Missing Bees

[eladdie]

Not wanting to alarm anyone, but have you seen any bees lately? All my flowering shrubs and apple trees are in full bloom, and nary a bee to be seen to pollinate. Talk about global catastrophy, I've read of estimates of 100 percent die offs of wild bees in North America, Asia, etc., with domesticated hives only kept alive through the use of antibiotics and sprays.

Beware before you spray
Backyard pesticides threaten beekeepers' survival
By Dawn House
The Salt Lake Tribune


For the first time in 24 years, Taylorsville beekeeper Larry Knowlden is without bees. He thinks improper pesticide use might be to blame. (Al Hartmann
The Salt Lake Tribune )
Despite high-tech advances, farmers still rely on the ancient practice of bee pollination to grow billions of dollars worth of fruits, vegetables and crops.
But bee numbers are down so much from parasitic mites and toxic habitats that beekeepers nationwide are scrambling to save their colonies.
To make matters worse, backyard gardeners are wiping out bee populations by carelessly using pesticides and indiscriminately killing any insect with a stinger.
City dwellers can help protect this key part of the food chain by knowing the difference between attacker insects such as wasps, yellow jackets and hornets, and the gentle pollinators such honey bees, leaf cutters and wild bumblebees.
Such knowledge could
Related Articles
# Beekeepers: State laws ignore the plight of dwindling hives
be critical to some beekeepers' survival.
In Utah, the Beehive State, the numbers of colonies (each one supports from 20,000 to 60,000 bees) have dropped from 32,000 to 23,000 in the past decade, according to the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food. Although yields have recently increased, honey production is nowhere near the state's 1963 banner year, when three times the amount of 2004's honey. Utah ranks 24th in the nation in honey production, generating $1.7 million from honey sales.
Last year, California suffered its most severe bee shortage, with half its colonies severely weakened or killed, according to the American Beekeeping Federation. That shortage has a domino effect in that crop production driven by pollination in the Golden State will be affected. That in
turn probably has affected beef and dairy production, which is dependent on legume forage such as alfalfa and clover that requires pollination.
"The wasp attacking your guests at a barbecue or carrying off part of your hot dog is not a honey bee that's interested only in pollinating your garden," said Taylorsville beekeeper Larry Knowlden. "Bees are not the predator insects that go after you and your food."
This issue is important to Knowlden because for the first time in 24 years, he is without bees, perhaps because a homeowner somewhere in Salt Lake County used a toxic spray that helped kill off his entire colony.
Knowlden advises gardeners not to spray during the daylight hours, starting at sunrise when bees begin flying about, until sunset, when they scurry back to their hives. And don't spray flowers or blossoms or use pesticides that kill bees.
Knowing the right pesticide to use is as easy as reading the label. Package directions indicate whether the compounds are harmful to bees.
To get rid of insect predator nests, use Sevin (carbaryl) as a dust or liquid concentrate, Dursban (chlorpyrifos) as a dust, or Orthene (acephate) as a liquid concentrate. These compounds are to be applied directly to the predators' nests, not sprayed so that bees will be protected, said Rosalind James, a U.S. Department of Agriculture research leader at Utah State University.
Homeowners can help out even more by contacting beekeepers when swarms of honeybees leave overcrowded hives, settling under building eves, on fences or backyardtrees.
If you spot swarming bees, call Knowlden, secretary of the Utah Beekeepers Association, at 801-966-8619. Beekeepers will remove the clouds of honeybees and take them home to start new colonies.
Because of the dwindling numbers of bees, hobbyists have become vital to fruit and vegetable gardening in urban areas. In fact, the majority of the state's beekeepers are hobbyists, said Knowlden, who until this year had always maintained at least one colony in his backyard.
"My neighbors don't complain," he said. "They see first-hand the benefits of having bees around to pollinate their fruit trees and gardens."
If wild bumblebees populate your garden, consider protecting them rather destroying their habitats.
Unlike honeybee nests, bumblebee nests are small, bumblebees generally don't swarm and they usually won't attack, even if their nests are threatened.
dawn@sltrib.com

http://www.sltrib.com/business/ci_3739615

 

[eladdie]

Re: Where are the Bees?

