Robert Bandanza
June 28th, 2009, 09:37 PM
By Kevin Myers
Wednesday June 24 2009
High-pressure zones are not merely the guarantors of good weather; they are the architects of childhood memories. Look around you. The days that you see now will be remembered in 70 years' time, with a warm and tenacious gratitude.
This brief period will colonise the minds of hundreds of thousands of children, and the memories they make now will still be cherished as this century draws to a close.
A thousand grey days will come and go, and leave not an atom of recollection: but this miraculous week in June will live on, and grow and prosper, until it will seem in 2080 that all the days of a distant childhood in those early and innocent days of the 21st century were composed entirely of the sun and the warmth and the strange sensuality of an endless summer.
But will those old men and women know honey bees? The roses are now in full flower, and the honeysuckle riots beside them: but for the most part, they remain unvisited by the citizens of the hive.
The fears of last year seem to be coming to pass. There are almost no honey bees. In their stead, small black bees have appeared, and now forage through the stigma and style of the mid-summer blossoms.
The disappearance of the common honey bee has caused much concern amongst the doomsayers, who are convinced that climate change is about to end civilisation as we know it. But remember, the honey bee is an import -- usually the Italian bee, Apis mellifera ligustica. It is the grey-squirrel of the apian world. It is a better feeder than the native black, and produces more honey. But if it disappears, for whatever reason, the black bee -- Apis mellifera mellifera -- will probably come into her own once more.
According to the recently published 'A World Without Bees', by Alison Benjamin and Brian McCallum, the honey bee is not a vital part of the floral life cycle. There were no members of her family -- Apis mellifera -- in the Americas before Europeans arrived. Flowers were pollinated by many kinds of native bee, including leafcutters, bumble bees and carpenters: but not the honey bee. The first bee taken from England to the Americas was the black bee, a cousin of the little lady whose bottom is to be found sticking out of our roses this glorious June. More recently, she has been replaced by the more productive Balkan and Iberian varieties. And as you know, the honey bee in the US has suffered a dramatic decline, just like here. Maybe this will cause the black bee to prosper once again, naturally.
To be sure, man often interferes, and produces "new" versions of existing species. He isolates, and breeds, and creates subspecies, with a wide range of characteristics in many things.
The Pekinese is kin to the wolfhound: the Chihuahua a cousin of the Great Dane. Let man step back, and dogs will interbreed wherever they can. The descendants will end up like Australian dingos -- which are almost indistinguishable from their wolf ancestors. Were dogs to go feral in northern Europe or North America, where winters are long and hard, they would probably be identical to the wolf. Nature finds its way. Always.
So it is with the honey bee. If too much domestic interbreeding has created a gene pool that is not diverse enough, then the bee population will be vulnerable to predation by, say, mites. But such predation is like Dutch elm disease: by killing all its hosts, it inevitably kills itself. And then some obscure little bees, surviving in some remote valley, can spread once again. This is nature's way. It sorts itself out, ruthlessly if need be: but it finds a way. Those that cannot compete in changed circumstances perish, and their genes vanish.
The little black bee appearing in your garden today might in time reclaim the dominance which it possessed before our ancestors introduced bees from southern Europe. One way or another, nature will find a balance.
The problem, of course, is man. Not merely do we ruin that balance of nature with our demands for food and space, we create irrational rules which prevent us even speaking of the real problems which threaten us.
For example, we maintain that climate change is the biggest threat to mankind, simply because we can discuss it in the UN without shrill and hysterical accusations of racism. But the real threat -- over-population -- simply cannot be discussed, most of all because it is at its most perilous levels in Africa.
Not merely are African populations doubling every 25 years, (Ireland's population took 80 years to increase by 20pc) the west is pumping in food and medical aid, which will ensure that this catastrophic demographic explosion continues.
This summer you will read much about the existential dangers we face because of the disappearance of the bee. Ignore it. Mankind's ability to respond with versatility and intelligence to threats from nature, and nature's own inimitable balances, will enable us to survive. It is mankind's cowardly refusal to deal with our own ruinous failings that is the real threat to our species.
