bertsmobile1
Lawn Royalty
- Joined
- Nov 29, 2014
- Threads
- 65
- Messages
- 24,995
Re: Tupelo Honey
It is a problem with the bees, a very big problem . We could very well be staring down world starvation.
There is a bug called the Veroa mite that is destroying bee colonies all around the world with the exception of Aust & NZ, because we are islands.
It's spread was made a lot faster because of the intense massive monocultures of large ari-business farms that pay apiarist to come from all over the country to pollinate their crops because they have wiped out every other flowering plant so after the corn/ maize/ canola is pollinated there is nothing else for the bees to feed on so the apiarist from the east cost infected the bees from the west coast .
Thus at the moment the entire USA & EU agriculture sector is near 100% dependent on getting queen bees from down here .
While some small apiarists actually make good money from selling their honey the bulk of them make their living from providing pollination services.
Europe, where the mite problem originated, very quickly passes bio-control proceedures through the ECU but in the USA where it is state government controlled the proper bio - control proceedures are yet to be legislated and even then it is highly doubtful that they will be enforced.
Honey prices down here have tripled because we are exporting so much honey and queen bees thus only the premium brands of honey are widely available and then we have initiated strong bio-controls over bee movements and over chemical use.
Periodically there is no honey on the shelves and food processors who used to use honey have changed their formulas to use treakle or molassas from cane sugar and that is why sugar prices have gone up.
AS over 75% of the food we eat is bee pollinated this is a very serious problem that rarely gets a mention.
Naturally the prime suspects Monsanto / Beyer etc are working on a chemical solution to the pollination and denying that long term pesticide use has anything to do with the Veroa problem.
Oddly enough the small organic type farms with their own captive bee populations seem far less affected than the large scale operations so some work is going down the genetic improvement of bees path along the lines that natural selection has been circumvented by apiarists over the past 50 years and thus we now have genetically inferiour bees which are no longer able to live with Veroa that has been around for centuries.
However the small organic farmers can not feed the entire worlds population .
Another strain of research is working with bees native to individual countries that are very selective pollinators to see if they can be trained to feed on commercial food crop pollen thus long term replacing Cappilarno Italianarno, which is the only bee that will pollinate any flower that has pollen which is why the entire world uses it to pollinate food crops in the first place.
Funny when you think about it that every one is captivated by some fanatic Korean who might blow up the world while in reality we could be wiped out by a mite .
So enjoy your honey wile you ca get it and plant things in your garden that are selectively pollinated by native USA bees or better still get a native honey bee hive installed at you property.
It is a problem with the bees, a very big problem . We could very well be staring down world starvation.
There is a bug called the Veroa mite that is destroying bee colonies all around the world with the exception of Aust & NZ, because we are islands.
It's spread was made a lot faster because of the intense massive monocultures of large ari-business farms that pay apiarist to come from all over the country to pollinate their crops because they have wiped out every other flowering plant so after the corn/ maize/ canola is pollinated there is nothing else for the bees to feed on so the apiarist from the east cost infected the bees from the west coast .
Thus at the moment the entire USA & EU agriculture sector is near 100% dependent on getting queen bees from down here .
While some small apiarists actually make good money from selling their honey the bulk of them make their living from providing pollination services.
Europe, where the mite problem originated, very quickly passes bio-control proceedures through the ECU but in the USA where it is state government controlled the proper bio - control proceedures are yet to be legislated and even then it is highly doubtful that they will be enforced.
Honey prices down here have tripled because we are exporting so much honey and queen bees thus only the premium brands of honey are widely available and then we have initiated strong bio-controls over bee movements and over chemical use.
Periodically there is no honey on the shelves and food processors who used to use honey have changed their formulas to use treakle or molassas from cane sugar and that is why sugar prices have gone up.
AS over 75% of the food we eat is bee pollinated this is a very serious problem that rarely gets a mention.
Naturally the prime suspects Monsanto / Beyer etc are working on a chemical solution to the pollination and denying that long term pesticide use has anything to do with the Veroa problem.
Oddly enough the small organic type farms with their own captive bee populations seem far less affected than the large scale operations so some work is going down the genetic improvement of bees path along the lines that natural selection has been circumvented by apiarists over the past 50 years and thus we now have genetically inferiour bees which are no longer able to live with Veroa that has been around for centuries.
However the small organic farmers can not feed the entire worlds population .
Another strain of research is working with bees native to individual countries that are very selective pollinators to see if they can be trained to feed on commercial food crop pollen thus long term replacing Cappilarno Italianarno, which is the only bee that will pollinate any flower that has pollen which is why the entire world uses it to pollinate food crops in the first place.
Funny when you think about it that every one is captivated by some fanatic Korean who might blow up the world while in reality we could be wiped out by a mite .
So enjoy your honey wile you ca get it and plant things in your garden that are selectively pollinated by native USA bees or better still get a native honey bee hive installed at you property.