Re: Where are the Bees?

State's bees are not busy enough
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
By ALLEGRA TIVER
Staff Writer

Wanted: Beekeepers.

In the face of dwindling bee populations, the New Jersey Beekeepers Association, New Jersey Department of Agriculture and Cook College at Rutgers University have joined forces to develop the "Bee-ginner's Beekeeping Program" to encourage industry in the state.
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"Insect pollination is vital to many important fruit and vegetable crops grown in New Jersey, such as apples, blueberries, cantaloupes, cranberries, cucumbers, squash, pumpkins and watermelons, which account for $115.8 million in revenue each year," said Charles Kuperus, the state's secretary of agriculture.

Fruit and vegetable farmers who depend on bees to pollinate their crops generally rent bees from beekeepers, who place them exactly where they need to go. Cranberries and blueberries would barely grow without bees, and apples and strawberries have better shape because of them.

Through a $20,000 grant from the Department of Agriculture, the program is offering $300 worth of starter hives and basic beekeeping equipment for 50 first-time bee-keepers who successfully complete the course, offered by the Cook College Office of Professional Education in New Brunswick. Two classes, of 50 students each, have already filled up.

The remaining $5,000 in grants will go to eight regional branches of the New Jersey Beekeepers Association, which will mentor the participants.

Destructive pests, such as the tracheal and Varro mites, have caused a decline in bee populations in recent decades, causing a major shortage in New Jersey and neighboring states, said Bob Goodman, executive dean of Cook College and the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station.

"Every commercial beekeeper winters in the South, since the mites have become resistant to all the treatment," said Bob Harvey, beekeeper at Harvey's Honey in Upper Pittsgrove Township. "Everybody was losing so many bees. There used to be a lot of sideline beekeepers who decided to throw in the towel."

Over the last several years, the state's beekeeper population has dropped from an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 to a present estimate of about 2,500.

Harvey remembers the first pest arriving from outside the country in the mid-1980s, followed by another a few years later. Now, Harvey's bees winter in Florida.

"We follow the bloom up the coast," Harvey said. "We're running the orange bloom now. It's our first pollination, and we do it just for honey."

Harvey is next scheduled to head toward the apples and blueberries in New Jersey, Maryland and Delaware. He ships 3,500 hives holding 50,000 bees each, which make a total of four tons of honey each day, on pallets in tractor-trailers.

The New Jersey Agricultural Statistics Service reported that in 2004 there were 12,000 honey-producing bee colonies in the state, which yielded 324,000 thousand pounds of honey -- valued at $447,000.

To find out more, contact Paul Raybold, State Apiarist for the Department of Agriculture at (609) 292-5440 or visit www.state.nj.us/agriculture/plant/bee.htm.

 

[eladdie]

Bee warned: Honeybees are declining

Bee warned: Honeybees are declining

Bee warned: Honeybees are declining
Still, there are plenty of other hard-working insects who can pick up the pollination process in the garden.

Little squash start to swell but then shrivel, and cucumbers grow only to nubbins big enough for a bite or two. Even citrus trees don't seem to bear as many fruits as they once did.

There appears to be plenty of flowers but a lack of pollinators.

Honeybees that gardeners have depended on to move pollen between blossoms are declining, says Glenn Hall, entomologist and honeybee geneticist with the University of Florida in Gainesville. There are fewer wild colonies and hives kept for pollination and honey production.

"A parasitic mite is putting the beekeepers out of business," Hall says.

The exotic mite was found in Florida in 1987, and it quickly spread to the honeybee colonies, destroying hives in as little as seven months. The mites live with the bees, feeding on the young and adults, which causes their demise. Miticides have helped control the parasites, but many hives continue to decline.

