Bees in more trouble than ever after bad winter

MERCED, Calif. – The mysterious 4-year-old crisis of disappearing honeybees is deepening. A quick federal survey indicates a heavy bee die-off this winter, while a new study shows honeybees’ pollen and hives laden with pesticides.

Two federal agencies along with regulators in California and Canada are scrambling to figure out what is behind this relatively recent threat, ordering new research on pesticides used in fields and orchards. Federal courts are even weighing in this month, ruling that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency overlooked a requirement when allowing a pesticide on the market.

And on Thursday, chemists at a scientific conference in San Francisco will tackle the issue of chemicals and dwindling bees in response to the new study.

Among all the stresses to bee health, it’s the pesticides that are attracting scrutiny now. A study published Friday in the scientific journal PLOS (Public Library of Science) One found about three out of five pollen and wax samples from 23 states had at least one systemic pesticide — a chemical designed to spread throughout all parts of a plant.

 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100324/ap_on_sc/us_food_and_farm_disappearing_bees

Ya, and I wonder what that “un-named” pesticide is …

The Technology Exists to Identify Morgellons Right Now, Today

On the left are bags of honeybees. I’ve touched on the Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) involving honeybees a few times. But this post really isn’t about the honeybees, it’s about the technology that was used to investigate the CCD phenomenon. Let’s take a look at the testing they were able to perform on the honeybees. Please read the information below, it is of the upmost importance for each and every Morgellons sufferer to understand the abilities that exist.

 

Vanishing Bees May Get By with a Little Help from the Army

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/earth/4219746.html

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Since last fall, the strange phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) has killed off a quarter of America’s honeybee population, and threatened 25 percent of our food supply. (A wide variety of crops rely on pollination.) This past spring, a nationwide effort by top DNA scientists determined that CCD is probably caused by a number of factors, including multiple bee-killing viruses. But identifying specific viruses with DNA sequencing is a slow, painstaking process.

That’s where Charles Wick (then the leader of the chemical and biological detection team at the Army’s Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland) came in, volunteering a microwave-size invention to help the cause. Originally used to screen drinking water for pathogens, Wick’s 50-pound Integrated Virus Detection System (IVDS) hits a sample with an electric charge, then counts and sizes the particles making up the sample to identify viruses. By measuring to the nanometer, the IVDS can pin down a disease in 10 minutes.

As a trial run, CCD surveyors sent Wick samples from suffering beehives, which he liquefied in a blender, filtered using a cheesecloth, and ran through the IVDS. "They’d been working on this for six or seven months," Wick says, "so we brought in a new technology and immediately detected the pathogens they were looking for."

The surveyors were astonished: Within minutes, the IVDS had found multiple suspicious viruses, kick-starting the chase for the cause of the collapsed colonies. Wick’s invention is now part of the ongoing CCD effort, and a commercial version of the device has just been released.

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So, they ground up the honeybees, liquefied them, and within minutes were on the trail of multiple pathogens. Now, sit back and consider Pamela’s testing she had done at Great Plains Libratory and how much more could be done using the IVDS mentioned above on a stool sample. This article is from 2007, we are approaching 2010 and you know the IVDS technology has probably vastly improved. I wonder if such technology can also detect different forms of bacteria which in our case I believe is very likely. 

CDC, We Request But a Few Minutes of Your Time

So, I am officially asking the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) for just a few minutes of their time. It appears the IVDS can identify pathogens in a matter of minutes. It would seem that this technology could certainly be put to use on both Morgellons suffers and control subjects to find out what we are carrying that the general population isn’t.

A little hypothetical thinking here.

More importantly such testing could determine if our gut flora has living residue left over from the GMO Pharming industry which could be a possibility. In this case, both groups, the sufferers and control group could both harbor the GMO residue, however, we have proven to be susceptible for some reason. Or perhaps, the GMO residue has taken hold in our gut flora whereas in most other people it is killed off.

Interestingly, the article states that a commercial version has now been released, and that was in 2007.

Can somebody at the Centers for Disease Control spare say, 10 minutes, even a week?

