Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
Agrobiodiversity is crops, livestock, foodways, microbes, pollinators, wild relatives …
What’s Killing American Honey Bees? by Benjamin P. Oldroyd, an Australian entomologist, is without a doubt the best summary of the current state of play on Colony Collapse Disorder. I know I’m biased, being — gasp — a scientist, but Oldroyd’s paper is the bees’ knees. It has hypotheses (wot, no mobile phones?), facts, and …
Someone called Bradford Plumer, whom I had not previously come across, has a longish post asking why people don’t seem to care about the ongoing mass extinction and wishing that more writers on the subject “would really hammer home why humans should care about the loss of biodiversity”. Funnily enough, he couches his entire argument …
The New York Times has a fascinating article about the shortage of bees caused by colony collapse disorder. Bees Vanish, and Scientists Race for Reasons is that rare thing in science writing, a story about process rather than results. So there’s not a lot actually to say, other than noting that around 60 experts gathered …
Varroa mites have appeared on the island of Oahu. These parasites of bees are a known cause of colony death. The current worry is for the honey industry. But I expect crops may suffer too if the island loses its hives. ((Thanks Invasive Species Weblog.))
We’ve spent some time on the big bee die off (although not on the mobile phones) as have many other blogs and newspaper articles. In the US, the problem has reached epidemic proportions and has raised serious concerns about the future of several crops that depend to a large degree on bee pollination. Unfortunately recent …