Help may be on the way, but it's going to take years for resistant honeybees, including variations of Africanized bees, to become established and assume pollinating duties. Until then, gardeners and growers have to depend on the pollinators that existed before European honeybee introductions by early settlers. Many think native bees, flies and similar insects can still do the job.

"They can make a tremendous contribution to pollination, but people aren't aware of them because they don't look like honeybees," says Suzanne Batra, a retired entomologist formerly with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Bee Research Laboratory in Beltsville, Md.

Batra studied various pollinators most of her career and refers to many of these insects as "pollen bees" because they make little honey and spend much of their time moving pollen between blossoms and back to their nests. Gardeners may recognize a few including bumblebees and carpenter bees because of their large size. But many are small, including mason bees and sweat bees, which could go unnoticed among the flowers.

Of this group, the bumblebee is probably the best known. It grows to almost thumb size and is black with yellow hairs. It works the larger flowers and lives in colonies formed in old rodent nests, piles of wood and even discarded furniture.

Other pollen-bearing bees often live a solitary life, carving out individual homes in finished wood, plant stems and the ground. When living together as if in a colony, the solitary bees form clusters called aggregates.

Sometimes they scare residents who happen upon their nesting sites, but these bees are usually not aggressive and they are reluctant stingers unless handled, says Keith Delaplane, a University of Georgia Extension entomologist and bee specialist in Athens, Ga.

"Take a deep breath, relax and don't kill them," says Delaplane. "Gardeners have to take advantage of what nature gives them. Learn to recognize their habitats and don't spray."

Another insect that is usually an unrecognized pollinator in local landscapes is the hoverfly. A true fly, it visits flowers looking for nectar and aphids. The adult is about the size of a housefly and hovers over blossoms during visits. It eventually drops down to rest while sipping nectar and picking up bits of pollen . Adults also deposit eggs on leaves near aphid colonies; the eggs hatch and feed on these common plant pests.

"Anything seen on flowers can move pollen to another bloom," says Lance Osborne, entomologist at the University of Florida's Mid-Florida Research and Education Center in Apopka. "The pollen is tiny and adheres to the insect's body."

Other pollinators you might find in the garden are wasps, butterflies, moths and beetles. "Even ants and lovebugs can move the pollen between the blossoms," says Osborne.

This all sounds good, but why are we having trouble getting pollinators to visit our yards? It appears they have to be invited, says Delaplane, who encourages gardeners and growers to create bee gardens.

"They want plantings that bloom in succession. Large numbers of bees die out because they don't have flowers."

Trees and shrubs that Delaplane suggests planting to invite pollinators include oaks, persimmons, blackberry, gallberry, elderberry, American beautyberry, vitex and groundsel. Flowers that are also favorites and give extended blooms include coneflower, horsemint, marigold, sage, coreopsis, mint, sunflower and milkweed.

"Try to keep the flowers going," says Osborne. " Once the insects come into the area, the potential for pollination increases as they hop from one plant to another."

 

[eladdie]

Honey, our bees are vanishing

Honey, our bees are vanishing

Honey, our bees are vanishing

Beloved by Britons, the humble honey bee is hailed as a reassuring symbol of summer. But disease has almost wiped out the wild population and threatens domestic swarms. Science Editor Robin McKie reveals why we should all be worried about the decline of this remarkable creature

Sunday April 30, 2006
The Observer

When a fire hazard light flashed in the cockpit of a British Airways jumbo jet that was heading from Sydney to London two weeks ago, its pilot, Dave Meggs, knew he had only one course of action. He diverted his craft, and its complement of 350 passengers, to the nearest airport, a tiny landing strip at Uralsk in Kazakhstan.

His emergency touchdown was a flawless copybook affair. It was also, as it turned out, completely unnecessary. There was no fire in the hold of the plane despite sensors indicating this was the source of the raging flames. All that could be found was a package of disgruntled bees, en route from Australia to Britain, which investigators now believe was the most probable cause of the alarm and the ensuing aviation emergency.

In the end it took 20 hours to ferry passengers back to London in a flotilla of smaller craft (the airstrip was too short for the jumbo to take off with its passengers on board) and all thanks to a bunch of errant insects.

