From the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council
Researchers have found that the spread of an exotic honey bee parasite -now found worldwide – is linked not only to its superior competitive ability, but also to climate, according to a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
The team of researchers, including Myrsini Natsopoulou from the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, who co-led the research alongside Dr. Dino McMahon from Queen’s University Belfast, believes that the parasite could become more prevalent in the UK in the future and their findings demonstrate the importance of both parasite competition and climate change in the spread of this emerging disease.
Myrsini Natsopoulou said: “Our results reveal not only that the exotic parasite is a better competitor than its original close relative, but that its widespread distribution and patterns of prevalence in nature depend on climatic conditions too”.
The research compared pathogen growth in honey bees that were infected with both the exotic parasite, Nosema ceranae and its original native relative, Nosema apis.
Experiments showed that, while both parasites inhibit each other’s growth, the exotic Nosema ceranae has a much greater negative impact on the native Nosema apis than vice versa. By integrating the effects of competition and climate into a simple mathematical model, the researchers were better able to predict the relative occurrence of both parasite species in nature: Nosema ceranae is common in Southern Europe but rare in Northern Europe.
Coauthor of the study, Prof. Robert Paxton of Queen’s University Belfast, added: “This emerging parasite is more susceptible to cold than its original close relative, possibly reflecting its presumed origin in east Asia. In the face of rising global temperatures, our findings suggest that it will increase in prevalence and potentially lead to increased honey bee colony losses in Britain.”
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This study was funded by the Insect Pollinators Initiative, a joint venture of the UK’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), Defra, the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), the Scottish Government and the Wellcome Trust, managed under the auspices of the Living with Environmental Change (LWEC) partnership.
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The biggest threat to bees is terrible bio security. It’s no accident that hot, disease free Australia exports healthy bees to the rest of the World.
While very true, that’s an ironic comment considering that honeybees are a non-native invasive species in most parts of the world. As a beekeeper, I happen to think that they are a wonderful species but I do not avoid the fact that in an environment of true “bio-security” they wouldn’t be in Australia (or the US or most of Europe) in the first place.
The biggest threat to bees are the gigantic “agricultural deserts” of corn and other energy plants which were made to produce CO2-neutral bio-fuel to “protect” the world against evil and satanic CO2 from fossil fuels, which – nota bene – would help to make the Earth greener and consequently a much better place for flowers and bees to live…
Alas! Isn’t it a tragedy that pure superstition rules our western and highly educated societies ???
The widespread growth of corn started in the 1970s, when then US Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz pushed through changes to farming laws that caused corn to become a favored crop. This continued with the use of corn as the primary feedstock for cattle and the ubiquitous use of high fructose corn syrup. The use of ethanol has increased the growth of corn further, but the trend started a long time ago.
@chris
That might be correct for the US. But in Europe and especially in Germany started this “biodiversity desertification of the agricultural landscape by energy-corn” (In German: Vermaisung der Landschaft) with the extreme hyping of bio-fuel and bio-gas in order to “save” the world from fossil fuel CO2 in the last 10 years.
An excellent documentation of this problem (caused exclusively by the CAGW hsyteria) is given in the following movie after 31:00 minutes running time:
More ” efficient ” farming has been a big problem for bees. The spraying of fence lines, ditches, and the general cleanup of wild native plants creates both shortage of year round pollen sources and lack of diversity .
Here in Central California, it has also contributed to the scarcity of other wildlife such as rabbits and game birds. There simply are not as many breeding areas, or cover against Hawks and coyotes .
“A warming world may spell bad news for (insert anything you like here)”..
And they were likely funded by the taxpayer, either through donations or “donations” at gunpoint (taxes).
Any minute now, a headline will read: Bees of the future won’t be able to take off at some beehives due to global warming.
Brilliant! 😉
Coauthor of the study, Prof. Robert Paxton of Queen’s University Belfast, added: “This emerging parasite is more susceptible to cold than its original close relative, possibly reflecting its presumed origin in east Asia. In the face of rising global temperatures, our findings suggest that it will increase in prevalence and potentially lead to increased honey bee colony losses in Britain.”
