Massive bee die-offs baffle scientists, industry

The enigma that is colony collapse disorder shows no sign of abating, as nearly 38 percent of honeybee colonies nationwide died last winter, according to a survey of beekeepers by the industry-backed Bee Informed Partnership. Losses were 7 percent higher than the previous winter and nearly 9 percent higher than the average over the survey's 13-year history.  Queries went to 4,696 beekeepers managing 319,787 colonies, the partnership explains in a news release. The high death rate came as a surprise to researchers, says Nicole Miller-Struttmann, a biologist at Missouri's Webster University who is considered to be one of the nation's top bee experts. "This is shocking because last year's survey showed some recovery, so many were hopeful that we were starting to reverse this trend," she says in an email to Farm Press...MORE

Off to a bumbling start at Interior

By Paul Driessen

Was it because there were too few senior Trump Administration officials in place to catch and stop it? Or because Department of the Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke was new on the job, and had so much on his plate, that this decision just slipped right past him?

Maybe it was because the new Administration faces so many battles with environmental activists already that it didn’t want another one?  Or perhaps Interior was intimidated by environmentalist lawsuits challenging President Trump’s 60-day delay of newly-issued Obama Administration regulations?

Whatever the reason, Trump’s Interior Department opened a real can of worms when it let the Obama Administration’s last-minute endangered species designation for the rusty patched bumblebee (RPB) take effect March 21 – exactly 60 days after President Trump issued his regulatory Executive Order.
The designation has serious adverse implications for Mr. Trump’s ambitious plans for infrastructure improvements, economic growth, job creation, and reining in regulatory abuse and overreach.

Already, officials in the Minneapolis area have delayed a road construction project – purportedly near a patch of potential RPB habitat – while they look for signs that the bees are actually nesting there. Another Minnesota group is trying to use hypothetical threats to RPBs to delay construction of a wastewater treatment plant that would prevent pollution from reaching sensitive state waterways!

And this is just the beginning. It will happen again and again as anti-development agitators use this designation to theorize that construction projects and even farming operations could risk harming an “endangered” bee species or its possible habitats.

In issuing the “endangered” designation, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) advised that “The rusty patched bumblebee is likely to be present in scattered locations that cover only 0.1% of the species’ historical range.” Thus, government agencies need only be consulted or issue a permit for developers to “take” (disturb, harm or kill) the bees in these limited areas.

However, 0.1% of the RPB’s historic range is still an area of roughly 6,000 square miles: 3.8 million acres – equivalent to all of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined. And that’s just the beginning.

The real kicker is that no one knows where that 0.1% area might be, scattered in tiny bits and pieces all across the 13 Northeast and Midwest states where the rusty patched bumblebee has supposedly been observed (by amateur entomologists) since 2000. That’s 378 million acres: equal to the combined land area of Montana, North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois and Indiana!

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Bees Hurt by Some Crop Pesticides, But Not All

A major pesticide harms honeybees when used on cotton and citrus but not on other big crops like corn, berries and tobacco, the Environmental Protection Agency found. It's the first scientific risk assessment of the much-debated class of pesticides called neonicotinoids and how they affect bees on a chronic long-term basis. The EPA found in some cases the chemical didn't harm bees or their hives but in other cases it posed a significant risk. It mostly depended on the crop, a nuanced answer that neither clears the way for an outright ban nor is a blanket go-ahead for continued use. Both the pesticide maker and anti-pesticide advocates were unhappy with report. The issue is important because honeybees are in trouble and they do more than make honey. They are crucial to our food supply: About one-third of the human diet comes from insect-pollinated plants, and the honeybee is responsible for 80 percent of that pollination...more

Barack the Bee Savior, President's Pollinator Protection Plan, US to be'Honey Heaven'

Drastic honeybee deaths are threatening ecosystems and food production across the United States, and the White House now has a strategy to cater to the bees' needs. The number of honeybee colonies has been cut in more than half since the 1940s, according to the White House's "National Strategy to Promote the Health of Honeybees and Other Pollinators." That's significant considering that pollinators, which includes the imperiled monarch butterfly, increase U.S. crop values by $15 billion. "[The strategy] focuses on both immediate and long-term changes that can be made to improve the well-being of pollinator populations. Consequently, the strategy addresses the many factors impacting pollinator health, including certain land-use practices, declining forage and nesting resources, pests and diseases, pesticides and bee biology," the White House said in the report...more

Just Another Bee Bailout by the DC Deep Thinkers, this time by El Presidente himself, otherwise known as Barack the Bee Keeper.  General Motors survived it, let's hope the bees do too.

This is just an Obama slick trick to control more land and spend more money.

Personally, I wish he would quit cross-pollinatin' this country.