[Pollinator] Competition by honey bees not significant - Please, emails, emails, emails

[Linda D]

Ok, Please, starting with yesterday too many emails.
Then today another email about the topic. I am positive there will
be even more later. It has to be controlled. 


To all concerned, can we stop this debate?
Either agree to disagree, or do private emails to each other.

I am a Master Gardener and I do care about the demise of the bee.
I am interested by this topic. 
When final views are established, maybe someone can do a email
to write about both thoughts.

Maybe as a Master Gardener I am not as developed as an scientist
and should not be in this group. I have gotten good info and that is
why I am on the list.

I have never seen so many emails as about this topic.
I hope I do not again.



Lynda Hall (Drake)


Wile the Coyote, Blue Doberman, brought home on December 12, 2009
2 Cat's: Chewbacka, Evel Knevel (Nov 18, 2011)
2 Betta's: Roxanne2 and 1 Half-moon-Archangel Michael(from the movie Michael) 

Waiting at Rainbow Bridge:
Mighty Dobermans: Jake (red clown, 2003) and Sir Duke (black/tan - 5/12/2009)
Sweetest kitties: Duke's best friend, Cookie the Cat, Beautiful calico, 8/20/2009
Piggy (orange & white kitty, rest in peace, Tues 9/6/2011, free from diabetics
Huey and Louie, such cute kittens!!


________________________________
 From: Peter Bernhardt <bernhap2 at slu.edu>
To: Peter Loring Borst <    > 
Sent: Friday, March 23, 2012 2:36 PM
Subject: Re: [Pollinator] Competition by honey bees not significant
 

Dear Mr. Borst:

You are making claims you can not justify because you have not read all the work of other people who have completed and published field studies on the impact of non-native Apis mellifera on populations of anthophilous birds and insects.  That is why I recommended the papers of Dr. David Paton to you and other NAPPC members,  The following links may help introduce the older literature.  Yes, both are reviews but if you finish them you will see the papers Dr. Paton based on his own field research in the references.  

http://www.jstor.org/stable/1311970

http://www.jstor.org/stable/2641769

The fact that the Oecologia (2000)  study showed unambiguous, negative results doesn't mean that ALL other studies around the world had the same response.  One also wonders whether the other members of the Cohen lab, in which you work, share your inflexible support for the same publications?  Remember, the other pollen-nectar consuming animals of Europe (at least through southern Europe) evolved with A, mellifera or went extinct.  The history of the honeybee in the Western Hemisphere is less than 500 years old from Canada to Tierra del Fuego.   .  

Granted, the Patton studies may seem rather old-fashioned and quaint to someone with a  degree in computer graphics/bioinformatics (according to your website).  Nevertheless, they were produced by someone with real training in field-based protocols and sampling techniques.  You trust the work of Dr. Roubik and so do I.  However, Dr. Roubik might agree with me that two consortia of scientists can perform the exact same field experiment in two entirely different parts of the world and end up with completely opposing results.  It's the differences in the two environments that ultimately determines the results in each case.  This is obvious if you read Gurevitch, Scheiner and Fox (2006) The Ecology of Plants and focus on their treatments of famous, field experiments in chapters 5, 10-13.  Western Europe is not quite North America.  An island off the cost of Panama is not the land around the Sonoran Desert museum in Arizona.

Peter Bernhardt





On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 5:50 AM, Peter Loring Borst <peterlborst at cornell.edu> wrote:

Although competition between honey bees and wild bees
>is often expected, we did not find any evidence for significant
>effects at the densities of bees and flowers we
>studied. Further, no other study has unambiguously
>shown negative effects of honey bees on the reproductive
>success of wild bees, although resource overlap and
>competitive exclusion from the most profitable flower
>patches have been demonstrated.
>
>Interspecific competition by
>honey bees for food resources was not shown to be a significant
>factor determining abundance and species richness
>of wild bees.
>
>
>Resource overlap and possible competition between honey bees and wild bees in central Europe
>Ingolf Steffan-Dewenter · Teja Tscharntke
>Oecologia (2000) 122:288–296
>© Springer-Verlag 2000
>
>_______________________________________________
>Pollinator mailing list
>Pollinator at lists.sonic.net
>http://lists.sonic.net/mailman/listinfo/pollinator
>

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