On “The Great American Dying Bee.”
This entry was posted on 6/11/2007 10:32 AM and is filed under Environment.
You know, I hate bees. Aside from being highly allergic to their stings, they just weird me out (how can an animal be both ugly and cute? Fuzzy and insectoid? It boggles the mind!) But I do understand the importance of bees in the food chain and their role in pollinating flowers and plants…so that we, the people can enjoy, well…flowers and plants!
Guess what? The bees are dying off. It’s called “colony collapse disorder,” which kind of makes it sound like a mental issue…something that one can go to Charter for and get some meds (“I have colony collapse disorder, and I need help.”)
Now, I’m not a biologist, nor am I an avid environmentalist…and I’m the first to smack down a spider with my latest copy of Entertainment Weekly…so maybe I’m not the most appropriate person to talk about Colony Collapse Disorder…but I do know that you can’t talk to your kids about ‘the birds and the bees’ without some damn bees! I’m sure some far-right lunatic will leap on this cause soon: now the far-left gays are killing off the bees so that we’re only left with ‘the birds and the birds!’
Nut-jobs aside, without the bees there are less nuts in the literal sense…if any nuts at all. In fact, one-third of all food that we, the people eat, is pollinated by the honey bee. Here’s a mere sampling of foods dependent on bee-flower sex:
• Apples
• Asparagus
• Avocados
• Blueberries
• Broccoli
• Cantaloupe
• Celery
• Cherries
• Citrus (lemons, oranges)
• Cranberries
• Cucumbers
• Kiwi
• Nuts
• Peaches
• Soybeans
• Squash
• Strawberries
Now, while I would personally be a fan of asparagus going extinct, I’m sure gonna miss apples, lemonade, pickles, peanut butter and guacamole. And I’m pretty sure that there are a few misguided people out there who actually like asparagus.
Here’s the kicker: as of yet, nobody really knows exactly why the honey bee colonies are literally flying off and dying. It could be a parasite, or weakened immune systems due to fertilizers and chemicals. It could be that slightly warmer temperatures have confused the bees. It could be that where there were once fields of wild, there are now suburbs of lawns, and thus less natural habitat to keep up a rigorous populace of wild honeybees (thus keeping the genes strong.) It could be all of these things and none of these things.
For us, it’s another example of depending too much on one strand of nature, entirely changing the ecology of farming. Pre-industrialization, farmers rotated crops and used a variety of nature’s little pollinators to prop up the farm. Post-industrialization, agribusiness consortiums fertilize the same massive plot of land and use only the honey bee.
Again, I’m not a farmer nor a biologist, but it seems to me that overtly simple relationships with nature are bound to fail…in this case, the honey bee and our ability to grow food.
Check out this article.
What strikes me is this quote:
“So if their decline worsens, we could be ‘stuck with grains and water’ to eat, said Kevin Hackett, who works with the department's bee and pollination program.”
Awwwww. Poor Americans! Having to only eat grains and water! How will we ever survive? Imagine the TGI Friday’s menu: four different varieties of white bread! And your choice of water!
Actually, that’s pretty insensitive, but not to Americans and Europeans, who have been feasting on a cornucopia of foods from around the world for the past two hundred years or so. That bread and water diet that we may soon be relegated to…has been the main food source for developing and third-world countries. To put it another way, when the American breadbasket overfloweth, Ethiopia chows down…and not on the good stuff, either. A bread and water diet is much better than no diet at all…which is kind of the issue facing the rest of the world as our bees die.
But let’s get back to America (because who really cares about those other people, right? U! S! A!) We’ve built an entire culture, a civilization based on mass-quantities of food, folks and fun! How will the fatties get by without their next fix at Applebee’s? Can we ‘stay away from the buffet?’ (© 2007 Aaron Michael Gordon, all rights reserved.) Will rat and roach become a Denny’s staple? I can just imagine the new ‘Ratty-Tatty, Fresh-And-Buggy’ breakfast, can’t you?
Jokes aside…why isn’t this a huge news story? I mean, if there was anything that might make Americans reconsider their pampered living situation and how we, the people are affecting the environment for the worse, it’s a shutdown of the food supply. To put it another way, if industrialized farming combined with suburban and exurban development…combined with warming due to driving big-assed SUVs to hold our big asses, if this combination is killing the bees and closing down Cracker Barrel, wouldn’t that be a wake-up call? Shouldn’t this be the top story at NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, MSNBC and even FOX News? (I’m sure the Fox angle would be something anti-liberal…like “Clinton and her socialist liberals want to keep you from eating like cows at a trough.” Also, cows eat alfalfa…so they’ll be gone too if the bees die off.)