If temperatures rise there might possibly be a problem. If temperatures fall then never mind. Got it.
2nd para ‘believes that’ and ‘could become’. Para 5 ‘ By integrating the effects of competition and climate into a simple mathematical model, the researchers were better able to predict’. Para 7 ‘ possibly reflecting its presumed…’ and ‘ our findings suggest’ and ‘ potentially lead…’
Good solid stuff, well done, worth every penny!
This Yankee gets the sarcasm, mwh, but the truth of the matter is;
“Good solid stuff, well done, worth
every[a] penny!”And I believe they owe us about three cents change from that penny.
I disagree, H.R.
I won’t settle for less than a nickel.
“Good solid stuff, well done, worth every penny!”
You forgot to add the word robust.
True,
In the spring here, the bees come out to do their stuff, but when we get a mild cold snap we see them clinging to whatever and obviously dying.
I bet there is a paper somewhere that warns of burgeoning populations of bees as temperatures grow.
However the most important thing to remember is that us taxpayers probably financed Prof Paxton’s paper.
Cheers
Roger
http://www.rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com
and didnt the cold winters knock off a lot of bees the last couple of years in UK?
so some warmer milder weather might be good for them?
and the plants they need to survive.
our aussie bees(I help an apiaist) cope in desert areas where over 40c isnt unusual
as long as we keep water up they do fine.
and any keeper worth the name is well on the ball in regular checks and burning any infected hives.
“By integrating the effects of competition and climate into a simple mathematical model …”
No complex models needed here.
Let me guess, it’s because as the air gets warmer and less dense, they won’t have enough power to take off without severe weight restrictions?
They really aren’t even trying anymore, are they?
During the Eemian interglacial, about 125,000 years ago when global temperatures were 3 C above what they are now, I wonder how life survived for another interglacial in which we now live?
I wonder how it survived glacial periods. Snowpiercer?
The honey bee is not native to North America (nor is the common garden worm). It is a European invasive species that the Native Americans considered a sign that the White Man was getting closer to ruining another day.
Perhaps the eco-green preservationists should welcome the demise of the honey bee (and promote the eradication of the earthworm). Get things back to Nature. If the previous range of the Polar Bear is the goal, so should the previous range of the honey bee, i.e. not including North America (or Australia).
Wait. The eco-green LIKE their honey on toast. That puts this creature into the OTHER category, the “okay as is” one.
The reason there were no earthworms in North America before the arrival of Europeans is that the ice age ice sheets eradicated whatever earthworms there were. Or so I have read.
Of course, the ice sheets did not cover all of North America. Nor is the earthworm confined to Europe: I have seen earthworms over a foot long in Southeast Asia and the Philippines.
There were only a few species of worms introduced. There are also many native types. Areas previously covered in ice didn’t have them in some areas until those with european ancestry helped moved them around.
Worms – yes. Earthworms (Lumbricus terrestris) – no. Lumbricus terrestris is a European worm introduces as part of the European agricultural diaspora.
And a fathom long in Southern Africa.
Auto
global worming
To Auto: You do live near Middle Earth so I guess six-foot long earthworms are no problem.
I think it was Einstein who said if the world’s bee population were to suddenly die, human life would cease to exist within 5yrs.
So…common sense approach…
More C02 equals warmer temps.
Warmer temps equals more plants.
More plants equal more blossoms.
More blossoms equal happier bees.
What am I missing?
There really is a wolf, it really is coming out of the forest to eat the sheep this time. Honest! …….
Then what pollenated the flowers in the past when the temperatures rose?
Wishful thinking
Wind, ever wonder what all that gray-green stuff is all over your car after a moderate late spring wind, it’s just that the damn bees are a little more reliable for many, (non-native), fruit crops
Ants were native American pollinators.
There are native pollinators. Including other types of bees, just not the honey bee which europeans bred from african bees long ago. Some types of flies, a few bee types, some birds and others all pollinate, as well as self pollinating plants and wind pollinated.
Solitary bees? Wind? Other insects?
Hawk moths, among other lepidoptera, along with humming birds, just to name a few.
