Evolution News: Bees Are Dying of Appian AIDS

Elaine Meinel Supkis

I keep bees. And the bee/human compact which has flourished for hundreds of years whereby beekeepers protect and nurture their bees in exchange for half of the honey, is collapsing thanks to modern beekeeping exploitative abuses.

I have lost several hives to this terrible disease!

By GENARO C. ARMAS

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) - A mysterious illness is killing tens of thousands of honeybee colonies across the country, threatening honey production, the livelihood of beekeepers and possibly crops that need bees for pollination.

Researchers are scrambling to find the cause of the ailment, called Colony Collapse Disorder.
Reports of unusual colony deaths have come from at least 22 states. Some affected commercial beekeepers - who often keep thousands of colonies - have reported losing more than 50 percent of their bees.

Mother Nature is a severe woman. She has iron laws of evolution. And her most ancient children are the single-celled germs. The sword of evolution works swiftly with these earliest rulers of the earth. All living systems incorporate or use germs even as germs colonize all niches. Over the last 300 million years, all other life forms have evolved schemes to avoid extinction from germs. And germs evolve to keep host populations alive because they need these niches to exist.

This all breaks down when a population is in an artificial enviormental situation.

From the article:

- Although the bodies of dead bees often are littered around a hive, sometimes carried out of the hive by worker bees, no bee remains are typically found around colonies struck by the mystery ailment. Scientists assume these bees have flown away from the hive before dying.

- From the outside, a stricken colony may appear normal, with bees leaving and entering. But when beekeepers look inside the hive box, they find few mature bees taking care of the younger, developing bees.

- Normally, a weakened bee colony would be immediately overrun by bees from other colonies or by pests going after the hive's honey. That's not the case with the stricken colonies, which might not be touched for at least two weeks, said Diana Cox-Foster, a Penn State entomology professor investigating the problem.

"That is a real abnormality," Hackenberg said.
Cox-Foster said an analysis of dissected bees turned up an alarmingly high number of foreign fungi, bacteria and other organisms and weakened immune systems.

Is AIDS universal? Is it a disease that only shows up when a population reaches dangerous levels? Is it triggered by environmental stresses? Is it something that evolves when an entire population is ready to crash?

I know a little bit about bees, being a beekeeper. I know that in nature, bee hives are not close to each other. Like any animal that stakes out territory, bees like to keep themselves away from each other, preferably at least 100 yards apart. In nature, they tend to build their colonies in caves, rotted tree trunks, thick brush piles and inside human habitations or constructions. Usually, outside of the queen mating with various drones, honey bees avoid strangers. They have various ways of recognizing each other so workers from different hives don't accidentally do business with each other.

Certainly, the workers in one hive don't want to share information about beautiful, juicy flowers with workers of another hive! They are in competition with each other.

Domesticated bees have been bred to not avoid each other but to live in harmony as a group. Usually, four or five hives would be clustered together. In Medieval Europe, they made hives out of rope baskets and would line them up on a board.

Nearly all beekeepers use 'Italian' bees which are friendly and productive. The genes from these bees mixed with wild bees over the centuries and has spread across the entire planet. This means most bees are closely related to all others. This also means, any illness from one group of colonies will affect any others no matter how far away.

Add to this genetic weakness caused by inbreeding is the new fact that beekeepers who cart their bees all over the country make more money than stay-at-home beekeepers! So orchard growers, instead of raising their own bees and caring for them and insuring there are flowers throughout the agricultural cycles, hire these outsider bees and have them moved all over the place and these bees then interact with native bees and spread diseases as well as stressing out the locals who are upset with this sudden flood of competition!

So there is overpopulation plus alien outsiders. As human invaders well know, invasions bring the Four Horsemen including Disease. 90% of the natives of North and South America died in the first 200 years of European colonization, just for example. Great numbers of humans living with excessive numbers of animals breeds diseases that jump from one species to another. This is why China has been the locus of many a plague.

Since humans are very footloose and travel great distances, this means diseases can be transmitted at light-speed.

The balance of nature rests upon the creation of variety within species and between species. The more diversity, the greater the chance of survival. If any one life form overwhelms an environment, the oldest life forms take over and colonize it ruthlessly. And everyone dies.

Why germs evolve into hyper-killer mode still eludes scientists. Which is why we suspect it is due to stress weakening all systems. Trees, bees and humans can all be stressed out. Ask my bees. Heck, talk to my 600 year old oak trees. The complain to me all the time, usually by dropping limbs near me.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Comments

No creature will tolerate slavery indefinitely.

Posted by: Chris Cudlip | February 13, 2007 at 09:48 PM

Is this ethical for the bees?

* News Media Home
* News Releases
* - Archive
* Publications
* Contacts

Detecting explosives with honeybees

Contact: Todd Hanson, [email protected], (505) 665-2085
Story Tools

* Printer friendly version
* Send article to a friend
* View most sent

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., November 27, 2006 -- Laboratory experts develop method to train an air force of bomb-sniffing bees

Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory have developed a method for training the common honey bee to detect the explosives used in bombs. Based on knowledge of bee biology, the new techniques could become a leading tool in the fight against the use of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, which present a critical vulnerability for American military troops abroad and is an emerging danger for civilians worldwide.

By studying bee behavior and testing and improving on technologies already on the market, Los Alamos scientists developed methods to harness the honey bee's exceptional olfactory sense where the bees' natural reaction to nectar, a proboscis extension reflex (sticking out their tongue), could be used to record an unmistakable response to a scent. Using Pavlovian training techniques common to bee research, they trained bees to give a positive detection response, via the proboscis extension reflex, when they were exposed to vapors from TNT, C4, TATP explosives and propellants.

According to Tim Haarmann, principal investigator for the Stealthy Insect Sensor Project, the project applies old knowledge to a pressing new problem. Haarmann said, "Scientists have long marveled at the honey bee's phenomenal sense of smell, which rivals that of dogs," said Haarmann. "But previous attempts to harness and understand this ability were scientifically unproven. With more knowledge, our team thought we could make use of this ability."

The team that Haarmann put together began with research into why bees are such good detectors, going beyond merely demonstrating that bees can be used to identify the presence of explosives. By looking at such attributes as protein expression, the team sought to isolate genetic and physiological differences between those bees with good olfaction and those without. They also determined how well bees could detect explosives in the presence of potentially interfering agents, such as lotions, motor oil, or insect repellant. In addition, the team studied structural units in the honey bee's antenna and looked for biochemical and molecular mechanisms that could advance their ability to be trained and retain their training for longer periods of time.

Currently supported by a development grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Stealthy Insect Sensor Project is a collaboration of scientists and technicians from the Laboratory's Bioscience, Chemistry, and Environmental Protection divisions, including Kirsten McCabe and Robert Wingo.

Los Alamos National Laboratory is a multidisciplinary research institution engaged in strategic science on behalf of national security. The Laboratory is operated by a team composed of Bechtel National, the University of California, BWX Technologies, and Washington Group International for the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration.

Los Alamos enhances national security by ensuring the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, developing technologies to reduce threats from weapons of mass destruction, and solving problems related to energy, environment, infrastructure, health and global security concerns.

Los Alamos National Laboratory • Est 1943

Operated by Los Alamos National Security, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy's NNSA

Posted by: nancy | February 26, 2007 at 03:17 PM