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July 15, 2011 01:27 pm PDT
Original Link: http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/ton96mTGHgQ/the-beekeepers-lamen.html
The Beekeeper's Lament: Must-read book on bee life, and death
What's killing the bees? After reading The Beekeeper's Lament —Hannah Nordhaus' lyrical, haunting book about the complicated lives and deaths of America's honeybees—my question has shifted more towards, "Good lord, what doesn't kill bees?" Domesticated bees turn out to be some amazingly fragile creatures. In fact, Nordhaus writes, bees were delicate even before the modern age of industrial farming. It wasn't until the second half of the 19th century that humans were able to reliably domesticate bees. Even then, beekeeping was anything but a stable business to be in. But in the last decade, the job has gotten harder, and the bee deaths have piled up faster. Bees are killed by moths and mites, bacteria and viruses, heat and cold. They're killed by the pesticides used on the plants they pollinate, and by the other pesticides used to protect them from murderous insects. And they're killed by the almond crop, which draws millions of bees from all over the nation to one small region of California, where they join in an orgy of pollination and another of disease sharing. None of this negates the seriousness of Colony Collapse Disorder, that still-mysterious ailment that reduced more than 1/3 of America's healthy beehives to empty boxes in 2007. But what Nordhaus does (and does well) is put those famous losses into a broader context. Colony Collapse Disorder is a problem. But it isn't the problem. Instead, it's just a great big insult piled on top of an already rising injury rate. Saving the honeybee isn't just about figuring out CCD. Bees were already in trouble before that came along. In the years since 2007, Nordhaus writes, bees have died at a rate higher than the expected and "acceptable" 15% annual loss, but the majority of those deaths weren't always caused by CCD....
Original Link: http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/ton96mTGHgQ/the-beekeepers-lamen.html
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