Jet Fuel Germs, Clouds, and Bees – A Potpourri

In my last post titled “Could Morgellons be an Ongoing Chemical Reaction in our Bodies?” I spoke a little about jet fuel and how 100% octane jet fuel contains approximately 14% Toluene by weight. But what I didn’t know about was something called Biocides that are used in jet fuel to kill bacteria, yeast, and fungi. Now, I shouldn’t really be surprised after all of this research I’ve been doing lately.  If you’ve been reading along then you know about Pseudomonas Putida (the very versatile oil eating bacteria capable of all kinds of things) and so on but I never though that such things growing in the tanks and fuel lines of jets would be a real problem, but it appears that it is. I’m not sure this is of any significance but thought I would post about it just in case. This idea of germs in jet fuel was given to me by Clark, thanks Clark !

Twenty-seven (27) individual species of bugs can occur in diesel fuel

Now, diesel fuel is not jet fuel but I thought this list of “things” that can grow in it is interesting. This information can be found HERE.

Bacteria utilize hydrocarbons and reproduce ‘asexually’ by binary fission; swelling in size as they feed, they then separate into two cells. In this way microbes double their numbers every 20 minutes, one spore becomes 262,144 in 6 hours.  Typical bacteria known to utilise hydrocarbons are Pseudomonas aeruginosa, other Pseudomonas species, Flavobacterium spp., Acinetobacter spp., Alcaligenes spp., Micrococcus spp., Arthobacter spp., Corynebacterium spp., Brevibacterium spp., Klebsiella app.

Yeast bud onto the parent cell, then eventually separate. Reproduction takes several hours and yeast prefer acidy environments. Typical yeasts growing on hydrocarbons are Candida spp., Saccharomyces spp., Torula spp., Torulopsis spp., Hansenula spp.

Fungus grow in the form of branched hyphae, a few microns in diameter, forming thick, tough, intertwined mycelial mats at fuel/water interfaces. Typical moulds which degrade hydrocarbons are Penicillium spp., Aspergillus spp., Fusarium spp., Monilia spp., Botrytis spp, Cunninghammella spp., Scopulariopsis spp., Cladisporium resinae,  Hormonicus resinae.

 

If you recall my very first blog post titled “Does this identification mean anything? I do not know” focused on Pseudomonas Putida, one of the two forms of bacteria Dr. Wymore cultured off actual Morgellon fibers. The other one was Corynebacterium efficiens and I noticed that Corynebacterium spp appears in the bacteria list above, probably of no significance however.

What does fascinate me is all these things growing in fuel, including jet fuel. At first I wondered if these things could be raining down upon us but it’s probably very unlikely that they could survive even in fuel that might not be burning clean, however, anything is possible.

 

Biocides for Jet Fuel

From Fuel Quality Services, Inc.

Microbial contamination in aviation fuel systems dates back to the 1950’s. For over half a century fungi and bacteria have consumed kerosene type fuels and have demonstrated their ability to survive the freeze and thaw cycles of the aircraft fuel systems during flight. Microbes enter aircraft fuel systems as a result of poor housekeeping, contaminated hydrant systems, separators and storage tanks. Microbial contamination undoubtedly creates biomats that clog scavenge systems, coats fuel quality indicator system (FQIS) probes, and leads to structural corrosion.

I’m sure these folks make a fine product, I only present this information here to demonstrate that jet fuel, like diesel fuel is effected by bacteria, yeast, and fungi.

 

Are Bacteria Floating Around In and Falling From the Sky?

When I was originally researching Pseudomonas Putida I stumbled across some information about how Putida can actually be found high in our atmosphere among  the clouds. I’m not saying this is coming from jet fuel by any means, probably by simple evaporation processes.

Fluorescent pseudomonads isolated from Hebridean cloud and rain water produce biosurfactants but do not cause ice nucleation

Microorganisms were discovered in clouds over 100 years ago but information on bacterial community structure and function is limited. Clouds may not only be a niche within which bacteria could thrive but they might also influence dynamic processes using ice nucleating and cloud condensing abilities. Cloud and rain samples were collected from two mountains in the Outer Hebrides, NW Scotland, UK. Cloud samples were dominated by a mixture of fluorescent Pseudomonas spp., some of which have been reported to be ice nucleators.

 

I just thought this was interesting and would document it.

 

Bees, Collapsing Colony Disorder (or CCD), and TNT

I have been following the CCD syndrome these past few years and thought I would throw this into the mix. If you haven’t heard about CCD here’s a quick definition from wikipedia on CCD.