It is still unclear how bees managed to trigger the alarm in the hold, although this is certainly not the only question hanging over the incident. In particular, there is the issue of what these creatures were doing on Flight BA010 in the first place.

Bees - which have been loved by Britons ranging from William Shakespeare to Jill Archer - are the quintessence of Britishness. Yet it transpires we are importing them regularly. What is happening? The answer, say beekeepers, is a simple one: a malaise has been spreading through the nation's apiary industry with alarming implications. Thanks to foreign diseases and the spread of drug resistance among infectious agents, the buzzing bee, as sure a signal of summer's onset as traffic jams on the M5, is now at risk of being stifled.

'The situation is very serious and very worrying,' said Dr Ivor Davis, of the British Beekeeping Association. 'We are suffering serious declines in our bee population and that has damaging consequences. People are doing anything to try to put things right and restore populations, and that includes importing bees from Europe and Australia but it is not clear this will help us in the long term.'

Britain's apiary crisis can be traced back to the Nineties when hives were first struck by varroa destructor - a parasitic mite that feeds off the bodily fluids of bees. Populations plummeted, particularly among the nation's wild swarms which have virtually been eradicated. Only colonies tended by people survive in this country today. New feral colonies are sometimes established but without a keeper to help will only survive for a short time before succumbing to disease.

'The honey bees that buzz around your garden and which help to pollinate your plants now all come from colonies that are cared for by humans,' said Davis. 'Effectively, we have no wild bees left in Britain at all now, only ones that are tended for and protected by keepers.' That is bad enough. However, new strains of varroa, resistant to the chemicals that had been used to treat the condition, have started to infect hives in the past year. Their appearance has triggered renewed alarm, with beekeepers reporting major dips in honey production.

Yet honey is only a small part of the problem. Bees - 'the little almsmen of spring bowers', according to Keats - shape our countryside. They pollinate the bluebells that carpet our woods as well as our dandelions and willows and they ensure our apple and pear trees are rich in hanging fruit. Our landscape would be a drab affair were it not for the attentions of Apis mellifera.

'It is true that fruit trees can pollinate themselves without help from bees, but the fruit that they would produce would be stunted and unappetising,' added Davis. 'We take bees for granted, which is a mistake. They have been making life bearable in this country for centuries.'

This point was backed by John Howat, secretary of the British Bee Farmers' Association. 'If you look at what the bee does for Britain, the statistics are really striking. It has been calculated that, if they did not pollinate our commercial orchards and gardens, the country would lose about ?120m to ?150m in lost agricultural produce.'

And that figure reflects only what bees produce for farmers and commercial growers. If you look at their impact on the economy, including the profits they help make for supermarkets, it is estimated that bees are worth between ?500m and ?1bn to Britain. Not bad for a puny insect.

Not that this industriousness is rewarded or is even acknowledged, say keepers. They have been infuriated by recent government moves which have included attempts to cut back on projects that could aid the British honey bee.

Recently ministers axed the government's contribution to a public-private project that was aimed at developing biological agents that could fight varroa in hives and halt the current waves of infection. In addition, it threatened last year to reduce funds spent on the nation's bee inspection service, staffed by men and women who monitor disease prevalence in hives across the country and who are seen as playing a crucial role in maintaining the health of Apis mellifera. Only an outcry by beekeepers and farmers halted the cutback.

'The government spends just over ?1m a year on a creature that is worth a thousand times that to our economy and an inestimable amount to our environment' said Howat. 'It is quite ridiculous.'

The government has also infuriated the beekeepers' association by relaxing rules that allow people to import bees from other countries, in particular the European Union and Australia. This has only increased the risk of new disease entering Britain, says the British Beekeeping Association. Parasites like the dreaded American Fowl Brood and the Small Hive Beetle infect other nations' bees, and their arrival in Britain is now viewed as being inevitable and their consequences highly damaging.

