UPI News posted an article that claims that deadly parasites, diseases, pesticides, and climate change are killing honeybee colonies across the United States.
This is only partially true.
Parasites, mites, possibly pesticides, and occasional damaging weather events have been linked to the decline of some honeybee populations, however, no losses can be attributed to climate change. [emphasis, links added]
The article, “Parasites, pesticides, climate change linked to loss of honeybee colonies,” written by Joe Fisher with UPI News, describes a recent study that claims that honeybee colony die-offs are occurring across the United States due to “climate change, parasitic mites, and pesticides,” among other variables.
Research discussed in Climate at a Glance: Bees and Climate Change shows that a variety of factors are contributing to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), a condition where beehives suddenly experience massive die-offs; climate change is not among them.
Among the causes of CCD listed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are:
- Honeybee-killing, invasive varroa mites;
- New and emerging insect viruses;
- Pesticide poisoning;
- Habitat changes and lack of food sources;
- Combinations of the above factors.
Temperature and precipitation may also have an effect on bees, but there is no data showing that periods of intense bee-killing heat are occurring more frequently, and precipitation increases in the United States have been modest and gradual, with no sign of increasing intense rainfall, or drought.
One of the authors of the study referenced in the UPI News piece stated in an interview that “changing climate and high-profile extreme weather events like Hurricane Ian — which threatened about 15% of the nation’s bees that were in its path as well as their food sources — are important reminders that we urgently need to better understand the stressors that are driving honeybee colony collapse and to develop strategies to mitigate them.”
In reality, Hurricane Ian, while destructive, was not evidence of an increasing trend of severe tropical storms. As discussed in exhaustive detail in a Climate Realism post here, the best available data show that there is no trend of increasing hurricane frequency or intensity. (See figure below).
There is no increase in hurricanes, therefore, an increase in hurricanes cannot be responsible for honeybee declines.
Additionally, despite frequent reports about declining honeybee numbers, as described by H. Sterling Burnett in a Climate Realism post, “Wrong, Tasting Table, Popular Foods Are Doing Well, Not Failing Under Climate Change,” global honey production has increased amid modest global warming, even as U.S. production has declined somewhat because of CCD. (See figure below).
Since climate change is a global, logic would suggest that there should be a global impact on honey supplies, but there is not.
In fact, modest warming and carbon dioxide fertilization are contributing to global greening, increasing the amount of available food sources—pollen and nectar—for honeybees.
The fossil record suggests that early bees evolved around the same time as flowering plants, during the Cretaceous period, and more modern bees likely showed up around the Miocene, but possibly as far back as the Oligocene.
In all of these periods, there was more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than today, as well as higher average global temperatures. Bees perform best when there are flowering plants to pollinate.
Solid research ties bee declines to a variety of factors, but because are no trends of worsening global weather patterns, there is equally no evidence that recent climate change is a contributing factor to honeybee deaths or CCD.
UPI News and researchers would serve themselves, the public, and the bees better if they focused their attention on the established causes of CCD and how to mitigate or prevent it, rather than trying to garner headlines by jumping on the climate crisis bandwagon by misleadingly tying the decline of bees in the United States to climate change.
Read more at Climate Realism
Not too long ago, maple trees in Quebec were dying at an “alarming” rate. The maple syrup industry blamed acid rain. I wondered then if they were deflecting attention away from their own greed, bleeding too much sap from the maples. I wonder, too if the honey bee business is guilty of the same tactic. Bees work summer long so that they have enough food to survive the winter. In a way, the beekeepers are parasites. Are they taking too much honey? Analogous to onerous taxation. When do the worker bees give up?
It was like with Tree Deaths up in Canada they blamed American Industry for so called Acid Rain which was later found to have been caused by wood boring insects. And we don’t hear anything anymore about Acid Rain because its now this Global Warming/Climate Change scam
The bee emergency is planned. Without pollinators, many agricultural crops are threatened. Egg production is under threat. Meat livestock production is under threat.
But it’s all right. There’ll be plenty of bugs to eat. Until, that is, they (shock and horror) discover there aren’t enough* and suddenly bring in food rationing (just like electric cars, where there will never be enough electricity and so you can’t have a car).
How can anyone get away with this totalitarianism? Thr answer is simple. They know they can rely on the vast majority to be total, abject cowards.
The telegraphing of this has already started with television showing a zoo having a meal worm shortage. Coincidence? No. Almost everything is drip fed slowly in advance. It has been for so for decades. Climate change is a cover for a whole heap of things people might reasonably and sensibly resist otherwise. If all one sees is the carbon scam, one needs to look deeper. CO2 is the shallow end of the pool.