I warned about the long-term impact of the hype of "National Pollinator
Week"
last spring here on Bee-L, maybe the "Nature" program on PBS is a good
example
of this, as it certainly was at least 80% hype.
>> ...about honeybees disappearing world wide. So, according to them, by
2035
>> we will have no more honeybees if the current trend continues. I have
no
>> idea what they based that on.
> The quote is about pollinator decline in testimony given before a
> congressional sub-committee for the Farm Bill on March 29, 2007 by May
> Berenbaum who is president of the Xerces Society and professor at
> University of Illinois.
So, it was "The Secret Death Of Bees".
Could they all be suffering from "Hepatitis bee"?
May was clearly speaking through her hat, as her "model" was a primitive
steady-state trend-line analysis, taking the estimated number of US
hives, and subtracting every year some number of hives "lost" to CCD.
First off, there is no accurate estimate of the number of "managed
hives"
even in the USA, let alone planet-wide. The witnesses in the same
hearings
said as much when they bemoaned the lack of accurate data on beekeeping.
Second, if the number of managed hives go down, there is an immediate
and massive financial incentive for survivors to be split, coddled with
care, and generally used to maximize the personal financial gain of
those
lucky enough to avoid the fickle finger of financial failure inherent in
CCD.
(Beekeeping, under to bee veils, is pure classical economics, nothing
more.)
Third, she ignored imports as being a potential source of not only
exotic
invasive diseases and pests of hives, but also (only with proper
port-of-entry tests and inspections), healthy replacement queens and
packages, that while economically inadvisable, would at least be
available
to replace dead-outs. Unless she was predicting utter extinction of
Apis mellifera, which would be utter nonsense.
In summary, it was in May's best interest to paint as dark and gloomy a
picture of the future of honey bees as she could, as her goal was
clearly
to justify expanded funding for "alternative pollinator research", when
these "alternative pollinators" have only limited applications in
real-world
agriculture. As a direct result, the actual work on at least finding a
cause
of CCD still remains unfunded, months later, and there is a very
dangerous
mis-perception even among lawmakers that even if every honey bee on the
planet
dies tomorrow, that "native pollinators" are some sort of viable
replacements
for honey bees over the short term on all crops in all situations.
Talk about over-selling!
So, this was the unfounded claim of a political lobbyist, wrapped up in
the white lab coat of science, and presented to an "Environmental
Protection"
Senate subcommittee, rather than a Senate Agriculture subcommittee.
Thusly, a simple bill introduced in the House, requesting funding for
CCD work only, was "expanded" over on the Senate side to also fund
R&D on "native pollinators". The two bills don't match. They need
to be negotiated into a "compromise version". No one cares to do this,
as the Senate and House have other things to do, things that they
rightly
see as more pressing.
Honey bees were merely mentioned to bolster the case for "native
pollinator
research", even though attempts to utilize "native pollinators" in
agriculture
(greenhouse bumblebees) have resulted in the extinction of two species
of US bumblebees so far, going on three.
http://www.xerces.org/Pollinator_Red_List/Bees/Bombus_Bombus.pdf
Somehow, exploitation does not result in preservation.
The native pollinator types don't seem to grock that.
Or maybe they just don't care, as long as they get funding to study the
extinctions.
I covered all this before in my "Pollinator Protection Racket" rants:
http://listserv.albany.edu:8080/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0706d&L=bee-l&T=0&I=-3&
P=2876
http://listserv.albany.edu:8080/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0706E&L=BEE-L&P=R2&D=0&
I=-3&T=0
I was roundly booed at the time for daring to critique the self-interest
of
people who appear to only want to hype and leverage our problem for
their own
agenda, so, lets see... HR1709 is still stuck in committee. S.1694 (the
Senate
companion bill to HR1709) is, um... ALSO still stuck in committee.
Neither
measure has even made it "to the floor" yet. Not even a committee vote
yet.
Looks like the "sense of urgency" I warned would be lost in the process
was lost.
No one has a dime as a result of all the shenanigans. Congress isn't
stupid.
But the hype level went way up with unfounded drama-queen statements
like
the one quoted. And as the hype level went up, the "personal payoff" in
prestige associated with "fixing" CCD went up. Which made it far too
easy
for many people to confuse their personal "competitive" agenda with the
stated goal of cooperating as a team to solve a problem.
And here we are, forced to admit that we allowed a single team to hog
all the
CCD samples just so that they could publish a high-profile paper in
"Science"
magazine, before the other team that made the actual discovery and
announced
their admittedly preliminary results back in April to the entire
"Working Group"
could publish anywhere. Cutting off the supply of samples to the April
team assured the September team that the April team would be unable to
verify
their preliminary findings, and not have enough samples to produce
"publishable"
results.
But to find only a month later that slightly older samples likely stored
in the SAME DARN FREEZER at USDA Beltsville completely refuted every
claim
they made, and every conclusion they drew in the September paper that we
waited on all summer is just the ultimate irony. Instant Karma.
And now, we have to wait for everyone to go through a "proposal process"
and hope to be awarded some fraction of $4 million allocated by USDA for
CCD work. Watch the same (September) team defy the laws of Karma, get
the
lion's share of the money, and use it merely to attempt to defend the
speculation they should have refrained from in the first place, rather
than admit that we are no further along than we were in April 2007.
You may note some irritation in my tone.
Recall that, back in April, all these people said that they would work
as a team.
http://www.beetography.com/gallery/2758754#146733652
So, while there is no "I" in "team", we must admit that there was "me"
in team for some, at least until it turned around and bit them.
(Proving that there is "meat" in "team"? Where's that Vince Lombardi
tape of his "Winning is a Habit" speech when I need it?)
New Rule - the next paper to be published that does not include the
names of
EVERYONE in the above photo (except me, 'cause I don't give a darn) as
an
author becomes grounds for that person or team to be kicked off the
project,
denied further funding, and to be shunned by the beekeeping community.
If they can't play nice with others, we, the anxious customers for their
output, will simply have force them to do so.
So remember, samples of bees and comb go only to people who can play
nice
with others, and only with their >>>written<<< assurance that they will
share with everyone else, samples, data, conclusions, and credit.
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