From: Science 2.0
The number of honey bee colonies fell by nearly 12% last winter – according to a preliminary look at a survey of beekeepers, that is. The UK and Spain were worst affected this year. The prior year, other areas of Europe were hardest hit. While environmental groups make money scaring people about that, what it really means is something else.
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Leave a Comment August 5, 2016
Editor’s Note: EFSA’s Technical Report, “A mechanistic model to assess risks to honeybee colonies from exposure to pesticides under different scenarios of combined stressors and factors” is available here.
From: Agra Europe
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Interested parties with “relevant expertise” will be invited in the coming weeks to submit tenders to develop the actual model,the EU’s food safety body announced on July 29.
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Leave a Comment August 4, 2016
From: Delta Farm Press
Colony collapse disorder has wiped out hundreds of thousands of honey bee colonies in the U.S. and worldwide. Bee breeders at the USDA Honey Bee Laboratory at Baton Rouge, La., have developed a line of bees with resistance to the varroa mite, which vectors viruses that lead to colony collapse.
Leave a Comment August 3, 2016
From: Mississippi State University — Extension
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“My top three reasons for bee colony death are Varroa mites, Varroa mites and Varroa mites,” said bee expert Jeff Harris. “This is my sarcastic response to the heavy emphasis in the press on the effects of insecticides and other pesticides on honey bees.
Leave a Comment August 2, 2016
From: Genetic Literacy Project
For years, environmental activists and the media have been warning of an impending “bee-pocalypse” in which a drastic fall in the honey bee population, which they claimed was already underway, would threaten bees with extinction and – because bees pollinate much of the food we eat – the word with starvation. The number one culprit in this extinction scenario is a class of pesticides known as neonicotinoids, or neonics, for short.
Leave a Comment August 1, 2016
