I heart bumblebees! Part Three: How we can help....

Mar 21, 2009 by

I heart bumblebees! Part Three: How we can help.

I watched the documentary King Corn last night and LOVED it. It's about two men who decide to farm an acre of land in Iowa and grow corn to understand just how the crop gets into so much of our food (and bodies). It's poignant, interesting and thoughtful, and I couldn't help but think how similar the issues they're looking at are to the ones that have caused bee decline. Basically, we're both exploring the downward spiral of agriculture, and its effects on our environmental and bodily health. The King Corn website also offers some great ways to address our agricultural system on the "take action" tab in their website, which gave me some good ideas for this post. So let's get on with it, shall we? How can we help out bumblebees (and...

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I heart bumblebees! Part Two: Why the bumblebee is in decline....

Mar 14, 2009 by

I heart bumblebees! Part Two: Why the bumblebee is in decline.

So, why have the bumblebees been in decline? Many of the articles I found concerned the U.K., which doesn't mean that the decline isn't happening in the U.S., it's just that the U.K. has been a hotbed of recent bee research. An article titled "Decline of Bumblebees (Bombus) in the North American Midwest" states: "The nature and extent of bumble bee decline in North America is poorly understood due mainly to a lack of baseline and long term data." Clearly, there are reports of bee decline in the U.S. as well, and I think that the two phenomenons are closely related. So let's return to David Goulson's analysis. In the last blog, I wrote about bumblebee's unique characteristics, but let's point out some of the main ones that are contributing to their decline. Bumblebees...

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An article I published recently on bees...

Feb 16, 2009 by

An 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...

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Yupbees: Young, Urban, Beekeeping Professionals...

Dec 14, 2008 by

Yupbees: 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...

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More love for Haagen Dazs

Dec 14, 2008 by

More 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...

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Haagen Daaz: Saving the Bees One Flower at a Time...

Dec 14, 2008 by

Haagen 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...

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The Simpsons do Bees!

Dec 10, 2008 by

The 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)...

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Smokers of the World, Unite!

Nov 30, 2008 by

Smokers 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...

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Keeping it Light

Nov 29, 2008 by

Keeping 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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Jumping the Gun on CCD

Nov 29, 2008 by

Jumping the Gun on CCD

I just emailed Kim Flottum, editor of Bee Culture magazine and a wonderful blog on beekeeping in The Daily Green. I asked him about a book that came out this spring about Colony Collapse Disorder, titled A Spring Without Bees, by Michael Schacker. I found this book quite illuminating, especially because it pointed to a specific cause of CCD: An insecticide called Imadacloprid (IMD) produced by Bayer Industries. In the book, Schacker makes the argument that IMD is responsible for CCD, and argues that we need to remove the pesticide from our agricultural production. Now, I'm an organic fan all the way, but I also wondered how Schacker was able to be so confident about his conclusion when I hadn't really come across anyone else as confident in my research. So, this led to...

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The Bees won in Denver!

Nov 27, 2008 by

The Bees won in Denver!

Want to know what I'm thankful for? I'm grateful for the Denver City Council passing legislation that allows Denver residents to keep bees in their backyards. This was the result of a recent snafu with a local resident who had a couple hives in her yard and was slapped with a $950 fine if she didn't remove her hives. (See previous post about it here.) Although the proposal passed 10 to 2 in the council, there were still two councilwomen who opposed it, Marcia Johnson and Jeanne Faatz. The women expressed concern that beekeepers don't have to notify or get permission from their neighbors, and were concerned about people with fatal bee allergies. This is an understandable concern, but my hope is that most beekeepers will give a heads-up to neighbors, and encourage them...

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Are bees still on the decline? YES....

Nov 6, 2008 by

Are bees still on the decline? YES.

My uncle asked me this question a few days ago, and I found it disappointing. Not on his part, of course--I was glad he knew about the situation and cared to see where it was at. Instead, my frustration was aimed at the media and the general public and their lack of knowledge on this topic. Why isn't there more news on this? According to an article on CBS news, 36.1 percent of the nation's commercially managed hives lost their populations last year, compared to 32 percent last year. Apparently, the die-off is not quite enough to show a trend, and also isn't quite enough to deserve any real alarm--or so it seems. But I'll be frank here, I think our recent economic meltdown has shown that most people are quite happy to turn...

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