Colony Collapse Disorder

michael

Bring out the vacuum
Has anyone heard anything more about this phenomenon? It seemed like a big deal, sign of impending doom, etc. and then vanished from my awareness, at least...
 

zhao

there are no accidents
wow. i was wondering about this too. so it was only our attention which moved on, and the problem is still there, growing.
 

vimothy

yurp
Possibly off topic, possibly vital bit of info -- was in my artist friend's flat the other day, rooting about in amongst all his junk while he made brews (as you do) and found... a jar full of dead wasps.

Full of dead wasps
 

vimothy

yurp
the jar is shut? there must've been eggs in there and hatched?

The jar was shut, standing on the mantlepiece as if it was the most natural thing in the world... There were no eggs. I assume the wasps were killed and collected individually.

I'm sure there's someone about here who can confirm whether or not this is classic psychotic behaviour. I think it is.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
If only it were wasps dying, rather than bees, holiday-makers and picnickers all over the world would be rejoicing.
 

Ness Rowlah

Norwegian Wood
Huge piece on bees in The Sunday Times today,
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5604401.ece

And that is the thin end of the long-term catastrophe that now stares us in the face. You take one brick out of the ecological wall, others crumble around it. Then more crumble, on and on until the edifice collapses. Ecologists call it an extinction vortex. You lose bees, you lose plants. You lose plants, you lose more bees. Then more plants, then other insects, then the birds and animals that depend on them and on each other, all the way up the food chain. But never mind animals — if you stretch the process far enough, you’re talking about humans.​

I must admit I have never read the works of the recently deceased Arne Næss, but this year might be as good as any to cover that crack and read up on deep ecology.
 
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zhao

there are no accidents
strange that the article makes use of that debunked (i thought?) Einstein quote.

more quotable excerpts:
if insects were to vanish, the terrestrial environment would soon collapse into chaos. ... Flowering plants would go first, then herbaceous plants, then insect-pollinated shrubs and trees, then birds and animals and, finally, the soil. ... The human diet would be wind-pollinated grasses and whatever remained to be harvested from a fished-out sea. It would not be enough. Widespread starvation would shrink the population to a fraction of its former size. The wars for control of the dwindling resources, the suffering, and the tumultuous decline to dark-age barbarism would be unprecedented in human history. ... It would be a serious mistake to let even one species of the millions on Earth go extinct.” - E O Wilson
 
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grizzleb

Well-known member
Already, says Goulson, crop yields are beginning to suffer. Bald spots are appearing at the centres of bean fields where bumblebees are failing to penetrate. As in so many other aspects of global life, it is China that lights the way ahead. In Sichuan province, the most important crop is pears, which depend on pollination by bees. But there are no bees. A blunderbuss approach to pesticides has all but wiped them out. Result: thousands of villagers have to turn out with paintbrushes to pollinate the trees by hand. “It’s just about possible in a country where labour is cheap,” says Goulson, “but it wouldn’t work in Europe.”

Quite a nice image if you ignore the cheap labour aspect.
 
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