> If all honeybees were to disappear tomorrow, farmers would 
> be forced to adjust, yet agriculture would surely continue--
> so the NP agenda is not pure fantasy. 

This sort of statement, like the "Beepocalypse" article itself,
contains multiple rhetorical errors, false premises, and false
choices, making it about as useful and productive as the famous 
statement "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." 
(G. W. Bush, 09/20/01)  Let's break it down, and examine just how
corrosive the impact of propaganda has been on even what is offered
as Informed Discussion:

> If all honeybees were to disappear tomorrow

Clearly, an extreme scenario, not mentioned as a possibility
by anyone except the authors of the more sensational press articles.  
Terms like "Beepocalypse" imply that this may be happening, 
but the premise is utterly false.

> farmers would be forced to adjust

As no mention is made of how they might "adjust", this
phrase implies that they have other options that,
irrespective of cost, would pollinate the same number
of blooms in the same fields at the same level of
density as currently done by honeybees.  How would they
do this?

(Waiting...)

(Looking at watch...)

(Tapping foot impatiently...)


> yet agriculture would surely continue

Is this a statement of fact, or wishful thinking, given
that I'm still waiting for an answer to the question above?

> so the NP agenda is not pure fantasy

Let's examine the alternatives offered by the article that
started this thread, and see just where this scenario falls
on the scale from "Hans Christian Andersen" to the journal
"Nature", shall we?

1) Marla Spivak's hygienic bees

Even the article admits that they are a non-sequitur in a
discussion of CCD, mostly because we don't yet know what is
behind CCD, so no one can say if "hygienic behavior" will
have any impact.

2) Solitary Wild Bees

We've discussed the short-term prospects for these bees,
and I don't need to repeat what's been said.  These bees
are like recumbent bicycles - very few of them in use,
in very few places, mostly in academia.  Note that the
oft-mentioned "Blue Orchard Bee" simply does not thrive
well east of the Rockies, which is why a non-native
species (Japanese Hornfaced Bee) was imported and tested
by Dr. Batra of the USDA.  But even this effort was 
tested for several decades without much in the way of
large-scale uptake by growers and/or beekeepers.

3) Bumblebees

Yes, these ARE useful in certain narrow-focus applications,
like greenhouses, too bad that two entire species are now
extinct due to the push by the self-described preservationists
to justify preservation and conservation with exploitation
in agriculture.  At the current rate, there won't be any
bumblebees left in the USA long before honey bees are 
considered "threatened" at the species level.

So, the "adjustment" would be from honey bees to what?
All of the above would put us closer to "Grimm's Fairy Tales"
than to our current "norm" of stores well-stocked with
every possible food we can imagine.  The "adjustment"
would be "grim" indeed.

Now, let's examine the cultural changes suggested in the
article:

4) "These big giant monocultures pretty much hammer the bee habitat".

Yep, but don't criticize with your mouth full.  The economies 
of scale inherent in the "giant monocultures" are exactly what
result in such affordable and abundant food.  Pull out your passport
and go visit other places to see how expensive common food items are
elsewhere.  Then tell me that smaller-scale farming is what we need.

5) "One solution is to enhance the habitat for native bees around 
   farmland-by planting hedgerows..."

Wow!  A "solution"!  Hedgerows!  Only one problem.  If the fields
are being sprayed with herbicides and pesticides, how does anything
live in the "hedgerows"?  If this approach had any value, beekeepers
and growers would have figured this out by now, and placed honey bee
colonies in these locations bordering fields so as to avoid pesticide
kills.

6) "...or leaving some land uncultivated."

Yes, the central premise of the current legislation.  Set-asides.
Well, if you are a farmer, which land will you take out of production?
Easy - the land that is too eroded, too worn out from years of
relentless farming, and otherwise useless.  How will this wasteland
support pollinators without being specifically restored so that it
can grow plants to support native pollinators?  Is this land anywhere
near active cropland, or close enough that the native pollinators
can reach the cultivated crops?  None of this is explained, so it
does not seem like anything more than a pure "habitat preservation"
program, where the "habitat" presents about the same desirable 
qualities as a vacant lot in downtown Detroit.

7) "Another approach is to encourage managers of semi artificial
environments like golf courses to surround the greens with the 
types of plants..."

While this would clearly have no direct impact on agriculture,
it is also laughable in the extreme.  Golf courses certainly have
made massive strides in becoming more environmentally friendly,
but they are among the most excessive users of pesticides, herbicides,
and other "lawn chemicals".   Golf courses are dead zones.

So, we have yet another article that offers up "alternatives"
that are false choices, and offers "practices" that may enhance
native pollinator populations, but would offer no tangible advantage
at all to practical agriculture.

I feel that preservation and conservation do NOT need to be justified
on the (false) premise that there will be any agricultural advantage
gained as a result.  No other threatened species need to provide any
specific benefit for man, so why should these pollinators be forced
to do so?  Think of wolves, eagles, spotted owls, snail-darters.  
Any of them have any tangible advantage for agriculture?
Nope, but they are still worth saving on their own merits, aren't they?

Why these native pollinator folks want to exploit, rather than
preserve these species remains a mystery to me.

Exploitation is neither preservation nor conservation.




 

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