Honeybee Pollinating an Apple Blossom
(Image credit: Jasmina)
Retirement home living but for cats
4 days ago
Showing posts sorted by date for query bees. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query bees. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Monday, April 23, 2012
Vanishing of the Bees: What You Can Do
Palate Cleanser #177: Comtesse-Related
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Earth Day
Illustration by Nicholas Felton for Mother Jones
How deep would the damage go they asked? How much would the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem and food web be altered? The article talked about potential damage to krill, phytoplankton, and various keystone species, such as killifish, and what that might do to the entire marine food web. Damage some of these small species and you will potentially wipe out larger fish.
Deformed Gulf Shrimps On the left is a Gulf shrimp with growths, while on the right are a group of shrimps without either eyes or eye sockets. Left: Keath Ladner. Right: Erika Blumenfeld/Al Jazeera
(Image from Popular Science)
This 2011 photo provided by Donald Waters shows a fish harvested from the Gulf of Mexico with unusual lesions and infections.
(Would YOU eat this fish? I sure wouldn't...)
(Image credit: Donald Waters/AP)
If you want to really think about our 42nd annual Earth Day, I encourage my readers to check out photographer Julie Dermansky's Flickr set Louisiana Wetlands with 249 exquisite photos of what delicate wetlands are supposed to look like. And then, take a look at her BP Oil Disaster series with 600 photos of everything that BP, and the oil industry as a whole, want you to forget. In these two photo sets Julie, whose photos have been featured many a time on this blog, has captured a beautiful world, sullied for a cause that I have a harder and harder time grasping these days.
There's more to come on this topic in the weeks ahead. For instance, what about bees being impacted by neonicotinoid pesticides like Merit, threatening our land-based food supply? (Readers of the blog know that in addition to our fruits and vegetables, much of our livestock feeds on bee pollinated fodder.) What will we do when all the insect pests are resistant to imidacloprid, except for bees, who were our friends?
Every day ought to be Earth Day. For a few posts more, it will be.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
US Army and UM-Missoula Team Gains Colony Collapse Disorder Insights
from Debivort at Wikimedia Commons
So y'all remember how much I love bees, right? (Yeah, it's weird since I'm allergic to them...) and surely you remember all about Colony Collapse Disorder and how necessary bees are to our production of foods in this country? Bees have been having a rough time in the US since 2004, when CCD was first observed. Recently, the Department of Homeland Security's Army research lab, Edgewood Chemical Biological Center, in Maryland and an academic bee-study group at University of Montana have collaborated on research into CCD, the bizarre syndrome which causes bees to become (or so it seems) disoriented and to flee their hives permanently. The NY Times had a nice piece on their research.
Necropsy of bee cadavers has proven a complex business. Bees from apiaries fly in all directions and die, usually alone, when suffering from CCD. Even collection of bees to necropsy has been challenging. Challenging, but fruitful.
The researchers, who have published their preliminary findings on PloSOne, found that to a worker, every bee cadaver recovered from a CCD'd colony was co-infected with an Iridovirus, an type of virus first noted in Asian Honeybees, that generally infects invertebrate species along with Nosema ceranae, a unicellular parasite that infests bees. Their studies show that co-infection appears to substantially weaken bees. Control bee species in Australia and the Montana Bee lab's apiary indicated that healthy bees were not co-infected with these contagions.
From study co-author Roger Cramer's NPR interview, on All Things Considered, we have the firm statement though that it's "not even close" to being the only answer to CCD. The short piece on CCD gives measure to the frightening rapidity with which bees can up and disappear.
"Pennsylvania beekeeper Dave Hackenberg recalls the experience from 2004 of checking on a hive one morning after noticing a loss of bees. He estimates there were several thousand in the hive.
"But by 1 or 2 o'clock in the afternoon, nobody was home," Hackenberg says. "They just totally disappeared."
Ultimately, the real concern is that no one knows why bees are getting so sick. Many of the diseases found in CCD bees have been known for some time. The suspected culprit? Pesticides. Sprayed on pollen-bearing crops that are dependent upon bees.
If you want to encourage honeybees in your yard, don't spray unless you absolutely have to. And check out Penn States' Pollinator Friendly Garden series.
How much of what you eat is pollinated by bees? Well if you're a fruit and vegetable eater like me, you'd be stunned. But even if you're not, what do think all those cattle, sheep and other livestock are eating? Is some of what they eat pollinated by bees? Hmmm. Maybe you should check that out. ;)
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Water
(Image credit: National Academy of Sciences)
Water Insecurity
Of course I wish I were in school. I want to learn to read and write… But how can I? My mother needs me to get water.