Climate models are very skilled at making predictions / projections. Just ask the IPCC.
They didn’t seem to get the Africanized Honey Bees (AHB) takeover of the over the European honey bees (EHBs) correct, so maybe they don’t have the correct factors either.
Some experts predicted the bees would spread throughout the country; others thought they’d reach only as far north as the latitude of Houston. Most expected there would be a southern zone where AHBs would predominate, a northern zone where EHBs would maintain a climatic advantage, and a large transitional zone between the two. And everyone expected AHBs to spread across the southernmost tier of states. But, as of January 2004, AHBs have been found only in southern California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and Texas, as well as Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Seems what stopped them was –
“What immediately jumped out at me was the correlation with rainfall,” he says. “Rainfall over 55 inches, distributed evenly throughout the year, is almost a complete barrier to AHB spread.”
Didn’t you also have a posting about how bad ‘Regional Climate Modeling’ was?
So it started in Asia.
I wonder how many bee colonies have been lost, so far?
World wide?
What has it done to the availability and the price of honey?
I don’t know about elsewhere but around here (Pacific Northwest) the price of honey has increased more than the average for most foods. Enough so, that I’m thinking about starting my own hives.
The world wide honey bee population is up over 20% since 2000. Honeybees are just like any other human raised animal, if we needed more we would just breed more of them.
“A warming world will cause (insert bad thing here).”
How many dozen, or hundred, are we up to now? Yes, we get it: alarmists are constantly claiming silly things about climate warming. At this point I don’t understand what purpose it serves to keep posting variations of the same story over and over and over.
The repeat of their claims without agreeing to any failures is the mantra of the left and the climate scientists. How do these scientists know that the parasite isn’t the result of being transported by humans to other nations? If that nation is too cold, the parasite dies. if the receiving nation is hot enough the parasite survives and propagates. What about the parasite that evolves to accept a cooler temperature and begins to propagate?
I talked to the world’s most successful artificial inseminator of bees. Yes there is one. He said the main cause of the spread of bee parasites was the long distance transport of bee colonies for money, by ‘pollination companies’. Like the frog and toad researchers, the bee keepers are the worst enemies of the creatures from which they seek to make a living.
Actually it’s “a warming world could”……insert terrible prediction here.
None of these scientits have any science to back up their claims so the use words like could and may.
In Wales (UK) where I live we live we have bees in our garden. My bee keeper has told me that early Springs and warm weather bring out the bees and they swarm more and make more honey for the winter, late springs and cold wet summers are bad for bees. So it is swings and roundabouts!
I also notice that when we holiday in Southern Europe where the summers are hotter there is more variety of insects, and more insects generally. Somehow I do not buy the idea that the bee keepers will panic at the prospect of more early springs and warmer summers.
My neighbor’s bees that survived a very hot summer two years ago all died last winter due to the extreme cold. We welcome some global warming.
This reminds me of claims that Malaria is spread by rising global temperature. The more these astrologists predict future the more their reputations suffer when the future doesn’t agree to cooperate.
I seem to recall reading that before the onset of the little ice age malaria, known as the ague, was commonplace in the south of England.
Mind you grapes which had grown as far north as the Scottish Borders in Roman times could not be grown, even in the very South of England, after the onset of the LIA, until the middle of the 20th century. The growing range for grapes in the UK is still several hundred miles South of that in Roman times.
are there new grape varieties that are better able to cope with the northern climates?
Sorry, didn’t reference my sources;
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/scarewatch/global_warming_spreads_malaria.html
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/20/another-climate-myth-bites-the-dust-mosquito-born-malaria-does-not-increase-with-temperature/
I keep hearing that but frankly we (including me) grow grapes here in Michigan, European wine grape vines grafted onto North American grape root stock. If we can grow grapes of reasonable quality where I live, and we did it back in the late 60’s, when it was a lot colder, (like it is now), I sceptical of claims it can’t be done in England. If someone were to say that the British didn’t need to because they were able to brew drinkable beers and mead I’d buy that.
