Bee's And Us

Amen, kramarat.

Strange, this nut allergy thing. For the last 60 years of my life, i have been eating peanuts regularly.When icould afford,i started eating walnuts, cashewnuts, almonds...all going with a nice Single Malt. i haven't ever met anyone who had any sort of allergy to anything....except picking up the check

A couple of years ago i came across the child of a relative who was allergic to all nuts...he was born in the USA.

It has something to do with the weakening immune systems in a privileged culture... we are perhaps more immune to many things than people in the west ...

Sorry, nothing to do with bees (or birds either ), just nuts. So someone can vote me OT ...

KVS

I also have been eating peanuts for my 58 years (except may be my early childhood couple of years) without any problem. Now also (as I like those) I eat almost 1/4 Kg of salted peanuts at a time (many days) without any problem. In fact here in India it is considered an energy food if it is soaked in water overnight.

But still I disagree with your post, as KY is not talking about the allergy of the peanuts (though he mentions it briefly), but his main concern is about "Genetically modified peanuts" and not about general peanuts. Our generations were never exposed to genetically modified peanuts, thus it is difficult to talk about it.

Though OT is based on peanuts, I take it as all genetically modified food items like... recent brinjal (there was some agitation and discussions about it in India, I do not remember exactly).

On the other hand I do not bother much about any food items as firstly we never know what we are eating (if it is genetically modified/ chemical fertilizer based or organic). We have to purchase what we get in the market. Then why to worry.

Secondly I have got very good proud emmunity to anything (not sure about GM food obviously)

Thank you gsuhas

I should have taken more care in phrasing the post. Although I tried to keep the rumor mill inactive it is ticking over.

My main concern was to find out if, since the introduction of GM foods, there is this increase in bee mites. This has now been answered, in part.

I was (possibly falsely) seeing a connection between the two. If bees have been on this planet for millions of years then they might show adverse effects to even the smallest change in pollen or honey or the supplementary food they are provided with.

These minute changes could be working like a catalyst and cause this or that to change in the bees (humans?) and make them more prone to diseases or allergies. I will not have the time to go into full time study of the subject, just thought there would be some answers out there.

As I have seen there are and I am quiet happy with the responses I have received. Some doubt lingers though, Ky.

Very pragmatic, I get your point. marcot

Does this not warrant a therapy, if it is known that it could be avoided by educating people to not put their kids into gilded cages and be a bit more 'rabiate' about hygiene. Just avoiding the obsessiveness of the act of cleaning would probably make a difference.

Farm animal kindergartens in high rises anyone? Leaving it all to natural selection is a bit harsh and could be reduced with very little cost to any one. If natural resistance could be boosted this way one would be stupid not to introduce this to the nearest family which suffers from the obviously very dangerous effects of a reaction to all kinds of triggers.

I have a much better understanding of the matter now and I'm happy I asked. Others will have come to a similar conclusion and this is possibly a well documented way of approaching this challenge and finding a humane (beemane) solution.

I'll get goin' now, thanks to all, Ky.

Actually there are no genetically modified peanuts on the market -- at least as of 2008. So the peanut allergy people have had for years cannot be blamed on genetically modified peanuts.

See the section on Genetically Modified Foods: http://www.ascof.com/tatol/special.htm

Also: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2006/12/26/peanut_hea.html?category=health&guid=20061226130030 -- Which indicates that genetic modification might actually reduce or eliminate the allergen in peanuts.

Researchers have been working on modifying peanuts for the past decade or so, but none of the GM peanuts are on the market, unless they have entered the market within the past year or two.

I think we need to keep in mind that improvements in medical treatment for allergies may be one reason we see more people these days with allergies like peanut allergies. Fifty years ago (or more) kids who had severe peanut allergies died young. The parents may not even have been aware of the cause; there was little publicity about such allergies. A story like this might appear in the local newspaper, but there was not the immediate widespread reporting of news from everywhere like we've seen over the past 30+ years (due to portable TV cameras and the internet.)

GA _{(and I'm starting to feel redundant)}

GA - Used to be that people died of 'natural causes'. Now everything has a reason even if it is not right.

I suppose that in 100/500 years people will look back and wonder how those backward people ever survived. Too much of medicine is still just a WAG.

When i was growing up, peanuts & peanutbutter made my tongue & throat swell up, I just avoided them. That allergy went away in my 20's.

My immune system worked it out over time. no shots or other methods of suppressing my immune system, I'm sure I had trace amounts of peanuts over those years.

Down to earth information. Very balanced. GA and good luck with the Queen, Ky.

Hi piolenc

You might be the person to ask. Have you ever come across one of these?

The white stripes had a bit of a bluish tint. Any idea? Never seen one like that before and never since. It was the size of a "normal" bee, not the size of a bumble bee, just wondering.

GA, BTW, Ky.

Not sure, but when I have questions along this line, this site is where I always turn. It takes an invenstment of time depending on how much information you have, but it has never let me down.

JavaHead

Great link. I remember back then searching for hours. Well, I had more time and had just started operating computers so I got nowhere real fast. Thanks for that, I'll have a closer look later on, Ky.

Same size as a regular honeybee, you say. Well, I'm stumped. It has some honeybee features, like the large pollen baskets on the back legs. I can't see its proboscis because it's humped over, caught in the act of stinging. Did you see the thing's nest?

No nest. Here is another shot. It was still alive but barely.

I was amazed by the size of the wings!!! How could this thing fly, with all the ballast?

This is the only shot showing the "true" colors of the stripes. Now you might understand why it caught my interest. The fabric is the underside of synthetic velvet which gives an indication of the size. Yes, it was rather small, I've seen larger "real" bees.

The native bees we have look nothing like it. Here is one, if you can find it. It is about 5mm long. (left of flower) I left all the pics at full size and hope you receive them as such.

