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Sun, 21 Mar 2010 09:07:10 -0600 |
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<8569FF3100BB4A38B6517D2963291909@Romulus> |
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> ... ants are social insects that are abundant in almond orchards despite
> being more directly and continually exposed to agro-chemicals than are
> honeybees then please explain why I might be off base.
It seems always that when we raise these issues, they are immediately
presented with analogies which are imperfect and which ignore the central
concerns and expected to accept the substitution without objecting.
Yes, ants seem to thrive in numbers above what we want to see in orchards,
but often bees fail to thrive in the numbers we work hard to provide.
The observation is reassuring in that it shows that insects can develop
resistance to agro-chemicals, but it does not address our concerns about
very specific quantities of very specific strains of a very specific insect
in very specific locations and very specific timeframes. under very specific
economic pressures.
We also know little about the paths which were taken by the ants in arriving
at the current state and how many extinctions and near-extinctions took
place along the way.
When we look at the ants, can we compare the current state to the state
before or without agro-chemicals? To growers a few ants are probably too
many and no one counts, but large and measureable numbers of healthy bees
are expected. If the ants are not there, nobody fusses, but if the bees do
not arrive, then it is a panic (unless the neghbour has lots).
Nobody asks if these ants are the same ant we had decades ago and if they
are as industrious and as manageable or as robust. We know we can produce
survivor bees that can handle anything given enough time and large enough
beginning populations, but how much do we lose in the process and what do we
get in the end. It is not an accident that the many people working with
survivor stocks are swapping genetics and bring in outside lines.
Mere survival is not the issue.
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