'The trouble is that there are a lot of keepers and farmers in Britain who have contracts with orchard owners to provide pollination of their trees but are now having great difficulty is getting enough bees, so they have started to import them,' added Alan Johnston, a former chairman of the Bee Keepers Association. 'That is probably what was going on in the flight that got stuck in Kazakhstan.'

However, the risk posed by these imports is downplayed by other beekeepers. Only single queen bees are actually brought into the country, which limits the prospects for the spread of infections.

'Packages contain a fair number of bees, a single queen and a lot of workers who provide her food,' said Martin Tovey of the Beekeeping Association.

'However, workers are killed when they get to Britain and only the queen is kept. It is introduced gradually to members of a new hive. Eventually she is accepted and some of them join her to set up a new colony.' (Queens usually cost around ?20 each, although those with good pedigrees can fetch prices that reach up to ?500.)

When in the new hive, the bees start to collect pollen which they then turn into honey. 'Essentially honey is just concentrated pollen with some added bee enzymes,' said Howat. 'They create honey as food for surviving winter. The good thing is that bees produce far too much honey, so we can take most of it and use it for ourselves.'

It is an industry that has endured for centuries. 'It is not coming to an end overnight,' added Davis. 'However, it is clearly now in a worrying state. If any other of these new diseases establish themselves in this country in the near future, we could find ourselves in a very worrying situation.'

The History of Honey

7000 BC: Cave paintings in Spain show the earliest records of beekeeping.
4000 BC, Egypt: Honey used as a sweetening and an embalming agent.
Roman Empire: Beekeeping becomes a major industry; honey used to pay taxes.
11th century, Germany: Beer was sweetened with honey; peasants paid their lords feudal dues in honey and beeswax.
16th century: Conquering Spaniards discovered that Mexican and Central American natives had already developed beekeeping.
17th century, American colonies: European honey bees are introduced to New England by settlers in about 1638; natives call the bees "white man's flies". Settlers also use honey to make cement, preserve fruits and act as a substitute for furniture varnish.
20th century: Until the Second World War, honey is used for its antibacterial qualities in dressing wounds.
21st century: Nearly one million tonnes of honey are produced worldwide every year.Felix Lowe

 

[eladdie]

Re: Where are the Bees?

Re: Where are the Bees?

Can Wild Bees Take Sting From Honeybee Decline?
John Roach
for National Geographic News
October 20, 2004

Decades of disease and overuse of pesticides have put the squeeze on populations of the domesticated honeybee. As a result, farmers are increasingly left with fields of flowering crops that fail to bear fruit.

Since some 15 to 30 percent of the food we humans eat directly or indirectly depend on the pollination services of bees, scientists say the problem threatens to take some excitement?and potentially abundance?from our diets.

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RELATED

* Bee Decline May Spell End of Some Fruits, Veggies
* Bee Sex Gene Find Helps Solve 150-Year-Old Riddle
* Powerful Pollinators, Wild Bees May Favor Eco-Farms
* Backyard Beekeepers Abuzz Over Social Life of Hive
* "Killer Bee" Touted as Economic Lifesaver in S. Africa

Claire Kremen, a conservation biologist at Princeton University in New Jersey, thinks native wild bees can take some of the sting from the honeybee decline. These wild bees buzzed North America for thousands of years before the domesticated European variety arrived.

"We need to ensure we can keep on having [honeybees] around, but at the same time we can reduce the risk of relying on honeybees for crop pollination by protecting wild bees and ensuring their pollination services can be maximized," she said.

Scott Hoffman Black is executive director of the Xerces Society, a Portland, Oregon-based invertebrate-conservation organization. He says North American farmers rely so heavily on domesticated honeybees today that they often forget that pollinated food crops existed before the domesticated honeybee was introduced.

"Prior to the advent of large-scale monoculture agriculture [the practice of growing only one kind of plant in a given plot] in the fifties and the use of lots of chemical pesticides, native bees and feral honeybees pollinated everything. It wasn't an issue. People didn't cart bees all over the country," he said.

