Thisbud, That's sad information, but thanks for sharing with everyone. It's all the more reason for the small scale beekeepers to stay at it. I've noticed a real surge of interest from people about bees and our beeclub has doubled in the number of active members with a number of first timers joining this year.
Dennis gave 2 presentations at the SABA conference in Albany, NY He is a wealth of information, but also has a good sense of humor. He listed the top three threats to honeybees in this order. Varroa mites, local ordinances against beekeeping, and loss of habitat. The second one was a real eye-opener

Hi, I live in Ohio, on the border of Pennsylvania, and am really concerned about losing our bees. I would be really interested in any information I could get about perhaps getting in on the saving of our bees. As much as we feel they are a pain, we really do need them, and the loss of them would be devastating. I have 50+ acres of land, and would seriously be interested in saving them. Please give me any information that I could use to contact any organization that would be interested in helping me with this. Thank you, rose

The Haagen-Dazs Ice Cream people have taken out a two or three page adv in this month's National Geographic magazine (the one with China on the front cover) - it's located toward the beginning of the magazine. It has some information about helping to save the honeybees.

Hi Rose,
I've been saying this to beekeepers for nearly two years now, and they are still living in denial---the primary culprit in the disappearance of the bees is the beekeepers. Sorry, folks, but it's true. I've seen professional beekeepers working, and their common everyday practices spread diseases from hive to hive. The few times I've tried to explain this to beekeepers, they get defensive and insist that what they're doing won't harm the bees. I predict that the time is coming when beekeepers are going to have to learn about what scientists call "sterile technique." Farmers who raise daiy cows and pigfarmers who raise swine for meat understand that there are serious health risks involved if they do not follow proper sanitary procedures. One of these days, hopefully before its too late, beekeepers will have to learn the same lessons. Re-using boxes without properly sterilizing them, switching combs from one colony to another, importing queens from faraway places, failing to sterillize tools between hives, all of these are examples of practices that will have to cease if we intend to keep the bee populations from dying. Yes, I know, it'll be a major pain to change our ways, but there is NO alternative. You may recall that Rudolf Steiner warned about the dangers of modern beekeeping practices way back in 1920, and he predicted that over half the bee population would die "in the next 60-80 years." So, my concerns are not mine alone, nor are they new. It's just that beekeepers seem not to understand that their chosen animal is no different from any other agricultural livestock. If you want to grow them successuflly, you have to adopt the necessary sanitary precautions to keep your animals healthy and prevent the spread of disease.

Thisbud, I cringe when I see videos of the big guys. It's like watching an old Batman show, SLAM#BANG*CRUNCH. They have to get in and get out and do things fast in order to make any money. The sad thing is that like dairy farmers and milk, they don't get paid enough for their honey. I bought the video POLLEN NATION about migratory beekeepers. You get a helicopter view out in California of the almond orchards and it's like looking at the ocean. Absolutely nothing but almond trees as far as you can see. It's mono- culture at it's finest. And to top it off the citrus growers lobbied for a bill to keep commercial beekeepers from puting hives within a few miles of Their orchards because the bees were pollinating clementines and causing them to Not be seedless. There are varieties that can be pollinated and not produce seeds, but the growers have been steadily growing a new variety that will produce seeds.
I guess my whole point is this, and I've been saying it for a long time. We need to go back to small individual diversified farms and people planting their own gardens. We need more small time beekeepers with a few hives providing honey locally. And I guess the key word is local. The hard part is getting people to buy something produced locally when they can get it cheaper at the supermarket or Walmart. The increase in gas prices will even the playing field a little, and people are starting to come around. Well' I've rambled on long enough. Thanks for bringing up a very important topic.

Here is a link that might be useful: http://www.pollennationthemovie.com,

Tony, you been smokin' that Hopium again? The sad fact is, the vast majority of people don't like to live close to the land. They like the city life, they like to reproduce like rabbits, they don't care what negative consequences there are when hundreds of millions of them make similar decisions, and they either cannot or will not understand that they're to blame when things go wrong.

The truth is, agribusiness is necessary to produce the massive amounts of food that the blasted city folks eat. The utopian vision you present of people growing their own gardens is a gorgeous idea (and I do my part with two acres under cultivation), but I cannot get even ONE of my friends to join me doing farmwork. What the heck are they doing in their spare time? Well, all sorts of stuff....karate classes, square dancing, bar hopping (well, not my friends), night school (almost never for agriculture), and all sorts of STUFF. They don't understand the joys of farming, and they don't care to find out. Personally, I'd like to let'em just starve. Like I always say,

"Nobody respects the farmer until they start to go hungry."

Around here I think there is still hope. All of the farms aren't gone and some are in trusts so they can't be developed. The farm where I have some hives sells raw milk,eggs from truly free range chickens,cheese and butter they make right there and have a newly opened bakery. It's of the beaten path but does a great business.
As far as big agribusiness, you might say the migratory keepers are just providing a neccessary service and it isn't their fault, The big time growers are trying to feed the masses so it isn't their fault, the masses are too lazy to grow their own so it must be their fault. I guess one thing about having a little money is yo can pay someone else to do the things you don't want to do so you can spend time doing the things you like. They don't know what they're missing. I remain optimistic

Hi. Last year I posted about CCD, mainly to inquire and learn more. Please read the thread "Bees Vanishing, but are they Dying?" which was one of the last ones from 2007 that I contributed to.

The upshot was that some people who believed themselves to be knowledgeable kinda said "So what?!" IOW, the bees may have been diminishing, but there were BUMPER CROPS even among those crops believed to depend heavily on pollenation by European bees (the types kept in millions of hives by our professional large-scale bee keepers in the fields of North America).

I'm not currently keeping bees, though I did so on a small scale years ago. So I had a bit of background last year when I started looking into this problem. I posted on several GardenWeb forums... mainly asking questions and shuttling information around amongst people. I wasn't intending to hit the panic button, just wondering what was happening and how it was likely to affect agriculture, food abundance & prices, and other related matters. Besides, I have good will toward the bees and I like honey.

But there are those who say 'So what?... the bees aren't as necessary as everyone has been led to think. Wind, wild bees, and other insects do the pollenation job just fine.'

Well, what do you think, if you clear away all the sentiment, obfuscation, myths, panic? Is there ANY truth, any overall fact? "The public wants to know" as the magaizine covers from 1963 used to declare...

Joel

Well, it's true that there were and still are many native bees that pollinate plants. Bumblebees are much better at pollinating certain plants. The European honey bees have strength in numbers. Where the average bumblebee nest may have a couple hundred bees, the average strong honeybee hive is in the range of 50-60,000 at peak level. So far even with extensive losses of colonies,the supply for bees in calif almonds has met the demand, but with orchards increasing and bees decreasing, it would seem like a matter of time before the demand can no longer be met.
I'm going into my 4th year and will have 10-15 hives this year. I still haven't come out even at the end of the year yet, but I hope to this year. We'll see what the weather brings.

joel, if you don't believe that bees are essential for agriculture, just look at an apple crop from a professional orchard when the bee man fails to deliver his bees on time for pollination. Trust me, it ain't pretty--in fact, it's an economic disaster for the orchardist. Bees are absolutely essential for many crops.

thisbud4u wrote "joel, if you don't believe that bees are essential for agriculture, just look at an apple crop from a professional orchard when the bee man fails to deliver his bees on time for pollination."

Well, you may be right. I tended to lean in the direction of your way of thinking last year. Then people "debunked" the idea.

I guess time will teach us a lot (and by "us" I mean the public).

I repected the European bee when I kept hives. Still do, I guess...

J.