-trailer-hauling-17000000-bees/

Note the bee truck where you have the supers (a wooden box full of bees and honeycomb) stacked five across, six high and about 20 deep, depending on the truck.  The best way to make a lot of money, honey, is to take bees around the northern US and Canada, let them devour the pollen on everything as it blooms, then winter the bees down where the weather is mild so they don't eat up much of the honey they made in the summer.  Florida is a good place, but Mexico is even better.  Now imagine a bee truck with all the center hives removed, and filled with dope, down in Mexico.  The bee truck comes up in the spring, and what do you suppose happens at the border?  Senior Border Guard doesn't want that damn bee truck around, buzzing bastards everywhere, risking stings.  The dope-sniffing dogs can't get anywhere close really.  The net over the top helps hold some of the bees in, but notice anywhere you see a bee truck, there are hundreds of bees buzzing around everywhere.  The American crossing guards realize those bees are critically important for pollinating American crops, so welcome to the states, Senior Beekeeper, even if the driver is clearly an illegal immigrant and the border patrol suspects that bee truck might be carrying dope.  No border patrol will require the beehives to be removed from that truck, because a careful smuggler would carry the dope inside the hives, and they don't want the beekeepers to open every hive.  So in it comes.  

I have never heard of smugglers bringing dope across the border using a bee truck, but it would work perfectly.  If you ever hear of such an operation being busted (perhaps in some kind of sting operation) you know where you heard it first.  Recall that beekeepers work their asses off for a handful of dollars.  We could scarcely blame them if they crumbled under the temptation to make a lifetime of profit for smuggling one load of grass over the Mexican border.

But I digress.

There is a community farm near my home.  I suspect some pesticide they are using on that farm is slaying the local bees.  Tomorrow I will go looking for more data, and will report why I suspect it so, or present my counterevidence if I can find any.

spike





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