Declines In Pollination Rates Of Up To 50% Already Seen In Some Plants As Bees Vanish - Telegraph

[hatrack]

Researchers have found that pollination levels of some plants have dropped by up to 50 per cent in the last two decades. The "pollination deficit" could see a dramatic reduction in the yield from crops. The research, carried out in the Rocky Mountains, Colorado, is the first to show that the effect is real and serves as a "warning" to Britain which if anything has seen an even greater decline in bees and pollinators.

"This serves as a warning to other countries," said Professor James Thomson at the University of Toronto, who carried out the research. "For quite some time people have been suggesting that pollinators are in decline and that this could have an effect on pollination. I believe that this is the first real demonstration that pollination levels are getting worse. I believe it is a significant decline. I believe the pollination levels have dropped by as much as 50 per cent.

"Bee numbers may have declined at our research site, but we suspect that a climate-driven mismatch between the times when flowers open and when bees emerge from hibernation is a more important factor."

According to a previous study, England's bees are vanishing faster than anywhere else in Europe, with more than half of hives dying out over the last 20 years. Butterflies and other insects are also in decline due to habitat loss and climate change.

EDIT

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/7980954/Bee-decline-already-having-dramatic-effect-on-pollination-of-plants.html

[kjackson227]

1. This might be true, but I also think that too many chemicals are being used for whatever reason...

as weed killers, pesticides, and fertilizers. I go the natural/green route for my yard, and it works quite well (and cheaper).

Also, it was stated that here in the US, bees were coming down with some type of fungal disease. I very seldom see bees and butterflies at my home:(

[stuntcat]

2. I'm lucky this time, more bees and butterflies than ever in my yard..

and bats every night! :headbang: But the disease killing off bats horrifies me. And what's happening to bees.

I think humans will always take the most important stuff for granted.. like the oceans. We won't help ourselves in time.

[happyslug]

3. Most likely cause is the change from Sheep raising to planting crops

I first ran across this when watching a special on Stone-hedge. The hosts of show show the land around stone-hedge as it is today, and it is hard to see the roadways to and from Stone-hedge. In the days when Sheep grazed the raised roads were easier to make out as we can see in drawings from the time period.

http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/papers/Agprice.pdf

Here is a quote from "A Short History of English Agriculture by W. H. R. Curtler" now in Project Gutenberg at http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=196220&pageno=16 :

According to the returns, in many counties more acres were ploughed in 1086 than to-day; in some twice as much. In Somerset in 1086 there were 577,000 acres of arable; in 1907, 178,967. In Gloucestershire, in
1086, 589,000 acres; in 1907, 238,456.<54> These are extreme instances; but the preponderance of arable is startling, even if we allow for the recent conversion of arable to pasture on account of the low price of corn. Between the eleventh century and the sixteenth, the laying down of land to grass must have proceeded on a gigantic scale, for Harrison tells us that in his day England was mainly a grazing country. No wonder Harrison's contemporaries complained of the decay of tillage.
http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=196220&pageno=16

Thus you had before 1907 (Cutler wrote in 1909), the Harrison he wrote of lived during the reign of Queen Elizabeth and he quotes Harrison from that time period:

By this time England had largely changed from a corn-growing to a stock-raising country; Harrison, writing in the middle of Queen Elizabeth's reign, says, 'the soile of Britaine is more inclined to feeding and grazing than profitable for tillage and bearing of corne ... and such store is there of cattle in everie place that the
fourth part of the land is scarcely manured for the provision of graine.'

http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=196220&pageno=63

He goes on, in the 1600 more land was pasture then used in growing crops:

In 1688 Gregory King,<352> who was much more accurate than most statisticians of his time, gave the following estimate of the land of England and Wales:--

..................................Acres
Arable...................9,000,000 .
Pasture and meadow 12,000,000.

http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=196220&pageno=103

This preference for Pasture dropped by the mid 1800s, but only to an even split with Arable land:

Caird in 1850 estimated the cultivated lands of England at 27,000,000 acres (in 1907 they were 24,585,455 acres), cultivated thus:--

Permanent grass..13,333,000
Arable...........13,667,000

http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=196220&pageno=244

Now that book ends in 1914. Since WWII a tendency has been to cereal crops in Britain and away from Pasture, but please be careful when viewing the first site below, it uses "Britain" which includes Scotland and Wales, the above sites use England only. Do to the nature of the Highlands is has always been pasture, as has vast parts of the lowlands of Scotland.

http://www.ecifm.rdg.ac.uk/postwarag.htm

The following site list England AND Wales as oppose to England itself (and again Wales has more Pasture then England itself, so pasture land exceeds arable land in this chart, but I suspect in England itself the reverse is the case:

http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/research/library/data/112211.aspx

http://www.ecifm.rdg.ac.uk/current_production.htm

Just a comment the problem may be the loss of pasture, and its tendency to have many different types of grasses and other plants (Grasses do NOT need Bees, most other plants do). The switch to Cereals (another plant that does NOT need bees to pollinate) can be a factor in the drop of bees (Grasses and Cereals do NOT need bees, and thus do NOT "Flower" in the sense of most other plants, thus giving bees little if any nectar to harvest and thus no food for the bees).