Fascinating, imagine the engineering aspects of this all!! And the chemical and other. Practically all our sciences could stay busy with just these three images till the bees come home. And, on top of it all, there is the aspect of genetics and that of the changing (as we speak) parasites or even bacteria and viruses. Well they (scientists) must have their work and thinking cut out for them.

I'm a busy bee so I'll leave you with it for now, Ky.

Solitary bees are dieing off too and they do not have colonies. (Some have become extinct). So colony collapse disorder is just a made up name for a collection of different problems and the combined result of their effects.

I cannot remember how many thousand types there are in north America. But they all have their diseases and parasites. Honey bees transported round the country probably act as the main vector for mixing of those diseases and for spreading them to populations with absolutely no immunity. Vancouver Island where I live did not allow any new honey bees in until recently. (Because we are free of several of the really bad bee diseases). But the big bee companies did their "lobbying" and over the screaming of the island beekeepers, they got to bring in a few truckloads of sick bees a couple of months ago. (The provincial government of BC does not take scientific advice). It is a one leader one voice government.

Anyway, nobody cares too much for all those native bee species so I started instructions about how to build bee shelters for solitary bees. Because they can be back up pollinators if the honey bee disappears.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Save-the-bees-from-extinction-You-CAN-do-it/

You can just bundle plant stems or you can make artsy fartsy cob and stem bee shelters or grottos with cob and stem infill.

If you live in an urban area, you can very usefully do this too. Farm bees are doing less well than urban bees mostly due to monoculture and pesticides.

Brian

Ky,

There is another train of thought from the medical folks,... Many of the increased allergies are being blamed by some on the cleanliness of the US society. The Immune reaction to peanuts is an over reaction of our immune system, not from a decreased immune system. Its as if the immune system is looking for something todo and we have not let our children play in the dirt and eat mud pies enough to keep the immune system occupied.

Just one theory of many.

Spacecannon

Makes more sense than most.

My reply to marcot could have been for you. Sorry, I was doing the frack to bont thing. You know, read the last first.

Hope all goes well, Ky.

10 years ago the largest genetically modification program in the world was the "rapeseed GMO'd to Canola". a large company funded a study over the effect on bees. this was co funded by the Agriculture Canada I believe. the results were kept secret and so announced for the reason that the major funding was covered by the co that requested that all results be kept from the public. if it was good news, they would have told us about it.

I did not know that peanuts were GM. I do know that soy has a very high ratio of GM. It would be hard to find the farmers that do not use GM soy seed stock. I know there are some.[ I also live on Vancouver Island. A renter has 6 bee hives 60 yards from my front door].

See post no 4 - there are not GMO peanuts for whatever difference that makes.

The way you phrase the canola study is typically green - make the statement that a study was done (maybe was maybe wasn't) and that the results were secret so obviously they were bad. The 'bad' large company is conspiring against the public!

Some kind of references are in order when making rather sweeping allegations! References from the real world and not some green web site.

i almost only watch documentaries. if i had a "green website" to refer to I would have said so. the reporting company was a CBC.[W5?] the study is by no means secret. the results have never been published and this is not secret either. pre 2005. maybe there is a reason to withhold positive uplifting information.

Nothing to be hidden most likely - most TV news is far from news and more like entertainment.

In reading through this and some other recent posts of a similar nature, I got to wondering... how many of the young people who experience these food allergies and other environmental allergies were breastfed as infants? Certainly over the past 50 years medical science has improved the treatment and response time for allergies. But at this same time, there has been a dramatic rise in the use of bottled baby formula and drop in breastfeeding. I seem to recall reading that the mother passes on antibodies to the child; so I wonder if the mother also passes on a tolerance for certain foods and environmental chemicals?

Does anyone know?

Very good point. This was on topic 40 years ago, in Germany. I was all against not breastfeeding and we used just this argument, the carrying over of the immune system through the mother.

How could I forget? Well, I'm reminded now. Another string to the bow. GA usbport. I'm surprised it has not been mentioned by others. Too well known to be mentioned maybe?

Have one on me, Ky.

I don't know if anyone still subscribes to this thread, but I ran across an article this morning about beekeepers in the Houston area, that, after searching, led me to this thread. I very much appreciate the care and sentiments, ky.

Rather than having threads here and there, it seemed more reasonable to just add the article link to this thread as an update. It reaffirms the interconnectedness of life... the far reaching effects of a single organism.

Texas beekeepers bemoan declining honey bees

I heard a reading many years ago from a book entitled, "Mount Analogue," by Rene Daumal. I never read it, but in that short reading was the idea of this woven fabric of life. It has stayed with me all these years. I did not remember it, but it turns out it is the last sentence of the unfinished book. How appropriate. Here is a mention of this from an article here:

If the book retains a cultish following, it's due to its eminently quotable prose as well as to the cult of personality following Daumal himself. Daumal died of tuberculosis in 1944 at the age of 36 and the story is that he was working on Mount Analogue the day he died. It's a better excuse than Coleridge had, but one has the sense that it would have been a hard book to finish. The text proper ends in mid-sentence:

"Without them [wasps!], a great many plants that played an important role in stabilizing the shifting earth, . . ."

Undoubtedly here Daumal was to deliver an early lesson in ecology and species interdependence, which is not what one might expect from a tubercular Sanskrit scholar on his deathbed in the waning days of World War II in German occupied Paris. ...

Got that Passerby. Maybe others are still subscribed. I'll have a closer look later on. Thanks, Ky.

As serious as the bee decline is, I truly believe that it is only a symptom of a much, much larger problem...................one that we, as citizens, have completely lost any control over.

http://peopleforethicalliving.com/fda-usda-monsanto-pharma-gmo/