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Index of Subjects Hi Dave & All, You're not alone, I'm no honeybee expert either. Not quite. While the hive or colony is socially, very highly organized, the skillsets are not individually limited, but rather evolve as a function of age. It would seem that they are genetically coded. All worker bees are sterile females and they form the majority of the hives population. The youngest are called house or hive bees and their job is hive construction and maintenance. They make new combs, tend the brood, see to the needs of the queen and drones, receive nectar, pollen and other supplies from the foragers and store the same, make honey by evaporating water from stored nectar (by vibrating their wings over the nectar storage cells), clean up generally and otherwise maintain the hive. As workers grow older they become field bees or foragers. Their function then is to range outside of the hive, foraging for nectar, pollen, water and particular plant resins necessary for hive construction. The average life span of a summertime honeybee is about six weeks. As the number of foraging bees diminishes, the oldest of the younger bees replace them in their duties; So job function cycles through the population according to age. Yes large forager losses, that outstrip the ability of the queen and the brood stock to replace the necessary workforce, can indeed cause hive collapse, but through starvation, not through inharmonious social imbalance. A single beehive may contain between 50,000 and 80,000 bees. In areas where large scale agriculture is prevalent, it is not uncommon for thousands of hectares under cultivation to contain thousands of hives, within foraging distance of highways. While excessive "bee-napping" can be a serious problem for vehicles, it has little effect on the operation of the hives. Just a few bees from each hive can create mayhem for an awful lot of vehicles. The reason for the public to be concerned about CCD: Agricultural practices over the latter half of the Twentieth Century have reduced the population of indigenous pollinators in North America through the use of pesticides and the commercial use of honeybees as crop pollinators. The use of honeybees brought increased competition for resources to the native pollinators, thus further reducing the already depressed population. With reliance now so heavy on honeybees as pollinators, any serious reduction in their numbers would have devastating effects on North American Agriculture, and therefore have serious implications for the North American population at large. Further to the CCD article: Paragraph one indicates that there has been no confirmation of CCD in Canada as of June 2007, yet there are reports from New Brunswick (Apr. 10th 2007) of major losses in that province, with the president of the NB Beekeepers Assoc. losing 80% of his hives. Each of the affected hives had only a small number of dead bees with the majority of the hive population absent. Sounds like CCD to me. If I were to offer a guess, I would recommend looking at GM crops, particularly those containing genes to protect against insect attack. But that's only a guess from here and I'm miles away from the problem. Further to paragraph three of my initial comment: One note of interest is that when nectar is reduced into honey, all of the constituents that were dilute, including any contaminants, are then concentrated. Therefore an inhibitor that might not be noticed by the foragers at the nectar gathering stage might well be repulsive in the hive at the honey stage. Kent ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------- Dave Webster wrote: Hi Kent & All, June 20, 2007 I know practically nothing about Honey Bees but understand that a hive population is a highly organized social structure with skills for the various specialized functions being imprinted early in development. If it is true that bees can not readily adapt to changes in hive composition, then could not sufficient loss of forager bees cause the hive system to go into a tailspin ? In 1962, when we drove across the U.S. in August, we were cautioned in some western states (Utah, Montana and Idaho ?) to clean our radiator of bees before going up mountains. Apparently a lot of vehicles in that area were getting bees on their radiators, leading to overheated cooling systems and unscheduled stops. Bees then, were a local problem to motor vehicles. With many more motor vehicles now on more roads, could motor vehicles now be a widespread problem to bees ? Yt, Dave Webster, Kentville
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