Part of the means by which they dealt with Africanization of bees was to remove the queen and plant a new one. Wonder if that might have some issue. The new queens being planted aren't gaining control of the nest properly, the bees there see her as hostile, kill her off, then die off.

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I'm not completely heartless, the doctor who removed it told me he'd never be able to get it all.

This may be a little off-topic, but...

I remember when I lived in Phoenix, the local PBS station would occasionaly broadcast this show about the Sonoran desert, featuring the Saguaro cactus. In it, they described how the Saguros only bloomed at night, so as to attrack the attention of their natural pollinators, bats, which only fly at night. With the near disappearnce of bats, however, (add disappearing bats to the list, BTW), survival of the Saguaro was "seriously" threatened.

I suppose the show was made in the 60s or 70s, but it was completely at odds with my own observation. All the Saguros in my neck-of-the-desert most definitely bloomed during the day, not at night.

I'm giving the producers of the show the benefit-of-the-doubt, and assume that at some time in the past, Saguaros did bloom only at night. But with the diappearance of the bats, I think they shifted their blooming time, to accomodate the schedules of the regular day-time pollinators.

So what I'm thinking is this: if Saguros are able to adjust to the loss of their favorite pollinators, can farmers as well?

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PW -- Plant Whisperer

Why is that?

Actually some very good reasons why this is not at all likely:

1) All Genetically Modified plants are exhaustively tested for any possible such interaction or negative effect. Any activity against bees would be obvious and noted.

2) There are only a few crops that are have been genetically engineered and are being grown commercially. The major such crops are corn, soybean, and cotton with smaller amounts of a few additional crops. These crops are not primary sources for bees to feed on.

3) The noted declines for bees are occurring throughout the world but GE crops are not grown in many area that are experiencing the problems with declines in bee populations.

4) There is no technical reason based on the known activity of genes that have been engineered into plants to suspect that there would be any effect on bees.

5) Causes for the declines in bee populations are known such as mites, and varioius diseases -fungal, bacterial and viral.

6) There is no evidence for GE crops having negative effects on bees - and yes they have been tested.

7) Finally, what many people do not realize is that GE plants are not so different from other plants. They typically have one very well understood gene that is added to their genome and the expression of that gene and its protein have been exhaustively studied.
Crop plants produced by "ordinary" breeding have ~20,000 unknown genes - essentially none of which have been tested...

There are some long term concerns about GE crops (I mentioned some of them in another thread something), but this is not that. Basically the "FrankenFood" stuff is pure hysteria. But not all concerns are hysteria, and the funny thing is the real concerns are hardly mentioned in the hysterical arguments.

Anyway, I love field corn better than sweet corn, and I have eaten BT and Roundup Ready corn on the cob and creamed every year for several years, now. So I'm living proof that GE food won't hurt you.

Well, on second thought, maybe I'm not such a good example.


-Richard

Other than inclusion of an insecticide is part of the genetic modification.

Consider Bt corn. The insecticide is a protein that binds to receptors in the guts of certain chewing insects and messes up the gut, killing the insect. Organic growers have used the stuff as a "natural insecticide" for years.

In one test, they fed honey bees feed with 10x the concentration of this protein that is found in the Bt corn pollen. There was no effect on healthy bees.

However, quite by accident, the bees in the study were infected by a parasite. The bees fed the Bt toxin did much worse than the control groups. So something there suggests that the combination of the Bt toxin and the parasite is bad.

However, the die off in bees is happening in Britain, where they've been pretty resistant to gengineered crops.

ETA:

http://conspiracyfactory.blogspot.co...abel/BT%20corn

Funny...I just tried to use my honey("Sue Bee" I think) in some tea the other day and it lost all its water content?
I haven't seen that before EVER!

Was that REAL honey or a concoction of:
Glycerine, High Fructose Corn Sweeteners, Water, BHT and FD&C yellow#5?

Wonder if honey goes bad?

Maybe I can make honey cubes with it now?

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Jami Cat
Astronomy is looking up... :)

I've had it start to congeal into a solid mass after a very long time sitting on the shelf. Still tasted sweet. I just checked the honey I currently have and it has no used by date, just a packed on date. So maybe it doesn't go off? And even if it did go solid you could aways put it next to a hive and cycle it through some bee's stomaches again. That should freshen it up.

So will adding one percent of water by volume and warming and stirring.

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For those inclined to oppose human meddling with the structure of the universe or the composition and configuration of objects and groups of objects within the universe, consider:
Whether there is a limit to the magnitude of a modulation of chaos below which order remains invariant? Or, is order but a fiction invented by perspectives applied over finite, however large, time intervals?

After a period of time, some of the sugar in honey will crystallize out. The honey is not bad. You can redistribute the solid material by gently heating the honey in warm water. I have done this by putting the whole jar in a pan for warm water for several hours.

Fact sheet
More facts and information about warming.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

Yeah, if you wanted to do it the hard way.

Take your crystallized honey in the jar and place the jar in warm water, or slightly nuke it (microwave)—it will return to its former sticky sweet self, and no harm done. There is no shelf life to natural honey, it keeps I guess, forever.


I read an article that Cuba is greatly concerned over the loss of its honeybees. A national effort is underway, taking many measures as no pesticides, moving hives around, study for pathogens and such, and greater effort to make more hives.


Cuban agriculture, environmental protection, is a state of the art business, can’t even chop a tree down, but rather pruning under power lines. Beehives, honey, is big business in Cuba and a decline could mean massive crop failures. Reforestation, orchard management, food crops have been high priority for that small country, with the latest and greatest scientific research. Even safety for hives in the event of a hurricane, is high on the list.


The article didn’t point to any one particular cause but perhaps a combination. The over all thinking was an improvement in the environment that bees require, and knowing what that environment is. Cuba is very open to ideas and has many international scientific conferences regarding their agriculture to say the least.


I will keep an eye on it, if I hear anything I will let you know.


Don

Real honey will experience crystal growth in the sugars over time, it's basically dependent on the water content.
It sometimes has to be stirred continuously during crystallization, to keep the sugar crystals small enough to make it spreadable.
Note that even when it's really hard, it doesn't mean it's dry, just that the crystals have grown together.

You can fix the problem by heating the honey slightly, which will cause some of the sugar to be redissolved, it will then take a while for the crystals to grow together again, so it you stir it a couple of times after it's cooled down again you should be able to stop it from hardening.
If the honey is in a flexible container you can also fix it by kneading it while in the container, as the mechanical shear will break down the large crystals into smaller and thus recreate the consistency.

There should be no need to add water, but if you have to one way would be to leave the lid slightly open, still protecting for dust but allowing the air to get in. As honey is quite hygroscopic, it'll draw moisture from the air.

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An emperor without enemies, a king without a kingdom, supported in life by the willing tribute of a free people.

Nope, and its antibacterial qualities made it a favored wound dressing since who-knows-when:

Actually, honey has amazing antibacterial qualities mainly because of the sugar concentration

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An emperor without enemies, a king without a kingdom, supported in life by the willing tribute of a free people.

Latest suspect:

For the first time, an eco scare has me genuinely panicked.

"If all the honey bees were wiped out, mankind would follow in about four years"

Albert Einstein

This seems like a fairly authoritative source, backed up with good figures:

http://southeastfarmpress.com/mag/fa...ss_honey_bees/

And now it's going global...

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=572652007

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I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge?

It's gotten to the point where careful investigation is needed just to tell parody from reality. I think that means reality is broken.- Noclevername.

Hmmh...(from parallaxicality's second link above)