Remember, organisms neither adapt nor evolve to changing conditions. None of them. The only thing anything responds to are shifts in the climate. [/sarc] Honestly, reading biological literature these days is aggravating because no one seems to ever consider any sort of hypothesis beyond “it’s getting warmer, woe is us”. The stupid, it hurts.
Hopefully not too far off-topic:
A headline story in some of the UK press today is that Seals in the North Sea are killing and eating harbour dolphins – with the additional tag line that swimmers may now be at risk.
I wonder how long it will be before some ‘scientist’ on the Eco-activist payroll blames this on global warming / climate change?
Not only that, Bottle Nose Dolphins are eating salmon; and I have seen a Bottle Nose kill a Harbour Porpoise.
In other words, things that ordinary people know about are now being “studied” by “scientists” who believe that they have found out new and wonderful “facts”.
Living organisms adapt to changing conditions.
Learn to live with this fact and spend the money on more important things.
In other words, things that ordinary people know about are now being “studied” by “scientists” who believe that they have found out new and wonderful WAYS TO MAKE GRANT MONEY.
Fixed it 🙂
European honey bees (Apis mellifera) are the bees being referred to here. They live in large colonies (or hives if you will) and regulate the temperature very accurately (about 35degC as I recall). They warm it in winter and cool it in summer. Nosema ceranae is a natural parasite in a few honey bee species in Asia. The native Asian species are gradually being replaced for honey production by the European honey bee because they want more honey and easier to manage hives. Varroa destructor, another serious mite parasite in European honey bee hives (worldwide except Australia) seems well adapted to normal hive temperatures, regardless of climate wherever the hives are being kept.
Since global warming is not expected to change the temperature inside the hive, the only impact would be bees needing to spend more energy cooling in summer and less energy warming in winter.
Very good points – shame that the authors of the report lacked your common sense .
Warwick,
You are saying that the European bee is being used for honey production in warmer Asian climes in preference to the native varieties, and is there no problem with the mites? If this is so, what boobs these authors are.
In short: life is so feeble and precarious it is a complete surprise we are still alive at all.
So:
1 One type of bee parasite competes preferentially with another type.
2 The parasite that relatively benefits from a warming world is bad for UK bees.
3 Model shows that a warming world is bad for UK bees.
That seems reasonable.
Let’s breed better bees. Maybe cross them with the foreign bees that have the relative immunity?
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/jun/23/can-cities-save-bees
In cities, which can but up to 10- 20 x hotter than the surrounding countryside –
“But surprisingly, the industry has discovered that bees kept in urban areas are healthier and produce better honey”
Ontario just banned a pesticide that is applied to commercial seeds, and is blamed for bee die off. Don’t know if it is true, but it would explain why city bees do so well, none of the plants they harvest nectar and pollen from would have been grown from these commercial farm seeds.
This unfortunately is not true. Neonicotinoids (the pesticide family being outlawed in Ontario) are some of the most commonly used pesticides in suburban and urban environments. Go to your local Home Depot or garden supply store and write down the active ingredients of the weed killers and other lawn treatments that your neighbors pour onto their grass. They are also the same chemicals used in your dog’s flea collar. Neonics are everywhere and the local bees get exposed to them regardless.
I will concede that the means of exposure is different. There are relatively few urban or suburban uses of seed coatings (the dominant use means for commercial agriculture) but there is no evidence yet suggesting that the means of transmission is relevant to honeybee health.
The more generally accepted theory is that, counter-intuitively, urban and suburban environments have higher bio-diversity than rural agricultural settings and that the increased diversity results in better nutrition for city bees. This makes some intuitive sense. In my neighborhood, every house is planted with different flowers and they all bloom at slightly different times. Go to rural Kansas and it’s corn from horizon to horizon. And since corn is wind-pollinated, that essentially one great “green desert” from the bees’ perspective.
http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/07/05/bees-kill-hornets-with-carbon-dioxide-emissions-and-local-wa/
“But one animal actively uses both heat and carbon dioxide as murderous weapons – the unassuming honeybee”
this like the “airplanes of the future will not be able to take-off” alarmist propaganda is fear mongering.
I would expect one would actually have warming before any correlation can be made yet they (the alarmists) make said correlation.
those same planes would just need to lower their take-off weight for temperature which they already do at hot and high airports.
