Almost Extinct Ants and Bees

“Tierschutz Euskirchen” says that this week in Blaufelden (Baden-Wuerttemberg /Germany) a group of adolescents killed (intoxicated) the bees owned by a primary school just for “the kick”.

The Canadian producer of the cereals “Honey Nut Cheerios”, “General Mills” announced publicly that their mascot “Buzz” was going to be banned from their products until people showed more concern regarding the disappearance of bees due to decreasing spaces of flower fields. For example anybody could help by planting some flowers himself in the garden, on the balcony, in pots you can put somewhere outside your house etc. “General Mills” even gives away flower seed for free for this purpose as they announced. Among others the May-sample of the magazine “GEO” says so.

The November-sample of the magazine “GEO” talked about an invasive species named yellow crazy ant that meanwhile has become a serious threat to the animal-population of the Christmas Island. They most likely came to the island as stowaways on Asian ships as they originate in Asia and due to being very fertile – as well as their for ant-standards odd behavior according to which two ant-colonies when they first meet unite instead of fighting and killing each other – spread very fast. Meanwhile these carnivorous insects have such a huge population that they reduced the number of other insects, amphibians, reptiles, crabs and even birds that once were found in high numbers on the Christmas Island – which of course is bad for the hunting- and fishing-industry as these ants obviously take away people’s primary source to earn their living. In addition to that their relation to a special specimen of lice is similar to that between human farmers and cows. As these lice produce a special, sticky serum when they are just fed enough leaves, the ants keep them in their colonies, transport them to plants that have fresh leaves and then “milk” this serum. However the sticky remains of this serum that are left on these leaves are harmful to the plant in many ways. Not only do they attract insects that by biting off the serum do serious damage to the plant, but after a while they also start to rot if they aren’t eaten, which attracts diverse parasites that weaken the plant.
Environmentalists don’t know what to do about them. Spreading poisoned baits was successful, but alas these baits killed off other animals just as successfully. Knowing that these ants can’t walk on plastic – nor can they climb plastic things – they put up some plastic obstacles, but they know that this can only be a temporary solution. Animals could feed on the plastic and then their stomach would contain some toxic waste that in return could be eaten by human beings. They even know a species of frog that is not native to the Christmas Island and that feeds on these ants, but introducing another invasive species to fight of the invasive species that is already there on the island? In the end this frog could turn on some small native animals or eat away the food of those frogs that already live there as a native species. In the end they decided there was nothing they could do to get rid of all these ants.

A beekeeper from Hessen told “Tierschutz Euskirchen” that as far as he is concerned this year’s honey-harvest was the worst harvest beekeepers from Hessen had since the early 80’s. He blames this on a lack of flower-meadows for said insects.

In an interview according to “Tierschutz Euskirchen” a beekeeper from Saxony stated worries about the so-called varoa-acarian, a pest that already caused many bees to become sick and die this year. This acarian can be found anywhere.