Two researchers at New Mexico State University’s Agricultural Science Center at Los Lunas have been working together on the New Mexico Pollinator Project, which aims to test native and non-native plants for their ability to attract and retain pollinators at a time when some pollinator populations are under threat.
NMSU Pollinator Project addresses Colony Collapse Disorder
The massive, worldwide die-off of honeybees has been one of the biggest environmental scares of this new century. The possible extinction of the planet’s most prolific pollinator is more than a bit terrifying, which is why the story has been making headlines. But a closer look reveals that so-called colony collapse disorder, while a real threat, is being remarkably well managed.
Pesticides, pollination and the bees’ needs
For more than a decade, scientists have been trying to solve the mystery of the “colony collapse disorder” that is killing honeybees by the millions.
In an area that utterly relies on bees to pollinate our nut and fruit trees and the rest of the cornucopia of products we grow in the Northern San Joaquin Valley, this mission is critical.
There are many suspects, but one has become the focus of scientists worldwide. Over the past two months, several studies have pointed to a family of pesticides widely used in agriculture but also found in backyard products.
Our View: Finding the culprit in bee deaths is crucial
Neonicotinoids appear to have devastating effects across the natural world: we need a global moratorium.
By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 16th July 2014
Here’s our choice. We wait and see whether a class of powerful pesticides, made by Bayer and Syngenta, is indeed pushing entire ecosystems to oblivion, or we suspend their use while proper trials are conducted. The natural world versus two chemical companies: how hard can this be?
Another Silent Spring?
The past few decades of farm economics have created a system in which one-third of the food on our plate now relies on just one pollinator — the honeybee. And it’s dying.
NATURE’S DYING MIGRANT WORKER
(Reuters) – Home Depot and other U.S. companies are working to eliminate or limit use of a type of pesticide suspected of helping cause dramatic declines in honeybee populations needed to pollinate key American crops, officials said on Wednesday.
The moves include requiring suppliers to label any plants treated with neonicotinoid, or neonic, pesticides sold through home and garden stores.
Home Depot Looks to Limit Pesticides to Help Honeybees
Research published this week in the journal Nature links the use of neonicotinoid pesticides to declining populations of some insect-eating birds. The same pesticides, which have been banned in the European Union, have come under fire for possible connections to struggling bee colonies. Cynthia Palmer of the American Bird Conservancy and bee expert Dennis vanEngelsdorp talk about the birds, bees, and environmental protection.
Director, Pesticides Science and Regulation
American Bird Conservancy
Project Director, BeeInformed
Assistant Professor, Department of Entomology
University of Maryland
College Park, Maryland
TED Talk: A plea for bees
LISTEN NOW: Concerns Rise Over Pesticide Use, Birds, and Bees
It was one of those mysteries no one cracked for years but gripped many: What’s killing all the bees?
In Brevard County, Fla., nearly 12 million bees expired in 2011 in a great dying of almost biblical proportions. Then came news last year that 37 million bees — 37 million — had died that month at a Canadian beekeeping operation. That same month, Oregonians arrived at a Target to find 25,000 bumblebee corpses in the parking lot.
A reason millions of bees are dying
Glenn Morrison doesn’t wear gloves when he works with his bee hives. “My father-in-law told me only the first 1,000 bites hurt,” he said. “I’ve gotten so I can work with the gloves off.” While he’s accustomed to being stung by the bees he keeps, he can’t get used to the catastrophic diseases that have decimated his hives.
Beekeeper abandoning an avocation of 40 years