Colony collapse disorder (or CCD) is a phenomenon in which worker bees from a beehive or Western honey bee colony abruptly disappear. While such disappearances have occurred throughout the history of apiculture, the term colony collapse disorder was first applied to a drastic rise in the number of disappearances of Western honey bee colonies in North America in late 2006.

 

Here is a quote from the article Solving the Mystery of the Vanishing Bees on the seriousness of the situation.

One of us (vanEngelsdorp) performed autopsies on Hackenberg’s remaining insects and found symptoms never observed before, such as scar tissue in the internal organs. Initial tests also detected some of the usual suspects in bee disease. In the gut contents we found spores of nosema, single-celled fungal parasites that can cause bee dysentery. The spore counts in these and in subsequent samples, however, were not high enough to explain the losses. Molecular analysis of Hackenberg’s bees, performed by the other of us (Cox-Foster), also revealed surprising levels of viral infections of various known types. But no single pathogen found in the insects could explain the scale of the disappearance.

In other words, the bees were all sick, but each colony seemed to suffer from a different combination of diseases. We hypothesized that something had compromised the bees’ immune system, making them susceptible to any number of infections that healthy colonies would normally fend off.  And Hackenberg was right: the prime suspects, varroa mites, were not present in numbers significant enough to explain the sudden die-off.

 

TNT (Dynamite) – What could this have to do with Bees?

I thought I would bring up a subtle point about honey bees and TNT (dynamite) which is really an acronym for Trinitrotoluene (Tri-nitro-toluene).  Yep, there’s our old friend Toluene again.  Interestingly, they use honey bees to locate mines so they can be deactivated. The thing is, these bees think they are finding food, how interesting.

 

Look at this question posed by a beekeeper in Africa and his dilemma.

I am wondering if you can help. I am a small bee farmer in South Africa. I specialize in the control and removal of problem swarms. I have removed them from some of the strangest places. I have just had a request from a company to assist them at their factory. They process TNT and the bees seem to be attracted to it in a big way. Workers get stung on occasions while carrying the TNT and should they drop it, well you can just imagine. This has already happend on a few occasions with some serious results. The cardboard boxes which the TNT comes in, attract swarms once it is empty and discarded. 2 or 3 swarms are "caught" this way every week. I don’t have a problem with sorting out this problem, but it interests me to find out what is attracting the bees. This will also help in the solving of the problem.

Considering all of the Toluene pollution that could be found by bees one wonders if they are able to find it and thus mistake it as food and poison the hive? There is some incredibly bizarre stuff about how these bees abandon and hive, and no other bees will go in to raid the food, the bees leave their brood and even abandon the queen.

 

And finally, one more quote from WHY ARE THE BEES DISAPPEARING?

It is a fact that honeybees have been used to detect land mines because they are attracted to some component of the explosives used in the mines. They actually pick this material up and bring it back to the colony where it can be analyzed by the people doing the study. If bees are attracted to some component of explosives, isn’t it possible they are also attracted to some unknown (or unlisted) component of pesticides? The chemical structure of the highly dangerous explosive, TNT, or TriNitroToluene, which is used in land mines is benzene and a methy group of chemicals.

Benzene and toluene, two components of TNT are also inert ingredients used in many pesticides. I believe the bees are attracted to pesticides containing these inert ingredients as they are to TNT. If so, the bees may be attracted to trees and shrubs that are being sprayed and will be more inclined to pick up the pesticides and bring it back to their colonies where they can contaminate many more individual bees as well as the honey in the hive.

 

Now, I know this is pretty anecdotal and might give you cause to laugh but how many sufferers have themselves thought “If only I can move, this stuff is all over my house, my yard. I’m out of here?” In fact, I know many that have, and even a few that abandoned their homes to live in tents.  Could the immune systems of the honey bees actually be being destroyed by them finding sources of Toluene and bringing it back to the hive? Is what is happening to the bees similar to what is happening to Morgellons sufferers? You know how they make honey, here’s how (HERE).

Finally, I’ll leave you with a bee joke that will amuse you.

A bee walks into a doctors office and says to the doctor … “Doc, I’m covered in varroa mites, I can feel them crawling all over me and then he opens a matchbox full of them to show the doctor. The doctor smiles and says “Have you been reading that darned internet again …..”

Sorry for such a strange set of topics tonight everyone. Just getting some thoughts down on paper …