Only hardier species can adapt to global warming
Story submitted by Eric Worrall
Another claim that its worse than we thought – this time warmer temperatures are killing the bees.
According to Scott Groom, PhD student at Flinders University, mathematical modelling has connected changes in bee populations over the past 20,000 years across the South Pacific region, and exceptionally large declines in bee populations, with changes in temperature.
Groom says that prior to the ice age when temperatures rose, many bee species migrated to cooler areas, with only one hardy species able to adapt to the warmer temperature.
“They’re almost canaries in the coal mine, you can see that they’re going to be the first sort of species to be impacted by changes in climate,” Groom said.
The study, “Parallel responses of bees to Pleistocene climate change in three isolated archipelagos of the southwestern Pacific” can be found at the link below.
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/281/1785/20133293.abstract
Abstract
The impacts of glacial cycles on the geographical distribution and size of populations have been explored for numerous terrestrial and marine taxa. However, most studies have focused on high latitudes, with only a few focused on the response of biota to the last glacial maximum (LGM) in equatorial regions. Here, we examine how population sizes of key bee fauna in the southwest Pacific archipelagos of Fiji, Vanuatu and Samoa have fluctuated over the Quaternary. We show that all three island faunas suffered massive population declines, roughly corresponding in time to the LGM, followed by rapid expansion post-LGM. Our data therefore suggest that Pleistocene climate change has had major impacts across a very broad tropical region. While other studies indicate widespread Holarctic effects of the LGM, our data suggest a much wider range of latitudes, extending to the tropics, where these climate change repercussions were important. As key pollinators, the inferred changes in these bee faunas may have been critical in the development of the diverse Pacific island flora. The magnitude of these responses indicates future climate change scenarios may have alarming consequences for Pacific island systems involving pollinator-dependent plant communities and agricultural crops.
I don’t have access to the full text, so I don’t know whether other possible causes of population crashes, such as bee killing Varroa mites, were considered.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varroa .
Varroa mites were originally discovered in Asia, but have since spread worldwide. Some bees are resistant to Varroa mites, because they have evolved hygiene behaviour, which removes and kills the mites.
This guy is obviously not a bee keeper or he would know bees love hot weather.
It’s becoming clearer every day, that we are living in a computer animation recreation.
Obviously, enough unprecedented catastrophic climate change calamities have occurred that life on earth became extinct eons ago.
Nothing could have survived all these sequences of catastrophic events.
And I’m beginning to wonder if there are enough climate melodies left, to fully occupy all of the otherwise unemployable US post doc fellows, that are being churned out by the education system.
Maybe they will soon be on the endangered species list.
So some of these Pacific atolls are going to have no bees at oll by the time they end up being flooded by acid sea level rise.
Anecdote alert: A local beekeeper once told me that a nearby large scale honey producer lost most of his hives over winter because he had taken too much honey during his last Autumn rob of the hives.
There is a lot of info and mis-info out there:
http://operaresearch.eu/files/repository/20121210154701_BeeHealthinEurope-Anoverview.pdf
I think climate change os a non-starter on this one.
Further info on Ontario in particular and Canada in general:
http://www.ontariobee.com/sites/ontariobee.com/files/2013%20CAPA%20Statement%20on%20Colony%20Losses%20-%20final.pdf
Again — it does not seem like Climate Change is the issue.
Conclusion:
The mortality level for honey bee colonies over the winter of 2012/2013 was high (28.6%). This follows a year of decreased colony mortality. It should be stressed that it is important to look at the long-term, multi-year trend of winter mortality in Canada (figure 1). Although it is also important to consider variation, by region and between beekeeping operations it is clear that the level of colony mortality has been at a high level for several years.
Responses from provincial surveys indicated that weather, poor queens, weak colonies in fall, nosema and ineffective varroa control were reasons that beekeepers are suspecting for the high wintering losses. Clearly the impacts of pest, pathogens and environmental factors continue to be a challenge to commercial beekeepers across Canada. There are a variety of strategies that have been pursued to address these challenges including applied and basic research, pest and pathogens monitoring, responses to pesticide incidents through incident reports and data collection, regulatory authority to address bee pests and pathogens that may threaten the industry, advisory and extension services to beekeepers promoting best management practices. It has become obvious that the future of beekeeping will depend on a multi-factorial approach to address the risks associated with honey bee health and wintering honey bees in Canada
fwiw
Here is one UK summer insect that has been devastated by heat. It’s worse than we thought.
I remember hot UK summers. There were always more bees and I keep wondering why?
Global warming seems to be good for the canary population. They seem to be migrating towards the coal mines.
There are way too many assumptions that have to be made to be able to take this study seriously.
Even if we take it seriously, are we all supposed to adopt Amish lifestyles because a warmer planet might possibly endanger bees in Samoa, Vanuatu and Fiji?
if bees can survive in Dubai in Summer they can survive anywhere.
Jimbo says:
May 9, 2014 at 8:51 am
“They’re almost canaries in the coal mine
——————-
headlines that will be coming.
Global cooling is the canary in the coalmine that indicates changes in climate are happening.
Jimbo says: (May 9, 2014 at 8:51 am)
Holy similie Jimbo! Who knew? Those coal mine canaries are busier than a one-armed hooker at a Secret Service convention on free handjob night! At least Global Warming is good for coal mine canaries — those suckers are multiplying faster than bunnies on Viagra.
