Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => COLONY COLLAPSE DISORDER - TALKS & REPORTS => Topic started by: sandhya on April 25, 2007, 03:43:51 pm
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This is often paraphrased as "All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one." In other words, when multiple competing theories are equal in other respects, the principle recommends selecting the theory that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest hypothetical entities. It is in this sense that Occam's razor is usually understood.
The medicinal cures are killing the bees. Everything is out of balance. The bee's would have naturally got more strong and resistant to disease if we had not medicated them. The strong would have survived, and disease resistant bee's would have lived on. We have essentially upset the apple cart by allowing weak breeds or weak DNA to procreate.
Much as it has occurred with humans.
Diseases die out we we dont let the hosts carry on.... :?
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Sure is hard to argue your idea of weakening the honeybee. Today it is VERY hard to get antibiotics from doctors, it is usually easier to get pain-killers because of how antibiotics are weakening our resistance to nearly every virual attack known to exist. We literally destroy our defensive system to the point that even the strongest antibiotic is useless to many people.
I agree it is natural for superior colonies to survive threat without medication in order to continue to be a strong spieces on the planet. but I have one problem with the theory: not all beekeepers medicate, many have never nor would ever and yet they are suffering loss.
I can't imagine blaming everything on chemical treatments passed from bee to bee from casual pollination of plants or trees. I'm sure we are weakening our hives (as a general issue) if we expose them to chemicals unnaturally found in nature - and surely a saturation point can occur - we do live in a society where MORE is better and the idea of minimally medicating bees probably rarely happens.
I think there are lots of reasons, I often mention Cellphone and radio tower signals, but solar flairs also inturupt communications and we are in a massive cycle of Sol's eruptions, luckily the major ones have been while the sun was turning away from the Earth. One recording during January was nearly 140 times the average burst of radiation, it would have fried all high altitude communications (the stuff up around 26,000 miles like banking satellites.
The sun rotates fairly fast for a massive object - every 9 days. That was a 1 in 9 chance for a direct massive solar burst and a 1 in 6 chance of a major angular hit. The 11 year sunspot cycle effects all communications, some more notably than others but I have never heard of WHAT FREQUENCIES bees primative homing equipment works at. If I thought of their antenna length as a guide I'd assume seriously high microwave) in radio theory the higher the frequency the smaller the antenna - but of course bee antenna has litle to do with location homing - still, I doubt we know all the answers on their role in communicating.
Man has played God too many times and maybe THIS time (whether purposefully or not) they have played a role in the devastating losses we now see. But I'm sure many would argue that without MITE medication, honeybees would be in worse shape then they are now... I say, the reasons for CCD might be different, but the head-count and results would be very similar.
Welcome aboard the forum :)
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Your theory is only valid given an unbounded environment, given that other man made influences are acting on the bees, it is not clear that any would survive without intervention by drugs and clean disease free colonies to bolster the feral ones.
In other words I believe that man has so damaged the bees environment, that without swarming from human kept hives, that all feral colonies would die before they adapted.
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Good arguments all the way around, except one thing, if we are looking at environmental, then you would have to wipe out allot more than just bee's (at that biological level) we would see other creatures of that size and biology disappearing as well....bumble bees, carpenter bee's etc...all of which we do not artificially keep alive..
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I agree
we're making our bees weaker by medicating and feeding them. We have 2 hives that are fine and we've not fed or medicated them at all. I use a sticky board for mites and that's it. We have 2 of 5 hives at another location that may have ccd. These were fed sping and fall.
jim
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" When you eliminate all the answers, what ever remains however improbable must be the answer." Sherlock Holmes
CCD came to national attention only because it impacted the commercial operations. If this was a problem for the small non-migratory beekeepers only it wouldn't draw attention from anyone.
When your lifestyle, house payments, kids college, everything, depends on your business you take care of it as best you can. To get their income they cannot afford to let nature take its course. They medicate and feed to keep as many alive and producing as possible.
Kept bees are week and dependant creatures. Feral bees can recover their strength if they live through a cycle or two.
I don't think we will ever have a real answer to CCD. Just a list of things to do to try and save what's left.