Disturbing evidence that honeybees are in terminal decline has emerged from the United States where, for the fourth year in a row, more than a third of colonies have failed to survive the winter.What I found interesting was a comment on my post from a leading member of the local VRWC jokingly blaming the decline on Obama. (As an aside the problem began on Bush's watch.)
The decline of the country's estimated 2.4 million beehives began in 2006, when a phenomenon dubbed colony collapse disorder (CCD) led to the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of colonies. Since then more than three million colonies in the US and billions of honeybees worldwide have died and scientists are no nearer to knowing what is causing the catastrophic fall in numbers.
The number of managed honeybee colonies in the US fell by 33.8% last winter, according to the annual survey by the Apiary Inspectors of America and the US government's Agricultural Research Service (ARS).
There is a danger in any closely or loosely aligned group of group-think occurring. One area of group think that appears to be a feature of the right of center political blogs in New Zealand is global warming. Another is promotion of mining in the conservation estate that 40,000 people marched against last weekend.
This group think can evolve into the kind of roving bands of internet thugs that rove the threads of Kiwiblog and that suppress meaningful discussion.
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2 comments:
Have you seen the article in NBR "Why a QC needs to come clean in the Justice Wilson affair"?
I alert you to this because of the Scampi link
Just a thought but I am sure the UK has done what we hve done here in NZ and made the back yard bee keeper a thing of the past by regulating him out of the industry.
Maybe less people keeping bees in a healthy hive (and therefore less bees in total) has more to do with the decline than Bush Obama or group think??
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