CROATIA VENTURES tourism and property investment

Wednesday, May 15, 2007



One great way to spot trends is to open the imagination through science fiction, a place where the mind can soar without the tyranny of current reality and technology. One path in this realm that I occasionally tread is the excellent dozen plus Vorkosigan Saga novels written by Lois McMaster Bujold.



Beyond the science aspect, Bujold says a lot about social structures and magnifies our current power structures with potential technology of the future.



One comment that especially stayed with me came from the novel Mirror Dance was a dialogue between an Emperor of a warlike world and a clone who had suddenly become an apprentice to one of the world’s 60 Counts and unexpectedly the first heir to the Emperor’s throne.



The Emperor is trying to succinctly explain an Emperor’s power and says: “The Counts are the mechanism whereby one man (the Emperor) multiplies to sixty and then to a multitude. The Counts are the first officers of the Imperium; I am its Captain. You do understand that I am not the Imperium. An empire is mere geography. The Imperium is a society. The multitude, the whole body-ultimately down to every subject-that is the Imperium. Of which I am only a piece. An interchangeable part, at that. A link in a chain-mail. In a web. So that one weak link is not fatal. Many (links) must fail at once to achieve a real disaster. Still one wants as many sound reliable links as possible, obviously.”



This often forgotten reality by many powers to be (that they are just one interchangeable link) in today’s society is why recent messages have looked at the sudden and mysterious losses of bees in many parts of the world. The concern is a phenomenon called “Colony Collapse Disorder” (CCD) that could create the failure of many of our social links at once.



Thanks to dozens of readers we can share more ideas on might be happening.



First, numerous readers logically defied the idea that cell phones were the culprit of CCD.



One reader sent this good article: “In April 2007, news of a University of Landau study appeared in major media, beginning with an article in The Independent that stated that the subject of the study was ‘mobile phones’ (a term usually used to refer to cellular phones) and had related them to CCD. Cellular phones were in fact not covered in the study, and the researchers have since emphatically disavowed any connection between their research, cell phones, and CCD, specifically indicating that the Independent article had misinterpreted their results and created ‘a horror story.’



“The 2006 University of Landau pilot study was looking for non-thermal effects of radio frequency (RF) on honey bees (Apis mellifera carnica) and suggested that when bee hives have DECT cordless phone base stations embedded in them, the close-range electromagnetic field (EMF) may reduce the ability of bees to return to their hive; they also noticed a slight reduction in honeycomb weight in treated colonies. In the course of their study, one half of their colonies broke down, including some of their controls which did not have DECT base stations embedded in them.”



Another reader sent this article that shows the potential of an alternative cause:



“Flight of the honeybees. A fungus that caused widespread loss of bee colonies in Europe and Asia may be playing a crucial role in the mysterious phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder that is wiping out bees across the United States , UC SanFrancisco researchers said Wednesday. Researchers have been struggling for months to explain the disorder, and the new findings provide the first solid evidence pointing to a potential cause. But the results are ‘highly preliminary’ and are from only a few hives from Le Grand in Merced County , UCSF biochemist Joe DeRisi said. ‘We don't want to give anybody the impression that this thing has been solved.’



“Other researchers said Wednesday that they too had found the fungus, a single-celled parasite called Nosema ceranae, in affected hives from around the country — as well as in some hives where bees had survived. Those researchers have also found two other fungi and half a dozen viruses in the dead bees. N. ceranae is ‘one of many pathogens’ in the bees, said entomologist Diana Cox-Foster of Pennsylvania State University . ‘By itself, it is probably not the culprit … but it may be one of the key players. We still haven't ruled out other factors, such as pesticides or inadequate food resources following a drought,’ she said. ‘There are lots of stresses that these bees are experiencing,’ and it may be a combination of factors that is responsible.”



The article says that in many cases, scientists have found evidence of almost all known bee viruses in the few surviving bees found in the hives after most have disappeared. Some had five or six infections at the same time and were infested with fungi -- a sign, experts say, that the insects' immune system may have collapsed. One scientist called this the AIDs of bees.



Excerpts from another article several readers sent reinforce this idea of multiple causes:



“A mysterious decimation of bee populations has German beekeepers worried, while a similar phenomenon in the United States is gradually assuming catastrophic proportions… a small research project conducted at the University of Jena from 2001 to 2004. The researchers examined the effects of pollen from a genetically modified maize variant called ‘Bt corn’ on bees. When the bees used in the experiments were infested with a parasite, a significantly stronger decline in the number of bees occurred among the insects that had been fed a highly concentrated Bt poison feed.”



The article gives us a theory that the bacterial toxin in the genetically modified corn may alter the surface of the bee's intestines, sufficiently weakening the bees to allow the parasites to gain a hold.



The article goes on to quote Walter Haefeker, a director of the German Beekeepers Association, as saying "the very existence of beekeeping is at stake."



Haefeker says in the article that the problem of colony collapse has a number of causes, one being the varroa mite. He says that another is the widespread spraying of wildflowers with herbicides. Another problem is monoculture. He also suspects another possible cause is the growing use of genetic engineering in agriculture.



But that could soon change. Since last November, the US has seen a decline in bee populations so dramatic that it eclipses all previous incidences of mass mortality. Beekeepers on the east coast of the United States complain that they have lost more than 70 percent of their stock since late last year, while the west coast has seen a

decline of up to 60 percent.



So perhaps this problem is a social sum total…humanity ignoring its relationship with the global web and failing to see itself as just one interchangeable part.



Whatever the cause, we can be sure that this is a vital problem because bees are such an important link in our world!



Albert Einstein said, "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man."



Hopefully this problem is not quite as dire as Einstein’s prediction, but I have no doubt of its seriousness. This will at the least have a profound economic impact.



Genetic fiddling may be part of the cause. Perhaps some of humanity’s agricultural, genetic, biological and chemical leaders in their short term cleverness (and perhaps greed) have ventured too far into the inner space of reality without foreseeing the long term and holistic impact on the human web as a whole.



Our bio engineering may seem to support the human web and perhaps it has for a few years, but maybe at a devastating long term cost.



A New York Times article calculated the damage US agriculture would suffer if bees died out. Experts at Cornell University in upstate New York have estimated the value bees generate -- by pollinating fruit and vegetable plants, almond trees and animal feed like clover -- at more than $14 billion.



A CNN article suggested even greater economic devastation and said: “Unless someone or something stops it soon, the mysterious killer that is wiping out many of America's honeybees could have a devastating effect on the country's dinner plate, perhaps even reducing its people to a glorified bread-and-water diet. Honeybees do not just make honey; they pollinate more than 90 of the tastiest flowering crops the country has. Among them: apples, nuts, avocados, soybeans, asparagus, broccoli, celery, squash and cucumbers. And lots of the really sweet and tart stuff, too, including citrus fruit, peaches, kiwi, cherries, blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, cantaloupe and other melons.

A congressional study said honeybees add about $15 billion a year in value to the U.S. food supply.”



For most of this millennium our web sites have looked at this problem. Great problems create great opportunity. Finding solutions to huge problems and investing in them gives us profitable ways to do good.



There must certainly be more profit now in raising bees. There are some that rarely sting. You can see a message in our archives about two ways to help bees (growing them and learning more about GM)

http://www.garyascott.com/archives/2004/11/08/1114/