[ExI] bees again

[BillK]

On 26 May 2015 at 23:46, spike  wrote:
> http://news.sciencemag.org/plants-animals/2015/05/new-white-house-pollinator-plan-gives-big-buzz-science?utm_campaign=email-news-latest&utm_src=email
>
<snip>
> Now to this year: I see a puzzling paradox.  I have seen more bees this
> spring than usual, perhaps a 1-sigma heavy bee season, but I have seen far
> more bee deaths this year than in any year for about the last 10.  I have
> seen about 150 bees dead or dying this season.  The pattern didn’t match the
> spring 2013 observation, where it was 100 bees all in one location at one
> time.  This year I have noticed a lot of dead or dying bees, all in
> different places and times, where the ones still living appear too weak to
> fly.  This suggests starvation, which is entirely possible considering the
> heavy population this year.  In the dying or dead bees I have examined, I
> saw no indications of trauma or age-related distress.
>


I am moving to the idea that bees are being attacked on many fronts.
i.e. pesticides, neonicotinoid insecticides, mites, starvation, etc.
See:
<http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/05/building-bees/mann-text>

Quote re starvation -
A century ago many crops were still pollinated by feral bees. Then
family farms turned into agribusiness operations. Bees need to forage
for food much of the year, but fields devoted to single crops
typically have flowers for just a few weeks, while weeds that could
tide bees over are killed by herbicides. So few bees now exist that
farmers must rent hives from huge commercial outfits that transport
them from crop to crop in 18-wheelers.
------

The environment humans have created seems to have ignored the need for bees,

BillK