Bee colony collapse disorder follow-up

This is important. If you care at all about colony collapse disorder, the way science is done, and the way results are reported, go to Ian Parnell’s What’s Your Ecotype and read his long and detailed report on the latest news concerning Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus, Australian bees and CCD in America. You’ll be glad you did, because you’ll be better informed than almost everyone else.

5 Replies to “Bee colony collapse disorder follow-up”

  1. I’ve studied bee-keeping, focusing on older techniques of disease-control and parasite-management. I’ve also see Sierra Magazine mention that pesticides, herbicides, and plastics share common hormone-disrupting chemicals. I think the plastic food and water carriers used with livestock and for rain-collection is bothering the bees. Even rubber containers are often partly plastic nowadays.

    Some plastics are toxic when sunlight hits them. Some are less toxic than are others.

    While pregnant, I had trouble digesting anything that had contacted plastic–often not knowing until after I had eaten the food that plastic had been on it. The food would make my stomach feel gassy and warm-ish, and it seemed to swell-up the tissues in my gut. Even water from plastic containers was a problem, though a few minutes of contact with some types of plastic cups didn’t create such problems.

    I think the bees are getting enzyme poisons from water in plastic containers (feeling sick, slowed-down and heavy) thus becoming unable to get back to the hive.

  2. I find many dead bees on and around my car every morning, and not around anyone else’s car in my 14 + apartment building.

    Is it the perfume I wear that attracts them?

    I am very concerned abot bee colony collapse.

    Thank you,
    Marcielle Brandler
    in Sierra Madre, CA
    marcielle@verizon.net

  3. Hi,

    Look at the dead bees and see if they have hairs on them, or seem less hairy. The less hairy a bee is, the older it is, and they may just like the warmth/shade of your car’s parking spot as they are in their last moments of life. Try going without laundry or personal fragrances for a week and see if that changes anything, but it shouldn’t be killing them. I use “free and clear” or “dermatologist-approved frangrance-free” styles of laundry products.

    It has been determined that the sunscreen people wear was killing the coral reefs, so special bio-degradable sunscreen is now required at the reefs.

    Many insects are pollinators, not just bees: mosquitoes, hornets, even hummingbirds.

  4. Thanks Mary for that advice. I hope it works out that there’s nothing special about those bees.

    I was wondering, though: would fragrances stick around a parked car long enough to attract bees?

    It is odd too that sunscreen kills coral reefs, because some of the most effective sun-blockers were derived from corals.

  5. Many fragrances nowadays are designed to not fall apart. They have stabilizers that are toxic to some degree.

    Even natural products can be lethal when concentrated. Maybe making sun-block from corals is one of these cases.

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