Expert talks about the
decline of honeybees

A lecture at Fermilab on Jan. 16 covered the declining honeybee population and its effects on agriculture.

During the past few decades, the honeybee population has decreased. And that doesn’t just mean less honey on your table. It could mean less meat, cheese, carrots — and the list goes on. Bee pollination is involved in almost everything we eat, said bee expert May Berenbaum at her lecture, “BSI: The Case of the Disappearing Bees,” held Friday, Jan. 16, as part of the Fermilab Lecture Series.

An accumulation of pathogens and parasites has been killing off the bee population since the 1990s. That means less pollination. The land conservation that creates ideal settings for pollination to occur is also dwindling as farmers grow more corn for bio-fuel such as ethanol. It’s more immediately profitable for farmers to plant corn than to keep the land for bees.

But in the long term, pollination is profitable. That’s because pollination, or “plant sex,” assists in the production of more than 90 crops. Berenbaum estimates the value of pollination to the U.S. agricultural industry exceeds $14 billion per year.

As pollination declines, the survival of crops that are increasingly in demand, such as the almond, could be threatened. “With the increase in almond acreage, by 2012 every honeybee in America will have to be in California to pollinate that crop,” Berenbaum said.

So should we start a save the bees campaign? Berenbaum is not worried bees will become extinct. It is specifically the Western honeybee that is in decline. But two dozen subspecies are still buzzing around in Africa.

Still, the Western honeybee’s ability to pollinate has to be preserved.

“Unlike sunshine, pollination is not an inexhaustible resource,” Berenbaum said. “We have to create economic incentives for pollinator conservation.”

-- Kristine Crane

View slides from Berenbaum's lecture here.

House appropriators' document provides S&T rationale in stimulus funding bill

From AIP FYI, Jan. 23, 2009

A "Discussion Draft" produced by the House Appropriations Committee provides insight into how millions of dollars of science and technology funding are to be spent by the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy's Office of Science, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the U.S. Geological Survey. The wording in this draft is subject to change before it is released as an official committee report. Note that there is extensive draft language on various DOE's energy programs that is not included in this FYI because of space considerations.

House appropriators completed work on their section of The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on Wednesday. The $825 billion bill will be on the House floor next week. The Senate is scheduled to release its version of this legislation next week. Congressional leadership wants to have this bill on President Obama's desk before Congress takes a one-week break on February 16.

Complete selections from the Discussion Draft follow; quotation marks were not used:

TITLE V - ENERGY AND WATER
DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
SCIENCE
Science
Recovery funding: $2.000 billion

The Office of Science at the Department of Energy is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, providing more than 40 percent of total funding for this vital area of national importance. It oversees - and is the principal federal funding agency of - the Nation’s research programs in high-energy physics, nuclear physics, and fusion energy sciences. Independent scientific research provides the foundation for innovation and future technologies. But U.S. federal funding for research and development has declined steadily over the last decade. This funding will support improvements to DOE laboratories and scientific facilities to provide the foundation for research and development efforts....

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