Some Wise Words on Bees and CCD
Felicia Gilljam recently made a great post on her blog about Colony Collapse Disorder. She is a beekeeper and biology student, and offered her perspective on the problem from that point of view.
An American problem because beekeeping is much more industrialized there? Bad weather? The result of breeding for docility, repressed swarming behaviour and increased harvests? These are all things she discusses.
As was touched on in the comments, my personal opinion is that CCD is more than anything a result of the general degradation of the environment caused by global warming, intensive agriculture and mono-cultures and the ongoing loss of global biodiversity. It’s not that very serious attention shouldn’t be paid to CCD, and effort shouldn’t go into understanding it better, but the only real solution is going to be to address the underlying problems.
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I will have to watch this. We have been affected directly by CCD. I think attitudes have a lot to do with the problem. Talking to a older gentleman keeper here in North Carolina where the nectar flow season is shockingly short, he stated, “The problem is that the bees get most of their food from the trees.” I put for the comment that perhaps beekeepers should plant more annual and perennial bee plants and encourage friends and neighbors to do the same. He then expounded on the vast numbers required to do anything without acknowledging that a step in the right direction is a step in the right direction! Very frustrating. =o(