Which is just another reason why, in 70 years' time, old people will talk wistfully of those good old days, way back when, in 2009.
kmyers@independent.ie
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/kevin-myers/mankinds-refusal-to-deal-with-our-failings-is-the-real-threat-1786657.html
Wednesday June 24 2009
High-pressure zones are not merely the guarantors of good weather; they are the architects of childhood memories. Look around you. The days that you see now will be remembered in 70 years' time, with a warm and tenacious gratitude.
This brief period will colonise the minds of hundreds of thousands of children, and the memories they make now will still be cherished as this century draws to a close.
A thousand grey days will come and go, and leave not an atom of recollection: but this miraculous week in June will live on, and grow and prosper, until it will seem in 2080 that all the days of a distant childhood in those early and innocent days of the 21st century were composed entirely of the sun and the warmth and the strange sensuality of an endless summer.
But will those old men and women know honey bees? The roses are now in full flower, and the honeysuckle riots beside them: but for the most part, they remain unvisited by the citizens of the hive.
The fears of last year seem to be coming to pass. There are almost no honey bees. In their stead, small black bees have appeared, and now forage through the stigma and style of the mid-summer blossoms.
The disappearance of the common honey bee has caused much concern amongst the doomsayers, who are convinced that climate change is about to end civilisation as we know it. But remember, the honey bee is an import -- usually the Italian bee, Apis mellifera ligustica. It is the grey-squirrel of the apian world. It is a better feeder than the native black, and produces more honey. But if it disappears, for whatever reason, the black bee -- Apis mellifera mellifera -- will probably come into her own once more.
According to the recently published 'A World Without Bees', by Alison Benjamin and Brian McCallum, the honey bee is not a vital part of the floral life cycle. There were no members of her family -- Apis mellifera -- in the Americas before Europeans arrived. Flowers were pollinated by many kinds of native bee, including leafcutters, bumble bees and carpenters: but not the honey bee. The first bee taken from England to the Americas was the black bee, a cousin of the little lady whose bottom is to be found sticking out of our roses this glorious June. More recently, she has been replaced by the more productive Balkan and Iberian varieties. And as you know, the honey bee in the US has suffered a dramatic decline, just like here. Maybe this will cause the black bee to prosper once again, naturally.
To be sure, man often interferes, and produces "new" versions of existing species. He isolates, and breeds, and creates subspecies, with a wide range of characteristics in many things.
The Pekinese is kin to the wolfhound: the Chihuahua a cousin of the Great Dane. Let man step back, and dogs will interbreed wherever they can. The descendants will end up like Australian dingos -- which are almost indistinguishable from their wolf ancestors. Were dogs to go feral in northern Europe or North America, where winters are long and hard, they would probably be identical to the wolf. Nature finds its way. Always.
So it is with the honey bee. If too much domestic interbreeding has created a gene pool that is not diverse enough, then the bee population will be vulnerable to predation by, say, mites. But such predation is like Dutch elm disease: by killing all its hosts, it inevitably kills itself. And then some obscure little bees, surviving in some remote valley, can spread once again. This is nature's way. It sorts itself out, ruthlessly if need be: but it finds a way. Those that cannot compete in changed circumstances perish, and their genes vanish.
The little black bee appearing in your garden today might in time reclaim the dominance which it possessed before our ancestors introduced bees from southern Europe. One way or another, nature will find a balance.
The problem, of course, is man. Not merely do we ruin that balance of nature with our demands for food and space, we create irrational rules which prevent us even speaking of the real problems which threaten us.
For example, we maintain that climate change is the biggest threat to mankind, simply because we can discuss it in the UN without shrill and hysterical accusations of racism. But the real threat -- over-population -- simply cannot be discussed, most of all because it is at its most perilous levels in Africa.
Not merely are African populations doubling every 25 years, (Ireland's population took 80 years to increase by 20pc) the west is pumping in food and medical aid, which will ensure that this catastrophic demographic explosion continues.
This summer you will read much about the existential dangers we face because of the disappearance of the bee. Ignore it. Mankind's ability to respond with versatility and intelligence to threats from nature, and nature's own inimitable balances, will enable us to survive. It is mankind's cowardly refusal to deal with our own ruinous failings that is the real threat to our species.
Which is just another reason why, in 70 years' time, old people will talk wistfully of those good old days, way back when, in 2009.
kmyers@independent.ie
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/kevin-myers/mankinds-refusal-to-deal-with-our-failings-is-the-real-threat-1786657.html