Species Collapse, Bees

Hanyuan county is known as the “world's pear capital.” But pesticide use has led to a drastic reduction in the area's bee population, threatening the fruit crop. Workers now pollinate fruit trees artificially, carefully transferring pollen from male flowers to female flowers to fertilize them... As bees rush toward extinction, Frayer's photos might portend a not-so-distant future — one in which human ingenuity must replace what human nearsightedness has wiped out.

“The European Food Safety Authority (Efsa) has begun a review that could pave the way for rolling back a pioneering EU-wide ban on three neonicotinoid pesticides, that are thought to have ravaged European bee populations.... the EU scientists said that they would finish their risk evaluation by the end of January 2017.... The restrictions on the use of neonicotinoids remain in place while this review is carried out.”

“The U.S. Department of Agriculture is trying to get ahead of a nationwide problem of colony collapse disorder, in which honey bees suddenly disappear or die. The agency has funded bee disease studies, and has created a working group to address bee issues. Its latest effort, will send $3 million to help reseed pastures in Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin and the Dakotas with bee-appropriate plants.”

“In an effort to protect their product, pesticide makers are loading up on high-powered lobbyists. [...] The lobbying push is backed by deep pockets. Bayer ponied up more than $2 million for all of its lobbying efforts in the first quarter of the year, according to lobbying disclosure records. Syngenta, meanwhile, paid out $350,000 in the same interval for total lobbying expenditures.”

“The European Commission will enact a two-year ban on a class of pesticides thought to be harming global bee populations...” “The pesticides industry has lobbied hard for these standards to be rejected.”

"The problem of bee loss was first noticed in October 2006, when beekeepers began reporting losses of 30-90 percent of their hives. While colony losses are not unexpected, especially over the winter, this magnitude of losses was unusually high."

“...he had first started noticing that his bees were acting oddly: not laying eggs or going queenless or inexplicably trying to make multiple queens.... he'd gone out to check his bee yard and discovered that of the 5,600 hives he kept at the time, all but 600 were empty.”

“...farmers made this compound the most successful insecticide world wide within a decade. Today imidacloprid is marketed in more than 120 countries protecting more than 140 crops.”

“Mites have taken a tremendous toll on honeybees in the United States, both in colonies and in the wild, with populations crashing by 50 to 90 percent in the mid-1990s in the span of just two years.”

“From 1972 to 2006, there were dramatic reductions in the number of feral honey bees in the U.S. Alone, and a gradual decline in colonies overall”

“Remove the bee from the earth and at the same stroke you remove at least one hundred thousand plants that will not survive. You will probably more than once have seen her fluttering about the bushes, in a deserted corner of your garden, without realising that you were carelessly watching the venerable ancestor to whom we probably owe most of our flowers and fruits (for it is actually estimated that more than a hundred thousand varieties of plants would disappear if the bees did not visit them) and possibly even our civilisation, for in these mysteries all things intertwine.”

“Wherever a bee might fly within the bounds of this virgin wilderness--through the redwood forests, along the banks of the rivers, along the bluffs and headlands fronting the sea, over valley and plain, park and grove, and deep, leafy glen, or far up the piny slopes of the mountains--throughout every belt and section of climate up to the timber line, bee-flowers bloomed in lavish abundance.”

“Hence, we may infer as highly probable that if the whole genus of humble-bees became extinct or very rare in England, the heartsease and red clover would become very rare, or wholly disappear.”