Guest guest Posted June 6, 2007 Report Share Posted June 6, 2007 ¶ The bees that are most affected by the colony collapse syndrome appear to be the European honey bee, that was brought over here from Europe. Other bees have not been affected all that much. [Dave]: What I'm hearing from the organic people is that it is mostly commercial bees that are affected, and these are not normal honey bees. Organic beekeepers, who work mostly with wild stock, are thriving. Commercial bees are European bees that have been bred, pumped, filled with hormones and antibiotics, and are about 15% larger than wild bees. They spend their lives being trucked from one area of the country to another as they are used to pollinate various crops. It's a stressful life. No one really is sure what's causing colony collapse, but it is not new and has happened before. This round seems to be especially severe. I had an interesting conversation with an organic beekeeper. His opinion was that the industry doesn't understand colonizing insects. What he said to me is that the hive is not a population of individual bees. The hive IS the organism, and the individual insects are its cells and its organs. In other words, the individual insects have no volition of their own, but the intelligence of the hive is somehow spread among all its members. This, he said, is the key to understanding what causes an entire hive to collapse all at once - when the brain goes, everything follows at once. I think he may have been on to something. Version: 7.5.472 / Virus Database: 269.8.9/834 - Release 6/5/2007 2:38 PM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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