This post angered me: "Speaking of ridiculous CCD media stories I had to
post this...its just too funny
_http://www.ufodigest.com/news/0108/honeybees.html_
(http://www.ufodigest.com/news/0108/honeybees.html) "
Other than the over the top "HoneyBees Abducted" title, obviously inserted
by an editor, this is a report of a CA beekeeper who lost 50% of his
operation.
Nothing funny about that, just ask Mr. Bradshaw.
In the past two weeks, we've been sampling bee operations reporting unusual
losses in CA. We visited as many bee operations as we could in terms of time
and travel costs - we missed several, couldn't coordinate times, etc. - in a
perfect world we'd have sufficient resources to visit and sample EVERY bee
operation sustaining bee losses.
Here's a brief summary of the last two weeks:
2008 CA Trip by the Numbers
· 13 operations visited
· 153 hives sampled
· 540 total bee samples collected for virus and Nosema analysis
At least 12 of these operations had classic CCD symptoms. Only one seems to
be primarily a mite problem - based on Scott's observations.
Scott's report - the sample numbers listed represent a small subset of
affected colonies - he had to limit how many he sampled in any operation, so that
he could get to more beekeepers. He also obtained 270 acoustic recordings
(we are exploring the use of sound to identify/diagnose pests and diseases in
hives).
Don't tell any of these beekeepers that missing bees is funny.
Jerry
**************Biggest Grammy Award surprises of all time on AOL Music.
(http://music.aol.com/grammys/pictures/never-won-a-grammy?NCID=aolcmp003000000025
48)
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