Category: Pollinators

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Bees older than agriculture?

A press release from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem says that scientists have uncovered the world’s oldest known bee hives, which date back around 11,500 years, at Tel Rehov in the Beath Shean valley.

The beehives there were found in the center of a built-up area there that has been excavated since 1997 by Dr. Nava Panitz-Cohen of the Hebrew University. Three rows of beehives were found in the apiary, containing more than 30 hives. It is estimated, however, based on excavations to date, that in all the total area would have contained some 100 beehives.

Beehives of very similar construction are apparently still in use in Arab villages in Israel and elsewhere around the Mediterranean.

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Colony collapse disorder culprit?

The mysterious ailment afflicting bee hives may be caused by a virus, Israeli acute paralysis virus of bees, IAPV ((This is bound to be all over the media, and I’m stuck in an airport without good access, but after our semi-exhaustive coverage of the great bee shortage it wouldn’t do to ignore the news completely.)). That’s the conclusion of a report just published online in Science Express ((D.L. Cox-Foster et al. (2007) A metagenomic survey of microbes in honey bee colony collapse disorder doi:10.1126/science.1146498))

In some respects the technique was dead simple. The researchers took samples from hives that had CCD, hives that didn’t have CCD, and royal jelly. They bulked up all the DNA in the samples and threw it into a very fast sequencer to decode all of it. Computer programs then assembled the various bits and pieces and compared them to all known genes. And the result? Evidence of a whole bunch of bacteria, fungi, animals and viruses, almost all of them equally present in CCD and non-CCD colonies. But one virus — Israeli acute paralysis virus — was found in almost all the CCD samples and only one non-CCD sample.

IAPV is related to Kashmir bee virus and was first described in Israel in 2004. The first recent reports of CCD date to 2004. Of course there are many other factors at work too, including the influence of pesticides and the presence of Varroa mites and the chemicals used to control them, to say nothing of possible changes in climate. As the researchers cautiously note:

We have not proven a causal relationship between any infectious agent and CCD; nonetheless, the prevalence of IAPV sequences in CCD operations, as well as the temporal and geographic overlap of CCD and importation of IAPV-infected bees, indicate that IAPV is a significant marker for CCD.

That’ll do for now. And there’s no mention of mobile phones.

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The services of agricultural biodiversity

The latest (number 18) Biodiversity and Society Bulletin of the Poverty and Conservation Learning Group discusses a new UNEP-WCMC publication ((Ash, N. and Jenkins, M. (2007). Biodiversity and Poverty Reduction: The Importance of Ecosystem Services. United Nations Environment Programme-World Conservation Monitoring Centre, Cambridge.)) entitled “Biodiversity and Poverty Reduction: The Importance of Ecosystem Services.”

It’s a very good assessment of the services provided by biodiversity, in particular to the poor. These services include:

  1. fresh water quality
  2. protection from natural hazards
  3. regulation of infectious diseases
  4. regulation of climate and air quality
  5. waste processing and detoxification
  6. nutrient cycling
  7. medicines
  8. timber, fibres and fuel
  9. cultural services

But food provision and food security are right up front, and that discussion doesn’t just deal with species diversity in farming systems (although this is somewhat underplayed, I think), landraces (though not, unfortunately, wild crop relatives, to any great extent) and wild foods. It also ranges over the wider agricultural biodiversity which supports food production. That means soil micro-organisms, pollinators and the natural enemies of pests:

Although some or all these functions can in theory be replaced by artificial, technologically-derived substitutes, these are often expensive and increase the dependency of poor people on industries and producers beyond their control.

The document ends with some implications for policy. I guess this is the bottom line:

The medium and long-term interests of the poor are likely to be best served by the maintenance of a diverse resource base at the landscape (i.e. accessible) scale, at the very least as a vital risk mitigation measure. This does not, of course, mean that all forms of intensification and adoption of new technologies should be avoided – far from it. Judicious application of new technologies and techniques, use of improved varieties (not necessarily excluding those developed with gene transfer technologies) in agriculture, and appropriate levels of inputs such as nitrogen and phosphate-based fertiliser, can increase productivity and help towards eliminating poverty. Increasing the efficiency of use of existing agricultural lands can actually reduce environmental degradation by reducing the incentive to convert marginal lands. The key is that such development should not be at the expense of the existing natural resource base and should be planned to ensure delivery of medium and long-term benefits, rather than maximising short-term gains.

Pity that the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture is not mentioned in the section on international obligations, though.