Plants missing bees' buzz

Lack of insects or bad timing hurting crops, flowers: study

By Tom Spears, The Ottawa Citizen September 7, 2010 7:00 AM

Plants missing bees' buzz

OTTAWA — Common plants in eastern Ontario from blueberries to roses to apple trees are already in danger of not being able to pollinate because of a bee shortage, new Canadian research suggests.

A long-term University of Toronto study on bees and pollination shows evidence that either a lack of bees, or bees hatching at the wrong time of year, may affect many flowering plants.

These range from common farm crops such as tomatoes and berries to flower-garden favourites and wild plants.

"There's a vast array of things that are insect-pollinated, and any of those things are potentially impacted," said Ottawa naturalist Dan Brunton.

"All of these things matter because they are all part of a system" -- an ecosystem that draws strength from its many parts.

"We don't know how critical any particular part is."

The new research comes from James Thomson of U of T's department of ecology and evolutionary biology. Seventeen years ago he bought a remote piece of land in the Rocky Mountains in order to do field work far from pesticides and other human interference.

Thomson built a log cabin there and started studying flowers.

Three times a year he measured how wildflowers were "fruiting," or progressing from the flower stage to produce seeds and fruit. This change requires pollination.

Today he publishes results showing a slow decline in the amount of pollination. This change had been widely predicted by biologists as the number of bees across North America has been mysteriously falling.

"Bee numbers may have declined at our research site, but we suspect that a climate-driven mismatch between the times when flowers open and when bees emerge from hibernation is a more important factor," Thomson said.

Some flowers bloom earlier than they used to and are ready to pollinate when bees are still hibernating.

Brunton said the bee problem is more complex than it appears on the surface because there are many hundreds of types of wild bee, with separate functions.

Some bees only pollinate a narrow range of flower types. Some are only active for a brief period of the year, so that a change in the time when plants flower can disrupt the schedule for bees and plants alike.
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"Inter arma silent Musae"--when the weapons speak, the muses fall silent.

An't nanum hearm deth, doth hwaet ye willath.

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished
unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets. -Voltaire

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If bees die out, human agriculture yields will bee fucked.

August 29, 2010

Bee deaths leave puzzling mystery

By Frank Konkel
DAILY PRESS & ARGUS

The unsung heroes of Michigan's agricultural industry are dying at unprecedented rates.

The honeybee, known for stinging and producing honey, is also responsible for the pollination of half of Michigan's $2 billion fruits-and-vegetables industry.

It's also entirely responsible for pollinating agricultural crops with an estimated value of nearly $1 billion in Michigan and $15 billion across the country.

In addition, these bees annually churn out $7 million worth of honey in Michigan.

However in recent years, it's the honeybee that's gotten stung.

Michigan's total honey-producing bee colonies decreased from 95,000 to 65,000 from 1988 to 2006, or by almost one-third. Scientists coined the term colony collapse disorder in 2006 in an effort to describe what was happening to honeybees across the country.

Much of California's nut, fruit and vegetable production depends on bees trucked in every year from elsewhere in the US to pollinate flowers.