A Council of Agriculture research team in Miaoli County have developed an environmentally friendly crop pollination technique using honey bees that promises to contribute to natural and healthy crop cultivation, one of the researchers said yesterday.
The technique involves specially designed portable and temporary hives made from cardboard that are used to transport bees to areas of crops enclosed by netting. A box containing pollen is placed at the entrance to the temporary hive, coating the insects with the powder as they leave.
The bees pollinate the crops much more intensively and effectively than would otherwise be possible. The government has approved patents for both the temporary hive and the pollination box.
There has been an alarming decline in bee populations across the US and Europe since 2006 that experts believe represents a potential ecological and environmental catastrophe that some say could lead to a collapse of the global food chain.
In light of the problem, known as “colony collapse disorder,” the Miaoli Agricultural Research and Extension Station established the system, which uses the temporary hives to transport locally raised Italian bees to enclosed crop areas.
The technique can be also be applied to open fields as well as the netted areas, station chief Hou Feng-wu (侯鳳舞) said.
“Bee pollination not only saves labor costs of NT$40,000 [US$1,200] per hectare for artificial pollination, but also reduces the percentage of malformed fruit,” Hou said.
Hou said that although Taiwan has not seen a bee decline disaster like the one in the US, his station was working with the system as a preventative measure.
He quoted scientists as speculating there are probably at least four major reasons causing the decline in bee populations: viruses; pesticides; toxins from genetically modified crops; and possible interference by radio waves from cellular telephone transmissions, which can disorient bees.
He noted that the Miaoli station has developed its own techniques in judging whether the pollinating bees are healthy or not and to boost their health by feeding them a formula made of traditional Chinese herbal medicine.
Hou said there were a total of 631 beekeeping operations around the country, with 60,000 to 70,000 hives and more than 1.2 billion bees.
Beekeepers churn out NT$1 billion in honey and royal jelly per year, while crop outputs from bee pollination could be worth as much as NT$50 billion a year, Hou said.
“Bees are fully deserving of their title, ‘the wings of agriculture,’” Hou said.
A wave of stop-loss selling and panic selling hit Taiwan's stock market at its opening today, with the weighted index plunging 2,086 points — a drop of more than 9.7 percent — marking the largest intraday point and percentage loss on record. The index bottomed out at 19,212.02, while futures were locked limit-down, with more than 1,000 stocks hitting their daily drop limit. Three heavyweight stocks — Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (Foxconn, 鴻海精密) and MediaTek (聯發科) — hit their limit-down prices as soon as the market opened, falling to NT$848 (US$25.54), NT$138.5 and NT$1,295 respectively. TSMC's
SELL-OFF: Investors expect tariff-driven volatility as the local boarse reopens today, while analysts say government support and solid fundamentals would steady sentiment Local investors are bracing for a sharp market downturn today as the nation’s financial markets resume trading following a two-day closure for national holidays before the weekend, with sentiment rattled by US President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff announcement. Trump’s unveiling of new “reciprocal tariffs” on Wednesday triggered a sell-off in global markets, with the FTSE Taiwan Index Futures — a benchmark for Taiwanese equities traded in Singapore — tumbling 9.2 percent over the past two sessions. Meanwhile, the American depositary receipts (ADRs) of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the most heavily weighted stock on the TAIEX, plunged 13.8 percent in
In a small town in Paraguay, a showdown is brewing between traditional producers of yerba mate, a bitter herbal tea popular across South America, and miners of a shinier treasure: gold. A rush for the precious metal is pitting mate growers and indigenous groups against the expanding operations of small-scale miners who, until recently, were their neighbors, not nemeses. “They [the miners] have destroyed everything... The canals, springs, swamps,” said Vidal Britez, president of the Yerba Mate Producers’ Association of the town of Paso Yobai, about 210km east of capital Asuncion. “You can see the pollution from the dead fish.
ASML Holding NV, the sole producer of the most advanced machines used in semiconductor manufacturing, said geopolitical tensions are harming innovation a day after US President Donald Trump levied massive tariffs that promise to disrupt trade flows across the entire world. “Our industry has been built basically on the ability of people to work together, to innovate together,” ASML chief executive officer Christophe Fouquet said in a recorded message at a Thursday industry event in the Netherlands. Export controls and increasing geopolitical tensions challenge that collaboration, he said, without specifically addressing the new US tariffs. Tech executives in the EU, which is