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Top Ten Bee Facts Video
Well, the video won't let me embed it into my blog, but I will include the link here on the top ten facts about bees. Here's the list (but still check out the video!) 1. Bees visit over 2 million flowers to make 1/2 kilo of honey (1.10 lbs). 2. For one jar of honey, bees will fly over 90,000 kilometers--55,923 miles. 3. A honey bee flies over 8km per hour (4.97). 4. The average worker bee will only make 1/2 a teaspoon of honey in her entire lifetime. 5. It would only take two tablespoons of honey to fuel a bee's flight around the world. (I hear this statistic a lot, but the fact is, a bee's wings wouldn't likely last long enough to fly around the world...but hey, it puts things in perspective.) 6. One honey bee will visit between 50 and 100 flowers on one collection trip. 7. Bees have been producing honey from flowering plants for between 10 and 20 million years. 8. Honeybees did not exist in North America. The Native Americans called the honeybee the "white man's fly." They were brought to North America by the colonists. 9. There are over 60,000 bees in the average bee colony. 10. A honeybee has four wings, while a fly has two. There ya have it--with metric conversions even! But check out that...
read moreCCD or not CCD? That is the question.
So...got some news. Not sure what to think about it. Basically it states that scientists have not been able to come up with any hard facts about why so many friggin' bees are dying, all the same way. Apparently, according to an article in the BBC news, "many experts now believe that the term [CCD] is misleading and there is no single, new ailment killing the bees." So--that means, according to the article--that CCD may not actually exist. Here's a little chunk out of the article: Conducting experiments at an isolated almond orchard in the Central Valley area of California, Frank Eischen, of the US Department of Agriculture, said it was "probably true" that there was no new single disease. "We've seen these kinds of symptoms before, during the seventies, during the nineties, and now," he added. "It's probably not a unique event in beekeeping to have large numbers of colonies die." Basically, the growing idea is that CCD is really a conglomeration of several different causes, like varroa mites, a lack of nutrition because of the urbanization of their pastures, and...and this is the biggie...pesticides. (Please go to the last blog and help protest unmitigated use of IMD!) Another big concern was the intensity of the agricultural system, which has beekeepers carting bees all over the state feeding them on a few single crops year round, instead of the natural diversity of pollen and nectar that they'd find flying to diverse pastures. Unfortunately for the bee loving community, there was also this kicker: "Some critics of the bee industry have called the whole concept of CCD a hoax, a public relations stunt designed to attract public sympathy." Wow--a public relations stunt? There are literally unprecedented levels of bees dying around the world--the number of bumble bees in the UK has halved in the last 60 years alone--and it's a hoax designed to manipulate people? I don't agree with this sentiment. I mean, check out those bee boxes above. Are bees supposed to live in condos? I don't think so. I'm inclined to think that there's something serious going on here that we need to continue to examine, and that this issue has brought some much needed attention to what's looking to be a broken piece of an already very broken agricultural...
read moreHelp Protect Honey Bees from a Toxic Pesticide
Hey all! Sorry I've been a little lax in blogging. I've been teaching more than full-time, and working to finish my novel. Anyway, here's a great opportunity to help save the bees. One of the more nefarious pesticides for honey bees is one called imidacloprid (IMD), a toxin created by Bayer Corp. What IMD reportedly does is make the bees drunk, essentially, and inhibit their navigational systems so they can't find their way home. This letter encourages the EPA to reexamine the research on IMD, and make sure to ban its use when it has proven harmful to honey bees. Please click here and send a letter to the Office of Pesticides Programs at the EPA and spread the word! Thanks! Here's the...