Anthony please mark these as satire pieces because they are just fear mongering otherwise.
As this paper is about European honeybees infected with an Asian bee parasite native to Asian honeybees, one coild have done a simple experiment. Get some hives of the double infected (european native and invasive parasites. Set some hives in England. Set some in, say, southern Italy. If the modeled (only hypothesis is true), then the English hives would do better than the southern Italy hives, since an irrefutable fact is that southern Itally is warmer than England, and by more than IPCC modelled AGW.
But that would require real bees and an experiment, not ‘a simple mathematical model of parasite competition and climate’. And one strongly suspects the experiment would disprove the ‘alarming’ AGW model hypothesis. Just ask Italian bee keepers.
Within the US, there actually is some evidence that nosema ceranae is a greater problem for southern beekeepers (Georgia) than for northern beekeepers (Ohio). See the American Bee Journal Extra – News November 26, 2014, “Nosema ceranae More Susceptible to Cold Temperatures” for one discussion.
That said, there is a much better discussion at http://pubs.ext.vt.edu/ENTO/ENTO-66/ENTO-66-pdf.pdf (all Virginia based data) which concludes that “Colony mortality due to N. ceranae infections does not appear to be a major factor in colony losses throughout the mid-Atlantic region. We do not feel that N. ceranae is a major factor associated with colony decline.” So if this second conclusion is true, then even if the article above is correct about a relationship between temperature and nosema ceranae, it won’t be a major impact on the bees.
Next up: Warming World Threatens Future Thanksgiving Dinners.
Yes, they are serial.
I was just going to ask why are they scaremongering about honeybees when everyone is thinking about Thanksgiving turkey? Your link is to Mother Jones and they are not content to predict doom for just turkeys. No, they detail how global warming will have devastating impacts on mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, creamed spinach, corn and pumpkins. A sample of their exhaustive research:
On the bright side, fuel scarcity will make those Thanksgiving car trips to visit extended family unaffordable (what with the carbon emission surcharges), so you’ll end up staying home to enjoy reconstituted Veggi-Pap (using recycled waste water) with just your family instead of spending half the day driving to visit someone else’s family. Saving all that energy will allow you to turn the TV on for maybe an hour or two to watch an installment of The Great Speeches of Wise Leader Barak Obama. The government-approved channel no longer carries football because it has been ruled too male-centric and disrespects Wymen Of Attitude.
After a skimpy meal you can exchange carrier-pigeon mail with your folks about how maybe next year the gasoline rationing will be eased a bit so you can meet somewhere in the middle to enjoy an all organic Tofu salad as an occasion to express your gratitude to the UN for saving the world from climate change.
Happy Thanksgiving to all — proper gratitude for our many blessings is best cultivated by enjoying them! I
predictproject that tomorrow we will still have honeybees.:)))
The BBC (no less – couldn’t believe it!) reported that honey production in the UK was 30% up on last year. Apparently it’s because bee keepers have got smarter! No mention of all the nasty things that man-made everything had been over come. Good news I guess, just a pity they can’t admit no one knows what the hell they are talking about when it come to climate and how bees etc etc work.. Just to explain, the ‘massive’ drop in bee population and hence honey production was all down to made made everything a year ago (so said the ‘neutral’ BBC).
The BBC has this on Red Button ‘Science’ news today and makes me feel these ‘scientists’ really ARE evil:
“Schemes to tackle climate change could prove disastrous for billions of people, but might be required for the good of the planet, scientists say”
They are talking about geo-engineering such as giant mirrors or sunshades high above and also of means of sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere. They call these “unproven science”.
And hopefully always will be! I mean, billions of people……?
“Schemes to tackle climate change could prove disastrous for billions of people, but might be required for the good of the planet, scientists say”
======================
the road to hell is paved with good intentions. How is it that the “good of the planet” outweighs the interests of “billions of people”?
Human sacrifice for the “good of the planet” is a common theme throughout history. We look back and laugh in wonder at the people of the past, only to realize that they are us.
Or it may not.
So the hell what?