Well…I have a reason as to why the major news outlets haven’t latched onto the bee story: advertisers. I’m pretty sure McDonald’s would rather we, the people focus on the abstract war on terror instead of the tangible lack of bees. It’s kind of why we don’t have reports on the torrid, unhealthy and sad state of our livestock (until there’s a bird flu, that is.) If the choice is between showing a slaughterhouse for cattle polluting a river with waste and methane, or getting a multi-million dollar check from Burger King for their next ‘I Am Man” ad blitz…which side is going to win out in the free-market media?
You can have it their way, and their way only.
Except for the little fact that we, the people can only eat like manatees if there is plenty of food. And if we lose 1/3 of the food…that’s gonna be a pretty skimpy salad bar at Wendy’s, no?
So how can we bring back the bees, en masse? Well, here’s a start.
Check out this passage:
Dee Lusby, who works in the Tucson and Benson areas, has been keeping bees for years and now has 900 colonies.
“I’m not seeing the problem with the honeybees I keep, but then I am an organic beekeeper,” she said.
She uses a back-to-basics approach without the use of drugs, chemicals, essential oils, herbs, FGMO, acids, fungicides, bacterial/viral inhibitants, micro-organism stimuli, and artificial feeds.
“Why? Because healthy, happy bees don’t need any additives,” she said. “You want a natural sustainable beekeeping system. To me the disappearing disease is a last stress factor that causes our bee colonies in this country and other places in the world to collapse due to increased dependency of many artificial management ways today that simply don’t work.”
Turns out… a return to sustainable, organic farming is what it takes to keep the bees (and by extension, ourselves and flowers and plants) alive. Now, this report may be wrong…and the colony collapse may spread to non-drugged out bees, but it kind of makes sense. People who only eat processed foods are statistically much less healthy, much more obese (and much less attractive) than those that eat organic. A real fruit is better than a Roll-Up.
So the bees are really just like us: you are what you eat.
Guess what? The bees are dying off. It’s called “colony collapse disorder,” which kind of makes it sound like a mental issue…something that one can go to Charter for and get some meds (“I have colony collapse disorder, and I need help.”)
Now, I’m not a biologist, nor am I an avid environmentalist…and I’m the first to smack down a spider with my latest copy of Entertainment Weekly…so maybe I’m not the most appropriate person to talk about Colony Collapse Disorder…but I do know that you can’t talk to your kids about ‘the birds and the bees’ without some damn bees! I’m sure some far-right lunatic will leap on this cause soon: now the far-left gays are killing off the bees so that we’re only left with ‘the birds and the birds!’
Nut-jobs aside, without the bees there are less nuts in the literal sense…if any nuts at all. In fact, one-third of all food that we, the people eat, is pollinated by the honey bee. Here’s a mere sampling of foods dependent on bee-flower sex:
• Apples
• Asparagus
• Avocados
• Blueberries
• Broccoli
• Cantaloupe
• Celery
• Cherries
• Citrus (lemons, oranges)
• Cranberries
• Cucumbers
• Kiwi
• Nuts
• Peaches
• Soybeans
• Squash
• Strawberries
Now, while I would personally be a fan of asparagus going extinct, I’m sure gonna miss apples, lemonade, pickles, peanut butter and guacamole. And I’m pretty sure that there are a few misguided people out there who actually like asparagus.
Here’s the kicker: as of yet, nobody really knows exactly why the honey bee colonies are literally flying off and dying. It could be a parasite, or weakened immune systems due to fertilizers and chemicals. It could be that slightly warmer temperatures have confused the bees. It could be that where there were once fields of wild, there are now suburbs of lawns, and thus less natural habitat to keep up a rigorous populace of wild honeybees (thus keeping the genes strong.) It could be all of these things and none of these things.
For us, it’s another example of depending too much on one strand of nature, entirely changing the ecology of farming. Pre-industrialization, farmers rotated crops and used a variety of nature’s little pollinators to prop up the farm. Post-industrialization, agribusiness consortiums fertilize the same massive plot of land and use only the honey bee.
Again, I’m not a farmer nor a biologist, but it seems to me that overtly simple relationships with nature are bound to fail…in this case, the honey bee and our ability to grow food.
Check out this article.
What strikes me is this quote:
“So if their decline worsens, we could be ‘stuck with grains and water’ to eat, said Kevin Hackett, who works with the department's bee and pollination program.”
Awwwww. Poor Americans! Having to only eat grains and water! How will we ever survive? Imagine the TGI Friday’s menu: four different varieties of white bread! And your choice of water!
