# CCD, Bee Dieoff ~ Did the Ancients Have the Answer?



## naturebee (Dec 25, 2004)

Hello Friends, 

CCD, Bee Dieoff ~ Did the Ancients Have the Answer?
Principio sedes apibus statioque petenda, (Virgil 29 B.C.) 

The classical bee authors of ancient times tell us about the habitat that is
essential for honeybees. We've all but ignored the ancient teachings in
today's beekeeping practices, and the result; CCD, bee mortality 
throughout the industry. I will occasionally revisit historical works 
from the great writers of bee literature which scholars turn to again and 
again with increased delight for comparison to today beekeeping, as I
attempt to illustrate Just how correct in the main the classical writers 
are on the subject of bees, and how that knowledge may still apply to 
beekeeping in modern times. 

In June of 2013 Marla Spivak gave a TED Talk About 'Why Bees are Disappearing' 
~ What Spivak tells us bees need to remain healthy is remarkably, similar to what 
the ancients tell us over 2000 years ago. That bees need an environment having a 
wide varietal and abundance of nutritional forage; a diverse and nutritional environment.

VIDEO ~ Marla Spivak ~ 2013 TED Talk:
https://www.ted.com/talks/marla_spivak_why_bees_are_disappearing?language=en#t-107074

Marla Spivak tells us the answer to solving the Bee die-off:

"The bottom line is, bees dying reflects a flowerless landscape and a dysfunctional 
food system." "Set aside farmland. We need a beautiful diversity of flowers that 
blooms over the entire growing season, from spring to fall. We need roadsides 
seeded in flowers for our bees, but also for migrating butterflies and birds and other 
wildlife. And we need to think carefully about putting back in cover crops to nourish 
our soil and nourish our bees. And we need to diversify our farms. We need to plant 
flowering crop borders and hedge rows to disrupt the agricultural food desert and 
begin to correct the dysfunctional food system that we've created." -Marla Spivak, 2013

What Spivak tells us bees need to remain healthy is remarkably, similar to what 
the ancients tell us over 2000 years ago:

(http://www.beesource.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=23096&d=145666971537.0 KB)
Image above: Showing the diverse and nutritional environment bees need. 
~Artwork By Wenceslaus Hollar ca. 1654, published in ~ The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro, 
Translated, Adorned with Sculpture, and Illustrated with Annotations. 
By John Ogilby Page 108, ca. 1668


In Georgics, Book IV, by Publius Virgilius Maro 29 B.C. Virgil tells us:

Principio sedes apibus statioque petenda,
~First we must seek an abode and station for the bees,

quo neque sit ventis aditus, 
~where neither winds may have access,

nam pabula venti ferre domum prohibent.
~for the winds hinder them from carrying home their food.

Neque oves hoedique petulci floribus insultent,
~Nor sheep and frisking kids may trample down the flowers,

aut errans bucula campo 
~or the heifer, wondering on the plain,

decutiat rorem et surgentes atterat herbas. 
~can shake off the dew, and bruise the rising plants.

<snip> reason: several lines removed as irreverent. 

At liquidi fontes et stagna virentia musco 
~Let the clear fountains and pools made green by moss

et tenuis fugiens rivus per gramina adsint,
~and shallow rivulet swift running through the grass be near,

que palmaque vestibulum aut ingens oleaster inumbret,
~and let the palm or the great wild olive overshadow the entrance,

ut cum novi reges ducent prima examina suo vere, 
~that when the new kings lead forth the first swarms in the spring,

que juventus emissa favis ludet,
~and the youth let loose from the honeycombs dulge in sport,

vinina ripa inviltet decedere calori,
~neighbouring bank may invite them to withdraw from the heat,

que obvia arbos teneat frondentibus hospitiis.
~and the intervening tree may detain them by its leafy protection.

Conjice salices transversas et grandia saxa in medium,
~Cast willows placed across and large rocks in the midst of the water,

seu humor stabit iners, seu profluet, 
~whether the water shall stand inactive,

ut possint consistere crebris pontibus,
~or shall flow, that they may stand on them as on many bridges,

et pandere alas ad aestivum solem;
~and open their wings to the summer sun;

si forte praeceps Eurus sparserit morantes,
~if by chance the violent east wind has scattered the loitering bees,

aut immerserit Neptuno 
~or plunged them into the sea.