read moreAn article I published recently on bees
Well, this seems like the appropriate place to link to the article I wrote. Here's an excerpt: IS THE HONEYMOON OVER? There's something particularly sweet about the first time you fall in love, especially when you're falling in love with honeybees. I remember when I first laid eyes on a buzzing, crawling hive box frame of apis mellifera, commonly known as the European or Western honeybee. I was living in the Philippines on a Fulbright grant in spring 2007, and decided to visit a small resort, the Bohol Bee Farm, located on the southern island of Bohol. Vicky Wallace, the Filipina owner and an avid beekeeper, created her sanctuary over the past 10 years. She dedicated her resort, a small farm plus a collection of hexagonal buildings nestled around an organic restaurant, to teaching locals and tourists about organic farming and the importance of bees. Once I held the thriving hive frame in my hands, I was sold. I stayed at the resort for 10 days to study beekeeping. In the process, I became a master of bee trivia, sharing my new enthusiasm like a recent convert. Did you know, I'd ask visiting tourists, that bees have been around for more than 30 million years, and that they are the only insects that actually produce food for humans? Did you know that more than 90 percent of all bees are female, led by a queen that maintains the hive through her pheromones? If the tourists let me, I would go on to add: the queen bee also only mates once, you know, and during her mating flight she'll mate with several male bees, known as drones, who will die mid-air when she rips out their thorax post-coitus. This usually got a grimace. Now that I had them, I'd explain that it takes about 550 worker bees (all female) to produce one pound of honey from about two million flowers, and that the average honeybee — who will only live for approximately three weeks — will only contribute about one-twelfth of a teaspoon during her entire lifetime. And did you know, I'd ask, breathless, that bees communicate navigational facts by dancing? I'd tell these facts in between bouts of eating honeycomb, finally consuming so much that I made myself sick. Read the rest here: Is the Honeymoon...
read moreYupbees: Young, Urban, Beekeeping Professionals
Maybe I'll be the first to coin it, because I'm all about this new movement. That's right: Yupbees. (The fact that this isn't coming up as a misspelled word in my spell check only confirms that this word will join the many greats in our lexicon.) So, there's a great article about urban beekeeping in Germany. The country, like many others, is experiencing a severe loss in its bee population. While most people typically associate bees with beautiful hillsides of lavender and apple trees, bees need to be a part of every landscape, including our urban jungles. What's interesting is that older beekeepers are trying to make beekeeping exciting and accessible to young beekeepers in the cities. They're offering classes and mentorships to help raise awareness and interest for young beekeepers, from school children to working professionals. Currently, hundreds of thousands of bees are flying through the neighborhoods of Hamburg, Frankfurt, and Munich. Apparently, the densely populated Ruhr region now houses more bees than the surrounding countryside. A lot of people ask if they can keep bees in the city. I have a friend who actually gets better honey yields when he keeps his bees in urban bee yards. People in the city tend to grow plants and water them year-round (or at least during the growing season), which provides more bee nectar and pollen than a field of wild flowers that might die mid-summer without water. The cities are also warmer than the countryside and bees can stay active and gather food longer than they might in a rural environment. People are keeping bees on their balconies, rooftops, and even hotel roofs. They're also in London and even Manhattan, and now--thanks to a new Denver law--they're in Denver too. And if you're wondering about honey, here's what one beekeeper had to say about the urban gold: "City honey has an outstanding aroma," said Benedikt Polaczek, a bee researcher at the Free University of Berlin. "And besides, it's very clean, because they don't spray pesticides as much in the city." In Manhattan, "Sheriff Beekeeper" David Graves sells his Rooftop Magic Honey at a premium price. Join the Yupbee revolution. I'm a Yupbee and...
read moreMore love for Haagen Dazs
Let's give it up a bit more for Haagen Dazs. They have this cool website where you can make your own bee that looks like you. (Yes, that's what I look like. Seriously.) Anyway, you can email a bee image to a friend and then it takes you to their website where you can get education on the bee decline and the role bees play in our ecosystem. It's fun. It's free. It's educational. Now go eat some...
