March 22nd, 2013

Beekeepers and environmental groups sued the EPA this week for allowing pesticides that are causing an epidemic of bee deaths. The suit asks the agency to suspend the permits for certain pesticides, which have been shown to poison bees, which in turn threatens a wide array of crops dependent on bee pollination.

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June 11th, 2012

Rachel Carson once warned the world that the pesticides we were using to kill weeds were devastating birds, threatening to bring on a ‘Silent Spring’. People woke up and banned the potent herbicide DDT, saving the American Bald Eagle and countless song birds (and fish, farm animals, trees and more). They began to control pollution and clean up rivers and lakes, answering Carson’s clarion call.

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March 25th, 2012

A coalition of commercial beekeepers and environmental groups is urging U.S. regulators to suspend the use of a pesticide they say may be contributing to a sharp decline in honeybee populations. In a petition to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency…

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January 5th, 2011

Wait! Don’t squash that baby bumblebee. You could be hurting a struggling species. Several varieties of bumblebees, which help pollinate major fruit and veggie crops, are in serious decline in the U.S., according to a report in Science magazine online.

The report focuses on a survey of bumblebees undertaken by University of Illinois/Urban-Champaign entomologist Sydney Cameron who says the United States has simply “lost a lot of bees” in recent decades.

“There are whole regions where we can’t find them any more,” he told Science.

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November 16th, 2009

By Chris Reinolds
Green Right Now

Beekeeper Laura Johnson enjoys tending to her buzzing friends, but the real motive behind her hobby is stopping the decline of honey bees.

Bee Colony Collapse Disorder has been threatening bees, and the crops they serve, around the world for the past several years.

So Johnson, an organic gardener in suburban Atlanta, decided it was time to jump into honey.

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November 5th, 2009

Green Right Now Reports

How many more causes can we shop or tweet for? At least one more, hopes Haagen-Daz, makers of those indulgences so inadequately called ice cream.

Haagen-Daz has been running a campaign to raise awareness about the decline of honey bees due to Colony Collapse Disorder. It’s close to the ice cream maker’s heart, and also should we say vat? , because the bees help pollinate almonds and, obviously, supply honey, both vital ingredients for HD flavors.

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July 30th, 2009

By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now

Help the Honey Bees, a web-based campaign by Haagen Daz is trying to build buzz for the beneficial insects, which are beset by a mysterious ailment that causes whole colonies to collapse.

The effort includes backing some cute You Tube videos (dancing humans dressed as bees definitely help personify this issue), and a series of “challenges” on the Experience Project in which people can plant a flower or pledge to eat natural foods to help honey bees. There’s also a bee trivia quiz.

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July 29th, 2009

From Green Right Now Reports

A compound from honeybees known as propolis, the substance bees use to seal their hives, may protect against heat stress in athletes, according to an article released in the Journal of Food Science, published by the Institute of Food Technologists.

Honeybee propolis, or bee glue, has been widely used as a folk medicine. An active ingredient in propolis known as caffeic acid phenethyl ester (or CAPE) has a broad spectrum of biological activities including antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and antiviral. Hyperthermia, or heat stress, is considered to be the main factor underlying the early fatigue and dehydration seen during prolonged exercise in the heat.

The discovery is another reminder of the potential ramifications of the loss in recent years of millions of bees around the world to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Scientists believe that CCD is a result of multiple stresses on the bees, such as loss of habitat, drought and possibly chronic exposure to pesticides, that weaken the bees immune systems, subjecting them to untimely deaths from viruses and other infections.

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June 30th, 2008

By Barbara Kessler

If you’ve been wondering about all the buzz over honeybees, here is some food for thought – or rather some thought about food: Bees play a role in one out of every three bites of food Americans eat.

Pollinators, mainly bees, but also butterflies, songbirds and even bats, perform such a critical function in the food chain that their absence threatens everything from the viability of vast fields of commercial corn and other crops to the tomatoes in your garden. Without the bees and other pollinators, plants can fail to produce the fruits and seeds we eat.

Which is why a San Francisco-based group called the Pollinator Partnership has dedicated itself to the survival of pollinators — from hummingbirds to small mammals to the fragile and busiest pollinators of them all, the bees. Partnership members, along with beekeepers and researchers testified before Congress last week to lobby lawmakers for more funding to research the decline of many pollinators, particularly the loss of millions of bees around the world to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).

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