Kremen and Black's organization are collaborating to spread the word about the role wild bees play in crop pollination.

While they acknowledge that farmers cannot and will not revert to pre-1950s practices for the sake of wild bees, they advocate steps to conserve and use native wild bee populations as an insurance policy for when a honeybee shortage would otherwise leave fields sapped of their full potential.

Wild Bee Needs

Scientists estimate there are about 4,000 different species of wild bees that are native to North America. They nest in thick grass, soil, and wood; are rarely kept in hives; and generally do not make surplus honey or form large colonies.

While the mites that have proven so devastating to domesticated honeybee populations cause little effect to the wild bees, pesticide use and habitat loss are taking their toll, according to Black.

"Like any animal, native bees need a place to live," he said. "They need nest sites and floral resources, and if they don't have them, they won't be there."

According to Black, people can take small steps to augment wild bee populations, such as making nesting areas available. Given that about 70 percent of wild bees nest directly in the ground, not in hives, this is simpler than it seems, he added.

Email to a Friend
RELATED

* Bee Decline May Spell End of Some Fruits, Veggies
* Bee Sex Gene Find Helps Solve 150-Year-Old Riddle
* Powerful Pollinators, Wild Bees May Favor Eco-Farms
* Backyard Beekeepers Abuzz Over Social Life of Hive
* "Killer Bee" Touted as Economic Lifesaver in S. Africa

Wild bees also need natural habitat to forage, which can include small woodlots, areas along a stream, or even a hedgerow between fields of crops. As an added bonus, Kremen said, wild bees help keep wild areas healthy.

"They help us maintain the natural landscape, which provides spiritual beauty, recreational quality, and other ecosystem services we depend on," she said.

Viable Populations?

Kremen has been documenting the extent wild bees play in crop pollination in California and has found that on farms in narrow valleys surrounded by wild vegetation the native bees can do most of the work.

But this is the exception, not the rule. The bulk of California farms are sprawling monoculture fields in the central valley that are completely devoid of natural bee habitat, meaning that wild bees will never be able to provide all of a farmer's pollination needs.

"In most of the central valley?no way. The bee populations are not healthy enough," she said. "There's a dramatic decline in bee diversity and bee abundance when you go from the narrow valleys to the wide central valley."

Robust wild bee populations do not thrive in the central valley's monoculture fields. But Kremen said small improvements could allow some native bees to flourish, as long as larger source areas are also restored and protected. These small steps could include reintroduced native vegetation to areas around tractor sheds and irrigation ditches.

"If you can get 10, 20, 30 percent of your needs met by wild bees, that would help a lot," she said

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/10/1020_041020_wild_bees.html

 

[eladdie]

Re: Where are the Bees?

Re: Where are the Bees?

I have been following the bee saga now for several years.

While the sad state of affairs of the decline in amphibians (remember those? We used to call them frogs and salamanders. I have not seen a frog in 10 years, and haven't seen a salamander since I was a young lad.) has made the popular press from time to time, and handwringing was appropriately done,

Bees, which are insects that "hurt" people, aren't exactly beloved by environmentalists and aren't warm and fuzzy. Thus, we rarely see stories and demand for action for the "lowly honeybee."

If there were to be a pandemic, and you needed to grow your own crops. Good luck in getting them pollinated effectively.

 

[achoo]

Re: Where are the Bees?

Re: Where are the Bees?

I'm located in the central flyway -- I've got bees (lots) and have had since March.

 

[Mellie]

Re: Where are the Bees?

Re: Where are the Bees?

We have lots of Pacific Giant Salamanders and others in our shaded creeks in norcal.

Have lots of wild bees too, although we haven't kept hives in 16 years. The cherry trees are in bloom and the redwood and dogwood. It was 78 degrees on Fri and Sat. Wild bees abounded.

eladdie, is this bee problem a regional thing?

 

[eladdie]

Re: Where are the Bees?

Re: Where are the Bees?

We have lots of Pacific Giant Salamanders and others in our shaded creeks in norcal.

