OT - I know what happened to the honey bees! | Arthritis Information

 

http://the-happening--trailer.blogspot.com/Hmmm....I don't think that's it.

Look, here's the thing: the bees that are dying have all been genetically engineered to be 50% bigger than a normal honeybee. This is done by making the base of the hive 150% the size of a naturally occurring hive. The bigger bees then make honeycombs that are 150% the size of a naturally occurring honeycomb. Unfortunately this larger size also accommodates pests like mites that would normally be too big for a regular hive, so the bees become sickly. Then, rather than just let to be flying around, the bees are trucked from farm to farm and orchard to orchard to pollenate factory farmed food, so they're totally stressed out. These are VERY SICKLY BEES.

As far as anyone knows, not one organic or natural bee hive has suffered spontaneous colony collapse.

This is the pitfall of man trying to "improve" on nature or "tame" it.

I know a guy who has a completely illegal business (in that he has no licenses for it) of setting up an organic beehive in your yard which he then comes around to maintain every now and then, and when he harvests the organic honey you get half. That's the kind of initiative we need to solve this man-made bee problem!

Really - none of the hives that collasped were 'organic'?  Have you a link to that info?  I know the hives that did collapse were infected with some sort of Israeli bee virus.  So, that does tie into your micro-managing nature and Big Agri points. 

An exerpt:
"I'm on an organic beekeeping email list of about 1,000 people, mostly Americans, and no one in the organic beekeeping world, including commercial beekeepers, is reporting colony collapse on this list. The problem with commercial operations is pesticides used in hives to fumigate for varroa mites and antibiotics are fed to the bees to prevent disease. Hives are hauled long distances by truck, often several times during the growing season, to provide pollination services to industrial agriculture crops, which further stresses the colonies and exposes them to agricultural pesticides and GMOs.

Bees have been bred for the past 100 years to be much larger than they would be if left to their own devices. If you find a feral honeybee colony in a tree, for example, the cells bees use for egg-laying will be about 4.9 mm wide. This is the size they want to build  the natural size.

The foundation wax that beekeepers buy have cells that are 5.4 mm wide so eggs laid in these cells produce much bigger bees. It's the same factory farm mentality we've used to produce other livestock  bigger is better. But the bigger bees do not fare as well as natural-size bees.

Varroa mites, a relatively new problem in North America, will multiply and gradually weaken a colony of large bees so that it dies within a few years. Mites enter a cell containing larvae just before the cell is capped over with wax. While the cell is capped, the bee transforms into an adult and varroa mites breed and multiply while feeding on the larvae."

Read the whole article"
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_5194.cfm

Also:http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_5094.cfm

There's a whole lot more on this page which I haven't actually read a lot of, if you're interested.I just noticed my statement of them being 50% bigger is wrong. They are bigger, but not that much bigger...sorry about that.I am interested.  Big Agri is on 'my list' now too! Pip, you should read "The Omnivore's Dilemma" then. BF just read it and it was so good he bought a copy to loan out (there were 180 people lined up at the library). I'm still on the first part but so far it's fascinating, albeit a bit depressing. Apparently it gets less depressing further into the book.Gimpy-a-gogo2008-03-15 16:53:46
Copyright ArthritisInsight.com