Actually, that’s pretty insensitive, but not to Americans and Europeans, who have been feasting on a cornucopia of foods from around the world for the past two hundred years or so. That bread and water diet that we may soon be relegated to…has been the main food source for developing and third-world countries. To put it another way, when the American breadbasket overfloweth, Ethiopia chows down…and not on the good stuff, either. A bread and water diet is much better than no diet at all…which is kind of the issue facing the rest of the world as our bees die.
But let’s get back to America (because who really cares about those other people, right? U! S! A!) We’ve built an entire culture, a civilization based on mass-quantities of food, folks and fun! How will the fatties get by without their next fix at Applebee’s? Can we ‘stay away from the buffet?’ (© 2007 Aaron Michael Gordon, all rights reserved.) Will rat and roach become a Denny’s staple? I can just imagine the new ‘Ratty-Tatty, Fresh-And-Buggy’ breakfast, can’t you?
Jokes aside…why isn’t this a huge news story? I mean, if there was anything that might make Americans reconsider their pampered living situation and how we, the people are affecting the environment for the worse, it’s a shutdown of the food supply. To put it another way, if industrialized farming combined with suburban and exurban development…combined with warming due to driving big-assed SUVs to hold our big asses, if this combination is killing the bees and closing down Cracker Barrel, wouldn’t that be a wake-up call? Shouldn’t this be the top story at NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, MSNBC and even FOX News? (I’m sure the Fox angle would be something anti-liberal…like “Clinton and her socialist liberals want to keep you from eating like cows at a trough.” Also, cows eat alfalfa…so they’ll be gone too if the bees die off.)
Well…I have a reason as to why the major news outlets haven’t latched onto the bee story: advertisers. I’m pretty sure McDonald’s would rather we, the people focus on the abstract war on terror instead of the tangible lack of bees. It’s kind of why we don’t have reports on the torrid, unhealthy and sad state of our livestock (until there’s a bird flu, that is.) If the choice is between showing a slaughterhouse for cattle polluting a river with waste and methane, or getting a multi-million dollar check from Burger King for their next ‘I Am Man” ad blitz…which side is going to win out in the free-market media?
You can have it their way, and their way only.
Except for the little fact that we, the people can only eat like manatees if there is plenty of food. And if we lose 1/3 of the food…that’s gonna be a pretty skimpy salad bar at Wendy’s, no?
So how can we bring back the bees, en masse? Well, here’s a start.
Check out this passage:
Dee Lusby, who works in the Tucson and Benson areas, has been keeping bees for years and now has 900 colonies.
“I’m not seeing the problem with the honeybees I keep, but then I am an organic beekeeper,” she said.
She uses a back-to-basics approach without the use of drugs, chemicals, essential oils, herbs, FGMO, acids, fungicides, bacterial/viral inhibitants, micro-organism stimuli, and artificial feeds.
“Why? Because healthy, happy bees don’t need any additives,” she said. “You want a natural sustainable beekeeping system. To me the disappearing disease is a last stress factor that causes our bee colonies in this country and other places in the world to collapse due to increased dependency of many artificial management ways today that simply don’t work.”
Turns out… a return to sustainable, organic farming is what it takes to keep the bees (and by extension, ourselves and flowers and plants) alive. Now, this report may be wrong…and the colony collapse may spread to non-drugged out bees, but it kind of makes sense. People who only eat processed foods are statistically much less healthy, much more obese (and much less attractive) than those that eat organic. A real fruit is better than a Roll-Up.
So the bees are really just like us: you are what you eat.
Comments
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6/12/2007 12:22 AM
Ryan wrote:
Informative and fun read! While it may not be the huge news story it deserves, it's people like you are really helping get this thing solved. You can't solve a problem with knowing the problem first, which is why awareness is just as important as anything in getting our bees healthy again!
I've been trying to raise money for bee research by selling tshirts. I hope you'll check it out!
Ryan
http://www.savetheblank.com">http://www.savetheblank.com">http://www.savetheblank.com
Reply to this-
6/12/2007 8:16 AM
Aaron Michael Gordon wrote:
These are great shirts!
Reply to this
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6/12/2007 8:16 AM
Aaron Michael Gordon wrote:
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6/12/2007 7:43 AM
Alejandro wrote:
That was fun read. Love the science/sarcasm combo.
Reply to this -
9/24/2010 12:43 PM
Volkl skis wrote:
I'm actually really concerned about the dying populations of honey bees. I love the products that they help produce. I don't know what I would do if I had to use artificial honey on my breakfast cereal. It would definitely be a bummer!
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