Circum haec virides easiae et serpylla olentia late et copia thymbrae spirantis graviter floreat;
~Around these places let green cassia and thyme grow far around and plenty of strong smelling blossom;

que violaria bibant irriguum fontem.
~and let violet beds drink from the flowing fountains.

Source:

VIDEO ~ Marla Spivak ~ 2013 TED Talk:
https://www.ted.com/talks/marla_spivak_why_bees_are_disappearing?language=en#t-107074

Marla Spivak ~ 2013 TED Talk Transcript:
https://www.ted.com/talks/marla_spivak_why_bees_are_disappearing/transcript?language=en

Georgics, Book IV, by Publius Virgilius Maro ca. 29 B.C.

Best Regards'
Joe Waggle
https://www.facebook.com/Historical.Honeybee.Articles/


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

>>"The bottom line is, bees dying reflects a flowerless landscape and a dysfunctional 
food system." "Set aside farmland. We need a beautiful diversity of flowers that 
blooms over the entire growing season, from spring to fall. We need roadsides 
seeded in flowers for our bees, but also for migrating butterflies and birds and other 
wildlife. And we need to think carefully about putting back in cover crops to nourish 
our soil and nourish our bees. And we need to diversify our farms. We need to plant 
flowering crop borders and hedge rows to disrupt the agricultural food desert and 
begin to correct the dysfunctional food system that we've created." -Marla Spivak, 2013<<

Here here :thumbsup:
Let this be one of our industries major focuses!!


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## aunt betty (May 4, 2015)

Sounds great until we do a cost analysis and try to determine who will pay for this flowery landscape.
In Champaign County, the highest price paid for ONE ACRE of tillable land is over $32,000.
An 80-acre farm costs how much? 

As a hunter I'd love to see some changes but again, who is going to pay? (not me)

I know farmers who expect to nearly double production in the next ten years to keep up with the demands of an ever-expanding human population. Every square inch of tillable ground is precious to the corporate farm system.
CHEMICALS is how it's going to happen. They could not care any less about bees (except for orchards) .


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

The "Ancients" in this case being people in the Roman world of 2000 years ago worked primarily with bees that did not have varroa mites.

Having said that, a world without modern insecticides, and less monocultural crops, must have been an advantage.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

Can't argue the fact our flowering landscape is disappearing


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## naturebee (Dec 25, 2004)

aunt betty said:


> Sounds great until we do a cost analysis and try to determine who will pay for this flowery landscape.
> In Champaign County, the highest price paid for ONE ACRE of tillable land is over $32,000.
> An 80-acre farm costs how much?


Good points. 
A flowering landscape can be a crop farm also. According to Spivak, 
'diversifying of crops/farms can achieve this goal'. Diversification 
without additional costs can be achieved in farming.



aunt betty said:


> As a hunter I'd love to see some changes but again, who is going to pay? (not me)


Here in Pennsylvania, the hunters have paid for all game lands through
licensing fees. Another enormous diversification of farm land / bee forage is
now taking place in this region. Due to the natural gas boom, many
of the farmers in my area who practiced crop monocultures have become
wealthy. Not needing to plant large expanses, much of this land is being
diverted to wildlife and natural flowerly landscape. Time will tell what
the benefits may be. 

Best Wishes,
Joe


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## BeeBop (Apr 23, 2015)

The "Ancients" didn't live on a planet with 7.3 BILLION humans that need to be fed with 200,000+ more mouths to feed every day.
The real problem is that humans need to stop breeding like flies.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

Who do you figure we cut first...


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## Vance G (Jan 6, 2011)

Ian said:


> Who do you figure we cut first...


I vote California should be depopulated and all that precious water be used for diverse horticultural practices and feed a whole lot of people and require a whole lot of pollinators. Its always someone elses job to suffer.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Put it this way. If we do not depopulate ourselves in an organised way, something else, be it war, plague, or starvation, eventually will.

