Missing Bees Mystery, Some Loss In Canada Too

Mystery killer strikes Ontario beehives over winter

But University of Manitoba entomology professor Rob Currie said the large-scale death of honeybees could hurt the production of other foods in the long run.

“Things like vegetables, a lot of the fruit that you eat, require bees to pollinate them,” he said, adding that the value of bee pollination is estimated to be about 10 times the value of the honey they produce, or about $700 million to $800 million a year in Canada.

Currie said that while he has heard of a few isolated cases in Manitoba where bee colonies have been wiped out, he thinks so far the problem is not huge in Canada compared with the U.S.

Mysterious phenomenon has researchers baffled

What happens to them is unknown. The adults are simply gone - thousands of them. No corpses left behind, nothing out of place. They are just gone.

It may seem like the set-up for an episode of CSI, but this mystery isn’t about missing people - it’s about missing bees. Strange as it may seem, a mysterious phenomenon called Colony Collapse Disorder is threatening bees across the United States and may be making its way into Canada.

The problem has researchers baffled. All of the adult bees in a colony will suddenly disappear without a trace, leaving behind only a small number of juveniles. The hive appears unaffected, just deserted. Remaining juveniles refuse to eat the stores of honey or pollen left behind. Other bee colonies meanwhile avoid the deserted hive - even though healthy colonies normally raid abandoned hives for leftovers.

Will fruit crops ‘bee’ OK?; Bee losses have farmers concerned

“It appears this may be a one-time event related to environmental factors,” he said. “Once the hives are replenished, the issue hopefully will be resolved.”

Halsall said beekeepers first started to recognize there was something very wrong with their bees about three weeks ago, and soon realized it was worse than anything they had seen before.

“We have a problem in Ontario, we’re used to having losses but certainly not the losses we have right now,” he said.

U.K. news:

Fungus fingered in US honeybee wipeout

According to the Los Angeles Times, researchers have identified the single-celled fungus Nosema ceranae in dead bees from hives in Merced County, California. Other teams have similarly spotted the fungus in affected hives across the US, as well as two further fungi and 12 viral infections.

U.S. News:

Bees Vanish, and Scientists Race for Reasons

More than a quarter of the country’s 2.4 million bee colonies have been lost — tens of billions of bees, according to an estimate from the Apiary Inspectors of America, a national group that tracks beekeeping. So far, no one can say what is causing the bees to become disoriented and fail to return to their hives.

Missing Bees, Cell Phones and Fulfillment of Bible Prophecy

Revelation 6:6

Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures, saying, “A quart of wheat for a day’s wages, and three quarts of barley for a day’s wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine!”

Although the Bible plainly speaks of great famine in the last days, the prophetic words of Revelation 6:6 states that the olive and grape harvest will not be damaged.

In general, breeders have assumed that grapes were either completely self- fertilizing or were cross-pollinated by wind, so that in either case insects were considered of no value. The grape harvest will not be affected by the missing bee population.

Bees and other insects play a minor role in olive pollination; wind moves most of the pollen from tree to tree. Most olive varieties are self-fertile, but increased production often results from cross pollination. And neither will the olive harvest be affected by CCD.

The Honeybee Mystery: What it means to you and your investments

CATTLE - Like I said earlier, Cattle depends on Hay, Clover & Alfalfa as food sources. Take away the food source, and we have less supply in a high demand market.
COCOA - Don’t worry, your chocolate isn’t going anywhere. Cocoa, derived from the Cacao plant, pollinates from small insects.
COFFEE - In most instances where pollination of coffee was studied, the honeybee was the most important - however, Africanized ‘killer’ bees can also do the job, and in some cases do it better. There is an Arabic coffee bean that self pollinates.
CORN - Corn does not require bees for pollination, however, corn prices may inadvertently increase because of the lack of other foods available.
GOLD 100 OZ - This would be the classic panic buy if the honey bee issue does turn into a major problem.
SOYBEAN - Prepare yourself for meals of Tofu. Soybeans self-pollinate.
SUGAR - no dice, sugar doesn’t rely on the honey bee.

ORANGE JUICE - Gold mine! Or is it? As Billy Ray Valentine (Trading Places) would say: Yeah. You know, it occurs to me that the best way you hurt rich people is by turning them into poor people. Would Orange Juice be affected by the lack of honey bees? That’s a tough call. Navel oranges don’t need bees, but a lot of other orange varieties do need bees to pollinate their fruit. The problem is, OJ futures have already had a huge run-up in the last year because of the late frost that killed the greater part of crops. The run from $100 to $200 has since corrected to around $150, but the price is still high.

Where have all the bees gone?

It is a vanishing on the scale of entire cities. Late in 2006, commercial beekeepers in Florida began noticing alarming numbers of their bees had gone missing. Bustling colonies, tens of thousands strong, were emptying in a matter of days. Systematic searches for dead bees around the colonies mostly drew a blank.