Have lots of wild bees too, although we haven't kept hives in 16 years. The cherry trees are in bloom and the redwood and dogwood. It was 78 degrees on Fri and Sat. Wild bees abounded.

eladdie, is this bee problem a regional thing?

No, the bee problem is, as near as I can tell, a major thing in north america and Europe. See above articles.

I finally did see some bumble bees yesterday, but no honeybees.

Bumble bees are not as good pollinators.


I probably haven't seen a salamander in a while, because I haven't played in a creek since I was a boy....

Still, I think they are almost gone in the midwest, I'll look for some articles.

 

[Shannon Bennett]

Re: Where are the Bees?

Re: Where are the Bees?

Native mason bees are the best answer to pollination. And bumbles are good workers there are just fewer numbers. Masons on the other hand can be purchased from catalogs. They live in straws or drilled holes in blocks of wood. Very industrious, calm, hardly ever sting, and can live together in large numbers, they do not make honey though. Bummer.

 

[eladdie]

Re: Where are the Bees?

Re: Where are the Bees?

I used to white water raft in this river as a boy. Absolutely the most scenic area in the US in terms of biological and vegitation diversity.

Scientists Study Decline of Local Salamander - The Ozark Hellbender

Associated Press, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
June 16, 2003

Standing on wobbly stones along the North Fork River in Ozark County, Ben Wheeler holds his fingers a few inches apart, a gap big enough to fit one Ozark hellbender, a tiny, young salamander he's hoping to find.

Years ago, hundreds of Ozark hellbenders could be found in every mile of the North Fork River. But in March, the Missouri Department of Conservation declared the hellbender an endangered species in the state.

Older salamanders are not affected as dramatically by environmental factors, said Wheeler, a 29-year-old doctoral student at Arkansas State University. Many of the salamanders - which can live up to 29 years - have been squatting in the same spot for years, feeding on crawfish, snails and worms.

Scientists say the increase in population and land development in the Ozarks has polluted the river habitat of the hellbenders. They consider the hellbender a harbinger for humans because the same pollution that is bad for the salamanders is also bad for humans.

Members of the Hellbender Workshop Group plan to meet in Georgia next month to discuss what they think has caused the hellbenders to go from abundant to nearly absent.

Ron Goellner, director of animal collections and general curator at the St. Louis Zoo, says the salamanders were found throughout the Mark Twain National Forest in the 1970s.

"Any suitable rock had a hellbender under it," Goellner says. "Most streams seemed to have fantastic populations."

Goellner says the first signs of a problem appeared in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when fewer hellbenders were found in the Spring River in northern Arkansas.

However, Conservation Department divers found 150 hellbenders during a two-day survey of southern Missouri streams in 1991.

"The consensus seemed to be that they were doing fine," Goellner says.

By 1998, a study commissioned by the Conservation Department found that nearly 80 percent of the salamanders had vanished, department herpetologist Jeff Briggler says.

Yue-wern Huang, an assistant professor of biological sciences at the University of Missouri at Rolla, says there seems to be a reproductive disruption among the salamanders. However, Huang says he's unsure what is causing a disruption in the hellbender's endocrine system, which regulates the secretion of hormones - although his theories include pollution, pesticides and people as possible causes.

Huang hopes water samples from the North Fork will give him insight into what pollutants might be harming hellbenders.

At Southwest Missouri State University, associate behavioral ecology professor Alicia Mathis is also trying to help keep the salamanders from extinction. Mathis and graduate student Shem Unger are raising both Ozark hellbenders and eastern hellbenders, which live between southern New York and eastern Missouri.

Tests suggest that Missouri hellbenders have lower sperm counts than their counterparts in North Carolina and Georgia, Mathis said. A similar study on humans from Columbia, Mo., Minneapolis, Los Angeles and New York City showed the Missouri men tested had the lowest sperm count.

Mathis says one interpretation of the results is that chemicals in Missouri's streams and rivers have sabotaged reproductive systems in both hellbenders and humans.