Notice more new plagues keep popping up more and more often? Notice we are struggling more to control them?

The planet is so big.


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## Vance G (Jan 6, 2011)

Dr Malthus used to have a lot more currency. This population may indeed crash and then stabilize at a yet higher rate. We are a successful species. In the sixties when I was in college we were all going to be dead years ago. USA agronomic science changed the whole equation in the seventies and eighties. If we get fusion, we will water the desert and a whole new supposedly unsustainable level of people will be possible. When reason prevails and GMO food is fully implemented, lots more people will be fed. The books 1491 and 1493 for historical perspective on populations and what makes them possible. I still think Californians would not be missed that much.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

"a whole new supposedly unsustainable level of people will be possible".

To what purpose? Already we are extinctifying the animals.


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## BeeBop (Apr 23, 2015)

Why do we need to fill every square inch of this planet with people?


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

I'm my eye this is quite the ridiculous argument. We will adapt or die and the fate of dying and otherwise should be completely out of our hands. Let's focus on the adapting part... And let's start with finding managment practices that help keep our flowers. 

We are Beekeepers, let's keep our focus on what we can achieve


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## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

BeeBop said:


> Why do we need to fill every square inch of this planet with people?


because procreation is ingrained into our DNA just like every other species, and it's fun!


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## deknow (Jul 17, 2006)

Malthus observed that a population will always (absent other pressures) grow to outstrip it's available resources.

This is one of my favorite Sci fi stories on the subject (it asks you to download app, but you can read the whole story without downloading)
http://www.scribd.com/mobile/doc/100964572/Larry-Niven-Bordered-in-Black


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

deknow said:


> Malthus observed that a population will always (absent other pressures) grow to outstrip it's available resources.


Agreed, for lemmings.

But we are a smarter species and our large brain allows us to understand the issues, and even do something about them.

Or does it?


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## deknow (Jul 17, 2006)

There seems (at least to me, at least superficially) that there is a feedback loop of sorts in play.

One of the best predictors of the number of children a human woman will have is education...the more educated, the less children . In the old days, educated women were often considered less desirable for marriage (my grandfather told my mother that if she wanted to go to grad school he would find some way to pay for it, but if she got too smart no one would want to marry her).

The issue is with the word 'we'. Without getting into some kind of strict delineation between 'us' and 'them', in rough the more civilized a person, or segment of a population becomes, the less children they produce.

We have never had a situation (amd it's hard to imagine a real one) where the population across the globe is all so equally 'civilized' and educated that there are no significant uneducated populations that fill in any gaps in population growth that the more educated populations have left.


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## whix (Feb 3, 2002)

Oldtimer;If we do not depopulate ourselves ...[/QUOTE said:


> If no one else is willing to take responsibility and depopulate themselves, I will..., but not for another 20+ years!


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## naturebee (Dec 25, 2004)

Oldtimer said:


> The "Ancients" in this case being people in the Roman world of 2000 years ago worked primarily with bees that did not have varroa mites.
> 
> Having said that, a world without modern insecticides, and less monocultural crops, must have been an advantage.


A valid point Oldtimer,

But I might add, that because Virgil needed to write 

'Principio sedes apibus statioque petenda,'
~First we must seek an abode and station for the bees,

The Ancients probably had some of the same disadvantages we have.
There were probably bad places as well as good places
to keep bees, and Virgil felt the need to define what
a good place to keep bees actually is, in Georgics IV

Best Wishes,
Joe


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## aunt betty (May 4, 2015)

Someone asked why we have to populate every square inch of the planet. The answer is simple. "because industry depends on growth". Whenever they're talking about growth I think it's in reference to population. People with tiny babies are easier to manage and make dependent upon technology and industry.

On another topic, geneology, they (geneologists) say that the human population has blossomed and wilted to a number of around 3000 individuals no less than FIVE times. It's going to happen again. Then the bees will be just fine. Til then we have to deal with the effects of technology and industrialization..growth and stripping the earth of it's resources. 

The Mayans stripped their lands and moved north. At this point where do we move to? Texas?


