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Bee killing has also become a sport of sorts on YouTube...people destroy bee hives with paintball buns, potato guns, etc. while filming it, then post the videos as if it is great fun.



Education is the key to preventing the extiction of an entire species, especially one as valuable and necessary to human survival as the honeybee.

the only bees i've seen people exterminate are the yellow jackets, honey bees don't typically live near homes, or on homes, typically anyway.

I used to see honeybees all the time and now, maybe one every so often...I am actually thinking about becoming a beekeeper...I wonder how hard it is. I have a sinking feeling there are miles-long pages of regulations to prevent me from doing so, however...

We found a hive of honeybees in my grandparents' eaves, and the beekeepers came and smoked them and took them out - along with EIGHT 5 gallon buckets of honey and honeycomb. So I think they're quite happy to live near people, as long as the area of the hive itself isn't too well-trafficked.

I think the biggest problem with honeybees at the moment is what they're calling "Colony Collapse Disorder", in which most or all of the worker bees in a colony disappear, leaving just the queen and eggs. Here's an article on it from the US Dept. of Agriculture: view link

This, on top of the spread of mites amongst colonies, is causing a big problem for beekeepers, as well as for crops dependent of honeybees for pollination. It will be very interesting to see if some environmental change or insult is either the direct cause, or at least making the bees more susceptible to illness.

Bats are having a similar problem right now - they're dying in great numbers, and the only symptom so far is that they have white on their noses: view link

Interestingly enough, some bats also pollinate plants, I think. And other types eat incredible numbers of bugs, which is probably to our benefit.

Dr. Lee Dyer is a caterpillar researcher in at Tulane University in New Orleans, and one of the things he's studying is what has happened to the caterpillars in his area in the aftermath of the hurricanes - and what's happened to the parasites that live on the caterpillars. This might give us some clues about how insects react to environmental changes. He also studies caterpillars in Arizona, and in Central and South America too, with the help of Earthwatch volunteers: view link

Hopefully, research that people like Dr. Dyer are doing will help of figure out how to save the honeybees - and the bats.

Kathy, the Earthwatch webmaster