"It may be something we should be concerned about," Mathis says.

Whatever is causing the decline, Goellner says he hopes it can be reversed.

"Maybe it could be a very simple set of recommendations to turn it around," Goellner says. "I guess all we can be is optimistic."

Republished with the permission of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.


http://www.stlzoo.org/wildcareinstitute/declineofozarkhellbender.htm

 

[KC]

Re: Where are the Bees?

Re: Where are the Bees?

Bruce, don't just worry about mosquitoes carrying Chik. The bees will hopefully come back in my area.

"West Nile virus, which in the US was first detected in New York in 1999, is one of several mosquito-borne neurotropic members of the Japanese encephalitis (JE) serogroup of the genus flavivirus, family Flaviviridae, that cause similar disease patterns across the globe. These include St. Louis encephalitis virus in the US, Rocio virus, which has caused encephalitis outbreaks in Brazil, and Murray Valley encephalitis virus in Australia, New Guinea, and New Zealand. Kunjin virus, which also circulates in Australia, recently has been reclassified as a subtype of West Nile virus." (Tom Solomon, New Engl. J. Med. 2004, 351:370)

 

[hawkeye]

Missing Bees

Birds and bees
Tuesday, March 06, 2007 22:02 IST



Just when environmentalists were wondering if the only way future generations would be able to see frogs would be in natural history museums, comes the disturbing news that entire colonies of bees are on the missing list in the US.

Parents may wonder how they will bring up the subject of the birds and the bees, but jokes aside, this is serious cause for worry. Bee-keepers in more than 20 states have reported entire colonies missing; the combs are intact and loaded with honey and larvae, but there are no live bees. No dead bodies, nothing with which to start investigation.

The worry is not just about honey stocks diminishing, but about the fate of crops, of all the fruits and flowers that the bees help pollinate, and of the natural ecological
balance.

Shocking, also, is the discovery that no records of demographics and movement patterns of pollinating bees, either in the wild or those from kept hives, have been maintained. It?s a mystery that has baffled the experts.

If that is the state in the world?s most advanced country, is it surprising that the disappearance of entire species from parts of the Indian subcontinent goes unnoticed and unlamented?

Since they started disappearing in the 1950s, almost 120 species of frogs, an amphibian with a 125 million year-old history, have disappeared. The Western Ghats have the dubious honour of joining Costa Rica and Australia among others, which have lost many of their frog species to pesticides, traffic, pollution and general changes in habitat that strike at their immune system and predispose them to infections. Frogs are a wonderful indicator of the health of the ecosystem around their habitat, so their disappearance is another cause for concern. Many of the world?s butterflies are extinct too.

The situation in Mumbai is grave. Microwave-emitting towers, and a growing crow population are supposedly responsible for the diminishing numbers of sparrows and mynahs, and the sound of a raucous parrot might soon be a cause for celebration among those who care.

Can we afford to be sanguine? Only if we realise these species are important. Nature links each living being to another and creates a chain that can be broken only with risk to all. ?There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow,? Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet. There is an ominous ring about those lines today. It?s an alarming situation that the authorities need to study and, if possible, reverse before it is too late.

 

[scottmcpherson]

It's pretty serious....

It's pretty serious....

Called Colony Collapse Disorder. Big story in last Sunday's Miami herald about it. Farmers are very worried. Any crop that requires bees to pollinate is in serious jeopardy in the 20+ states that have reported it.

The bees leave the hive and never return. Stress is a possible reason. Many of these hives are apparently moved cross-country and this adds to the stress on the hive.

 

[hawkeye]

Re: Missing Bees

Do you know if the bees die or migrate somewhere else?

 

[Blue]

Re: Missing Bees

Do you know if the bees die or migrate somewhere else?

They leave the queen back in the hive and fly off to die. They can not survive without the queen.

 

[AlaskaDenise]

Re: Missing Bees

There is considerable discussion of this at http://www.flutrackers.com/forum/showthread.php?t=16264

.