Tracy Turner

Image from http://tinyurl.com/mu86c66 Note of interest: blue and purple are the
rarest colors of flowers. True blue flowers are very rare and therefore catch the
eye. An amber colored bee on a blue or purple flower really catches the eye.

What do these learned publications have in common as a central flaw or hole within their logic?

● Krombein KV, Hurd PD Jr., Smith DR (eds.). Catalog of Hymenoptera in America North of Mexico, Volume 3, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1979

● McGregor, S.E. Insect Pollination Of Cultivated Crop Plants USDA, 1976

● Mussen, Eric [1].pdf Impact of Honey bees on the California Environment] University of California Davis, 2002

● Pollinators’ impact on crop production Research study in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences of 25 October 2006.

All of these learned articles revolve around crop production via bees, bumble bees and biotic pollinizers. The flaw is if bees go extinct, these publications predict shortages of crops. If bees do not pollinize apples, apple seeds go extinct. Over a relatively short amount of time (by Natural History standards) Apples, Oaks, Beeches, Onions go extinct. No bees, no seeds – no seeds, the whole lineage goes extinct with the extinct bees.

The other flaw is the sole focus of most is on the 200 or less plants farmed by farmers. Imagine Chile, Argentina forestless because Beech trees go exinct. Imagine Florida with no Dogwoods and Oklahoma without any Crape Myrtles at the same time Cherries, Almonds, Okra and Tomato go extinct both on farms and in backyard gardens. Unlike “Global Warming”, bee extinction is measurable, observable and getting worse year over year by both sheer numbers of die-offs and percentages of apiary losses.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has estimated that out of 100 crop species, which provide 90% of food worldwide, 71% of these are bee-pollinated. To focus solely on human stomachs and food costs is to focus on the initial human reaction to a vast, natural system undergoing die-off. When America and Europe lose 35% of their bees, the remaining 65% become more inbred and less able to withstand future diseases. At the same time, the 100-most popular foods on Earth become more inbred and less able to withstand future diseases. Call it bee and pop-crop gene-erosion… …a nearly invisible perfect genetic storm brewing just as the world moves from 7 to 8 billion eaters.

The word pollinize and the scientific term biotic pollinizers are thrown around so much people have forgotten what it is bees really do – they supply life with plant futures, aka seed supply. No strawberries mean no strawberry seeds which correlates to no future strawberry plants. Focusing on the cost of a strawberry fruit basket losses site of the whole clan of Gaviotas and Sequoias going permanently extinct.

Bees and bumblebees are suffering a man-made decline in their diet; from 1900 to 2000 75% of the foods formerly grown on farms have gone permanently extinct. Simultaneously, the six-largest pesticide manufacturers have taken wild meadows with milkweed and turned them into golf course “green-space”. In place of the 75% food-crop genes made extinct by modern society bees have a steady diet of hardware store “weed ‘n’ feed with insect control products. Everyone’s home must be weedless, bugless and bee killing while the adults drive the family car to the Global Warming Carbon Footprint Rally.

This article does a pretty good job of making the case that bees are important for forests: but no one article can adequately make the case that without bees there will be no humanity in the future. Forests, food crops and humanity will be gone if or when bees go extinct. To sugar coat it as honey prices may go up or strawberries may be expensive is myopically ignoring the fact that bees make 90% of flowering plants reproduce. Imagine 90% of the Earth’s flowering broadleaf plants gone and humans gone with them. So far, the way humans have reacted to the plight of bees insures theirs and our extinction. Obama signing the Monsanto Pesticide act in the midst of the largest bee die off in human/bee history.

The short-list of plants that will go extinct obviously connects to the human stomach and pocketbook. But humans so take bee pollinizing for granted that most are unable to wrap their minds around a world with no seed racks in the garden center. The pesticide aisle is burgeoning with product and the seed racks keep having smaller and smaller packets that cost more. Imagine a 12-gram package of Kroeger Strawberries for $34.99, replete with every last Strawberry seed removed by the growers. Now imagine Europe with no Linden Trees. One of the main culprits is every government worldwide will maintain the fiscal gluttony of Dow, Dupont, Bayer, BASF, Monsanto and Syngenta before it does anything to help the health of bees.

Every year, between 18,000 and 55,000 species become extinct. Some of the species we are permanently losing are wild pollinizers (wild bees, bats, butterflies, wasps, bumblebees, etc.). Our own extinction is in situ via pollinizer loss and most of what we now do will make it worse – new condos and golf courses as “green space” in every nation worldwide. The Earth is losing earth worms, compost mites, compost beetles – species loss that makes farming for raising fish impossible. Bee and pollinizer loss is a lynch pin species loss for humans.

Some bullet points from the UN FAO 1999:

• Agrobiodiversity is a vital subset of biodiversity, which is developed and actively managed by farmers, herders and fishers.


• Many components of agrobiodiversity would not survive without this human interference; local knowledge and culture are integral parts of agrobiodiversity management.


• Many economically important agricultural systems are based on ‘alien’ crop or livestock species introduced from elsewhere (for example, horticultural production systems or Friesian cows in Africa). This creates a high degree of interdependence between countries for the genetic resources on which our food systems are based.


• As regards crop diversity, diversity within species is at least as important as diversity between species.


• Locally diverse food production systems are under threat and, with them, the accompanying local knowledge, culture and skills of the food producers.


• The loss of forest cover, coastal wetlands, ‘wild’ uncultivated areas and the destruction of the aquatic environment exacerbate the genetic erosion of agrobiodiversity.


• The main cause of genetic erosion in crops, as reported by almost all countries, is the replacement of local varieties by improved or exotic varieties and species.

The inverse of the above is putting bees on a global GMO diet of 180 transgenic crops while dousing them with poisons and inbreeding fewer hives.

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http://olivebiodiesel.com/Government-Pesticide-Corp-Health-Trumps-Bee-Health.html

Tracy Turner was born into two extended families of bookworms - one horticultural and one petroleum industry. Semi-retired from IT and Botanical Garden Plant Propagation, his main interest are science, news, politics national and world events. Urges anyone to ask several IT professionals about web censorship; which is becoming rampant. Twitter, Facebook and Myspace are not free speech - they are places of monitoring, censoring and personal data harvesting. If you love freedom, become active in free speech and freedom of the press activism. Post Peak Sanity, Oil & Freedom; Pre Peak Thirst, Hunger, War and Ponzi Fascism aka 'Organic' Back Yard Urrban Tomatoes vs. New York Beekeeping by Tracy Turner - Environmentalist, Horticulturist, Analyst ~ Pasadena, Californa

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