read moreHaagen Daaz: Saving the Bees One Flower at a Time
Haagen Dazs rocks. Not only do they have this crazy cute website (complete with chirping birds and flying bees!) designed to help educate about bee decline and fund raise for bee research, they also have just announced a $125,000 donation to the University of Davis' department of Entomology to launch a nation-wide contest to design a half-acre bee garden for our beloved pollinators. I'm not sure how to express how excited I am about this without a bevy of exclamation points. But, since I can't contain myself, here I go: WOOHOO!! GO HAAGEN DAZS and UC DAVIS!!!!!!!! Phew. I feel so much better now that I got that out. I'm kind of against the use of frequent exclamation points, but sometimes it must be done. (Haagen Dazs, by the way, also proves that you can become an extremely popular business with a name that no one knows how to spell or pronounce. In fact, I had to check the spelling on this company about five times while writing this post. Nice work, Haagan Dazs.) Anyway, this genius idea will encourage landscape designers everywhere to submit a plan for a half-acre bee garden at UC Davis, to provide a haven for the honeybees used for research there. In case you didn't know, UC Davis is one of the bee research hot spots in the U.S. The garden will provide a seasonal variety of plants and flowers so the plants will have nectar and pollen year-round. The garden will also educate visitors on how they can make bee gardens of their own. The garden is expected to be the first of many pollinator gardens at UC Davis. I can't help it--I must say it again: GO UC DAVIS!!! As Eric Mussen, a Cooperative Extension apiculturist in the UC Davis Department of Entomology, said: "The garden will be extremely helpful in demonstrating that bees are not a nuisance in the backyard, but instead are obtaining food and water essential for their survival," That's right--bees are not a nuisance. They are responsible for about 1/3 of the food on your plate. In a time where there are a million different environmental causes that are--in many ways--so intangible, here's a cause that you can do something about directly, and it benefits the food on your plate. And...honey is yummy. Let's face it. To see the original article with info about designing a bee garden, click here. Or, to check out the Haagen Dazs website, go here: www.helpthehoneybees.com Last, but not least, I left out a few of these: !!!!!!!!!!! It might be the caffeine I just drank (chai green tea with honey). God knows caffeine in my sensitive body is a bit like crack. But I think I'm just darn...
read moreThe Simpsons do Bees!
It's official. Bees are now part of pop culture. Even Lisa Simpson has her eye on the disappearing bee population. The episode is wittily titled: "The Burns and the Bees," and--though I won't vouch for the bee science in the show--it's nice to see the bee awareness spreading into pop media. The plot? Basically, Mr. Burns decides to build a sports complex in the one place where the declining bee population is thriving, and ends up getting stung financially as a result. It's cute--not The Simpsons that I knew and loved years ago, but still worth seeing. I'm glad a more mainstream audience will be exposed--even if only in a small way--to this very important issue. You can watch the full episode of The Simpsons here. As a vegetarian (though not so strict anymore) and a frequent advocate of the environment and the oppressed (I say this a bit tongue in cheek) I have often resonated with the bleeding heart, slightly naive, Lisa Simpson. Now I do even more! If I could only get a chunky pearl necklace and that cool hairdo... Image: ©2009 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation (via...
read moreSmokers of the World, Unite!
No--I'm not talking about cigarette smokers; I'm talking about bee smokers. You can see me with a smoker in my profile picture--it looks like a tea kettle with a mini-accordion on the back, and is used to blow smoke into the bee hive to calm bees. But what I really wanted to talk about is a protest in Britain a few weeks ago. Apparently 300 beekeepers joined together with their smokers in full effect, dressed in their Sunday best (starch-white bee suits) to protest the dramatic loss of bee hives in the U.K. We're talking 2 million bees in ONE year. Wow. The beekeepers are angry that the government hasn't put enough money towards bee research. It's understandable why they haven't: Beekeepers don't have the same kind of sway that energy and science lobbyists do, for example...we face the same problem here in the U.S. In the U.K., about 2.4 million is being spent on bee research and to conduct hive checks, but the beekeepers would like to up that amount to 12.6 million. Why the urgency? Check this out. According to an article about the event in UPI.com: "The beekeeper group said if the current state of deterioration continues across Britain, English honey supplies could be gone before the end of the year." And when honey supplies are gone, we're talking about a bee decline that's so dramatic that it'll trickle down (and already has!) to farmers everywhere. Check out the article where I found the picture, and see some other great pics here and...
read moreKeeping it Light
I love this comic by Lela Dowling about CCD that I found on The Daily Green's bee blog. It's wonderful! Click on this link here to see it in all its...
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