Back to CCD and the ancients. I believe CCD and neonics are intertwined. The neonics appeared at nearly the exact time that CCD did. (2002) 
Reflect on that fact and consider that ancients had no such technology or maybe they did. Who knows? Ask Socrates.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

aunt betty said:


> Back to CCD and the ancients. I believe CCD and neonics are intertwined. The neonics appeared at nearly the exact time that CCD did. (2002)


Since no neonics show up in pollen samples pulled from hives, maybe we should look at Varroa/Virus as the culprit.


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## aunt betty (May 4, 2015)

The source that I've been listening to claims that neonics cause plants to manufacture 1000 different types of poison. I'm not smart enough to say one way or the other but it sure is a coincidence that neonics and CCD came out at around the same year. 
Either way we need to develop a better way to take out pests in corn and soybeans. Something more specific to each insect we want gone, not just one size kills all. 

Of course varroa and the diseases they transmit are bad too. No smoking gun either way. 
I've placed all my colonies in the city on the opposite end of the prevailing winds to stay as far away from planting drift as I can.
We have southwest winds 90% of the time at seed planting time so all my hives are on the north side of a city that's about 4 miles wide north to south. I think it helps. Need more years under my belt to see.

The University has all their colonies on the south end and ...they've lost most of their bees again this year.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

One size fits all.... Broadcast spraying


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

aunt betty said:


> The source that I've been listening to claims that neonics cause plants to manufacture 1000 different types of poison. I'm not smart enough to say one way or the other but it sure is a coincidence that neonics and CCD came out at around the same year.
> Either way we need to develop a better way to take out pests in corn and soybeans.
> 
> Something more specific to each insect we want gone, not just one size kills all.


The appearance of two things coinciding is only how it appears to you, not necessarily how things are or how they occurred.

And since you call for something other than a "one size fits all" insecticide, isn't blaming CCD on neonics a one size fits all diagnosis?


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

Oldtimer said:


> Agreed, for lemmings.
> 
> But we are a smarter species and our large brain allows us to understand the issues, and even do something about them.
> 
> Or does it?


I'm not sure you are observing the same we that I am. I do wish you were right, but as a species I'm not sure that we are any more capable of changing our behavior than the cyanobacteria which oxygenated the atmosphere and thus went from dominant life form to the scum on stagnant ponds.


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## SRatcliff (Mar 19, 2011)

aunt betty said:


> Someone asked why we have to populate every square inch of the planet. The answer is simple. "because industry depends on growth". Whenever they're talking about growth I think it's in reference to population. People with tiny babies are easier to manage and make dependent upon technology and industry.
> 
> On another topic, geneology, they (geneologists) say that the human population has blossomed and wilted to a number of around 3000 individuals no less than FIVE times. It's going to happen again. Then the bees will be just fine. Til then we have to deal with the effects of technology and industrialization..growth and stripping the earth of it's resources.


Speaking of collapse of human population due to the occasional "reset buttons", hasn't things like CCD always come and gone according to the old articles(disappearing disease etc)? Things come in cycles, you see it all over the planet and the universe. Regarding people, we've reached a state evolutionarily and technologically state that allows us to be more introspective and more connected to a point where we could possibly have SOME control over our survival and existence(diverting asteroids, populating Mars). Unless we develop AI, then we're toast.


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## Kamon A. Reynolds (Apr 15, 2012)

BeeBop said:


> Why do we need to fill every square inch of this planet with people?


Ask your mother.


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## D Coates (Jan 6, 2006)

aunt betty said:


> I'm not smart enough to say one way or the other but it sure is a coincidence that neonics and CCD came out at around the same year.


Your source is whom? Because they're flat wrong. Neonics have been around over 20 years. "CCD" assuming it actually existed, showed up less than 10 years ago. There's a decade floating around in there.

Secondly, If "CCD" was created by the use of Neonics it would still be going on as we're using it more here in North America more than ever. Australia has never had these "CCD" symptoms yet they use neonics there all the time. Europe banned them via public pressure (not scientific results), yet their hive collapse numbers didn't improve above the US.


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