No more bees?

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ToughGuy_BlueShirt
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No more bees?

Post by ToughGuy_BlueShirt »

Scary thought. Especially after you read this......

4.24.07: Begone

According to Einstein we’ve got a little over 4 years. Here’s a quote from him:

"If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man."

And in today's NY Times it says that more than a ¼ of the honeybees in the U.S. have vanished. The article continues with a lot of head scratching as to why but sort of says “gee, we dunno.”

In Speigel, the German newsmagazine, they say, “Beekeepers on the east coast of the United States complain that they have lost more than 70 percent of their stock since late last year, while the west coast has seen a decline of up to 60 percent.”

A month or so ago I read a similar article that said the bees were disappearing out west. Then, a few weeks later, I read a seemingly unrelated article that said that growers of GM tangerines were furious with beekeepers for allowing their bees to wander into the GM-planted fields.

The explanation for their anger is simple. GM crops have been carefully and sometimes expensively modified to have certain desirable characteristics — seedless tangerines, in this case. Bees, as an important part of the chain of life, cross-pollinate plants by “accidentally” rubbing pollen from one flower onto another further away. This is not really an accident, for, as Einstein points out, life as we know it has come to depend on it happening. If this “accident” or “byproduct” ceases we are goners.

Anyway, though it was not mentioned in the tangerine article I asked myself if the two articles could be related — if GM agribusiness could be trying to eliminate bees.

Call me a conspiracy nut, but it sure sounds likely to me. They are the ones who would principally benefit — they have a motive and incentive.

Would a civilization commit suicide? You bet they would — they’ve done it all the time. I read Jared Diamond’s book Collapse and, sure enough, according to him culture and greed trump common sense and reason every time — although in many cases it took a disaster like a drought or war to push things over the tipping point.

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Jocephus
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Post by Jocephus »

ive heard about this before and it is scary

'cause we can't duplicate waht the bees do...

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docellis
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cardinalkarp
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Post by cardinalkarp »

I've done my fair share in stomping on them as a youngster on the baseball field.

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Leroy
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Sutter'sBeard
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Post by Sutter'sBeard »

To summarize; Without the bee we will no longer be! Why can't the freekin mosquito population decline. If the skeeter's extinction ended up making us extinct, at least we could go fishing those last few years without covering ourselves in some god awful chemical that doesn't work half the time.

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docellis
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Post by docellis »

The http://www.snopes.com/quotes/einstein/bees.asp link basically says that they can't find proof that Einstein said this and that they aren't sure why Einstein would say that because his exertise was not in nature or bugs...Unless I am reading that wrong...

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Richie Allen
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Re: No more bees?

Post by Richie Allen »

ToughGuy_BlueShirt wrote: And in today's NY Times it says that more than a ¼ of the honeybees in the U.S. have vanished.
In Speigel, the German newsmagazine, they say, “Beekeepers on the east coast of the United States complain that they have lost more than 70 percent of their stock since late last year, while the west coast has seen a decline of up to 60 percent.”
That's because they're all in my back yard.

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sighyoung
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Re: No more bees?

Post by sighyoung »

Richie Allen wrote:
ToughGuy_BlueShirt wrote: And in today's NY Times it says that more than a ¼ of the honeybees in the U.S. have vanished.
In Speigel, the German newsmagazine, they say, “Beekeepers on the east coast of the United States complain that they have lost more than 70 percent of their stock since late last year, while the west coast has seen a decline of up to 60 percent.”
That's because they're all in my back yard.
That's a neat trick you're able to do.

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