The Eleventh day of Christmas

On the eleventh day of Christmas my YAV year gave to me eleven hypotheses for why the bee colonies are collapsing.

Also as part of the snowed in community day we also watched this documentary The Vanishing of the Bees: http://www.hulu.com/#!watch/397072?playlist_id=1688&asset_scope=movies

This one is longer than Save the Farm. But it gets you just as fired up about the problems in the world. The film outlines the phenomenof Colony Colapse Disorder (CCD), the mysterious disappearance of entire honey bee colonies.

Our entire agricultural system relies on bees. You may think bees only give us honey, but they pollinate all kinds of flowers and help them make all kinds of fruits. Not just what you call fruits like apples, oranges, pears, peaches, melons, etc., but also some things the FDA calls vegetables like squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplants, beans, nuts, and peppers. These are actually fruits, botanically speaking because they develop from the ovary of the flower once it's been pollinated. Without bees our farmer's markets would only include the true vegetables (roots, stems, leaves) and the wind-pollinated grains (corn, wheat, rice) and other random fruits pollinated by other means (bats, birds, beetles, ants, etc).

Bee keepers can actually make their living transporting their bees to surrounding farms to assist in crop pollination, so bees are essential to our fruit and vegetable production.

THANKS YOUTUBE!

 

The problem addresssed in this film is that bees have been mysteriously disappearing rapidly by the colony. They are just gone and people are confused as to why.

This film addresses some of the latest theory of why this is happening.

In general, the research and the experts blame the pharmaceutical companies and systemic pesticide use from the farmers. Prolonged exposure to small amounts of pesticide on each flower eventually kills the bees or at least confuses them so they forget how to get back to the hive. I've seen other bee films blame it on the GMO crops with pesticide inside the plants. And that makes sense, chemicals designed to kill harmful insects just might be harmful to bees--which are insects.

I was surprised in the film by one biodynamic (super eco-centric version of organic) farmer Gunther in Floyd. VA who didn't blame the crop farmers, but blamed the current bee keeping system. He said it may be the way new queens are introduced to the colony, or how the queens are artificially insiminated to select for traits that weakens bee colonies. The film also introduced me to the organic bee keeping idea that doesn't expose the bees to crops with pesticide use.

I liked that idea of looking inside your own practices when addressing the problem, it's something I'd not seen in researching bee problems before. Way to go Gunther, start by changing your own beekeeping practices to help save the bees.