I am afraid varroa mites have nothing to do.
mpainter says:
“There is such a thing as alarm overload (crying wolf), and the threshhold of response is raised, necessitating a higher level of alarm. Ho will they achieve that, because we are at alarm saturation already”
This is a profound statement. I think they made a “catastrophic” blunder with Holdren doing his video presentation connecting global warming to extreme cold and claiming that we should expect to see more of it.
Some of those in the brainwashed trans about global warming and climate change had a WTF moment as they realized how absurd this sounds, surrounded by extreme cold much of the Winter.
Granted, this part of the US and into parts of Canada were at the epicenter of the globally extreme cold anomalies(from a pattern similar to the Winter of 1976/77) and this administration was desperately in need of new damage control propaganda but this was their dumbest move ever.
However, linking extreme cold and predicting more of it from global warming is not only a bad sales pitch……….it causes some to no longer trust everything else that they were believing because that was based entirely on trusting that same source.
Even an Ice Age won’t shake the faith of many people and many sources from that side were celebrating this video because it now provided even more ammunition for their side that had them covered for even 1 more weather extreme…………………bad idea!
People can believe that global warming would hurt polar bears, crops, frogs, bees and every creature on the planet, as well as cause floods, droughts, tornadoes, cyclones and every extreme type of weather but making a special video presentation with your climate change science guru that claims global warming is causing the “Polar Vortex” to be displaced and will cause more extreme cold was, for some folks, like telling them to put on sunscreen to avoid the damaging rays of the sun, instead of taking an umbrella with them…………… on a rainy day!
http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2014/01/john-holdren-video-polar-vortex
If you want the weather maps from the Winter of 76/77, go to the link below. You can start with whatever date you choose. I like to start with 1976-11-01-00 which is the start of November 1976. Advance by using the + above the day and go forward by 24 hours for the next 3 months.
Don’t worry about the end date unless you want to do a loop. Advancing manually is best so you can pause as long as you want to study a map or even go back to see the previous day(s).
Have fun watching the “Polar Vortex’ drop way far south even more often than it did this past Winter. In the Winter of 1976/77, California was also suffering with a severe drought.
http://www.hpc.ncep.noaa.gov/ncepreanal/
BTW, the reason I believe we have been having much colder Winters and the Polar Vortex dropped south with recent Winters featuring some strongly -AO/-NAO’s(though some of our most extreme cold this year that hit farther west, did not have the -AO/-NAO in place at that time) is because we are in the part of a natural cycle similar to where we were in the 1970’s.
The influence of the natural cycle featured more warming in the 80’s/90’s and has flipped to become an influence towards cooling and harsh Winters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PDO.svg
I wonder how many bee colonies were killed from the cold this past Winter?
For the first time in 20 years, my butterfly bushes, crape myrtles, bamboo, hydrangea’s and some roses were killed to the root.
A lot of bare spots with new sprouts coming up this Spring. My landscaping and the wildlife in this area sure did much better when we were having global warming in the 1980’s and 1990’s.
Our heating bills? I think a lot of people had even bigger WTF moments seeing them.
Next Headline: Global warming, sorry, Climate change, causes elephants to fly, according to computer model.
It just doesn’t hit home without that fake Einstein bee quote.
1830 – English (or German) bees survive rapid climate change to Australia. Hopes for industry to thrive.
I get tired of these computer “studies” that produce “data” where none exists. Also tired of trying to make fun of such seemingly worthless waste of research funds.
Those islands were likely uninhabited much more than 1,000 years ago. So there’s no human observational data to support such claims. Also, those islands have plenty of pollinating bird species. I’d be surprised if bees mattered much, or even if there ever were many species.
These paywalled papers have to live or die by their abstract.
And this abstract screams; ho hum ! A total waste of dead trees.
And you are going to have a hard time making a case for catastrophic warming of small dots of land surrounded by vast oceans.
This thread is a good candidate for the circular file.
We have been warned by ‘experts’ of the demise of the bumble bee,having a large garden I begin to see a few in the early spring. This year I am seeing the most I have ever seen in the 35 years of
ownership.perhaps an ‘expert’ can explain.
Every species we like (e.g. bees, bears) will be harmed by climate change. Every species we dislike (e.g. mosquitos, poison ivy) will be increased by climate change. It’s magic!
Yup, pretty much anything bad that can happen will and nothing good can come out of it. Go wonder, if this was not the case then it wouldn’t be news. If it is not gory and scary (or sex) it doesn’t sell news.
Hey Anthony, what’s with the smiley at the bottom of all pages?
OK, so if a few degrees warming is going to kill almost all the bees, when why do bees currently exist in various climates ranging from hot climates near the equator, to very temporate climates extending far away from the equator.
On the presumption (yes just a presumption) that Global Warming is happening, why would it wipe out many bees who currently live in a wide variation of climates?
Why hasn’t someone produced a study showing Global Warming will devastate the carpenter bee population? Inquiring minds want to know.
GUYS, THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT COLD KILLING THE BEES…
..AND THE BEES DID BETTER WHEN IT GOT WARMER
Latitude says:
May 9, 2014 at 1:20 pm
Shh. We’re spontaneously jerking here. 😉
No seriously, I think we’re just reacting to the press release.
How was this possible in Australia? Next time you hear that global warming is killing European bees you can show them this.
Maybe this is the crux of the confusion:
Did he actually say that in connection to his work, or did the reporter just mix it all up?