Yeni Bazan, age 10, El Alto, BoliviaIn Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty and the Global Water Crisis, a long but fascinating report from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), readers can learn of the social justice impacts of lack of access to clean water in much of the world, including how it impacts the education of women, a topic of much passion on this blog. What is water insecurity? Not knowing where your next drink is coming from. Or wondering if you'll have water to cook your rice or lentils, or water to clean yourself and your clothes so that you can find work.
The minimum threshold for consumption and/or usage of water is considered to be about 20 L of water a day. However most of the planet subsists on 5 L a day, one tenth of the amount consumed by most Westerners merely flushing their toilets. While Europeans may consume around 300 L of water a day, Americans are estimated to consume around 400 L of water a day. When a European or American flushes a toilet or takes a five minute shower they are using more water in that simple action than is available to hundreds of millions of people on this planet. Do you leave the water running while you brush your teeth? That's wasted, potable water. Do you run your dishwasher half-empty? Wash that tiny load in a washing machine instead of washing the few items by hand? Do you water your lawn and just turn a blind eye to that sprinkler head that broke off, opening a little geyser that spills on your driveway and evaporates? Does the bathroom faucet drip steadily or the toilet keep running?
Millions of women spend a good fraction of their day acquiring what they hope will be safe drinking water. For drinking, for cooking, for cleaning. Yet half the world's population suffers from problems originating from contaminated water or poor sanitation. In the West we just turn on the tap and rarely have even a moment's thought about whether our water will make us ill or not be there tomorrow.
The US National Academy of Science has a great flash presentation, Safe Drinking Water Is Essential. You can read about the effects of climate change on alpine glaciers and fresh water in the Peruvian Andes. Or about water treatment options for well water that is contaminated. And contamination with things like arsenic, lead and other minerals and even organic agents, is a serious problem in much of the world.
I've had quite a few people try to tell me, naively, that reverse osmosis of sea water will solve all our drinking water problems. Reverse osmosis is very costly, both energetically (high pressure pumps are required and that takes energy) and water-wise. Even with large-scale and very well-maintained operations, only about 50% of the water is recoverable, while on a modest scale for household use, that amount falls to an astonishingly low 5-15%. And that's if you can stand drink that 5-15%. If you've ever had water from a reverse osmosis filtration system, you know much depends on your start product, its pre-treatment and then of course, in the real world you need to disinfect it as well. It is a long and costly process. But gone are the days when you could count on getting water from a river or stream. Our freshwater supply is likely just as unpotable as sea water.
Even if reverse osmosis as a process is improved as to efficiency, what we do with that processed water is an open question. Are we, as a planet, drinking it, cooking with it, cleaning with it? Not necessarily. Water is used for so many industrial processes. And of course, when you're talking equipment or chemical processes (like making paper for instance) you have to have clean water to prevent corrosion of equipment or spoiling of the manufactured goods. And that's why it's heartbreaking to read some of the comments from people quoted in that UNDP report. You see things like this:
I've had quite a few people try to tell me, naively, that reverse osmosis of sea water will solve all our drinking water problems. Reverse osmosis is very costly, both energetically (high pressure pumps are required and that takes energy) and water-wise. Even with large-scale and very well-maintained operations, only about 50% of the water is recoverable, while on a modest scale for household use, that amount falls to an astonishingly low 5-15%. And that's if you can stand drink that 5-15%. If you've ever had water from a reverse osmosis filtration system, you know much depends on your start product, its pre-treatment and then of course, in the real world you need to disinfect it as well. It is a long and costly process. But gone are the days when you could count on getting water from a river or stream. Our freshwater supply is likely just as unpotable as sea water.
Even if reverse osmosis as a process is improved as to efficiency, what we do with that processed water is an open question. Are we, as a planet, drinking it, cooking with it, cleaning with it? Not necessarily. Water is used for so many industrial processes. And of course, when you're talking equipment or chemical processes (like making paper for instance) you have to have clean water to prevent corrosion of equipment or spoiling of the manufactured goods. And that's why it's heartbreaking to read some of the comments from people quoted in that UNDP report. You see things like this:
They [the factories] use so much water while we barely have enough for our basic needs, let alone to water our crops.
Gopal Gujur, farmer, Rajasthan, India
Imagine how difficult it must be difficult to see factory use of water that you yourself cannot use to drink, to clean yourself, to cook your meals, to wash your clothes and water your crops. And of course all those factories are likely selling their products to people who have plenty of water. One person in the UNDP report says that when you have no water you are always dirty and no one wants to hire or trust someone who is dirty. Being poor just reinforces your lack of water and having little water guarantees you are and will be poor. Water is, of course, cheap where people can afford it and expensive where they cannot. It's a seller's market. We have plenty of water here in the US, so it's cheap, just like many of the cheap goods manufactured in places where clean water is a precious commodity.
But will you have that water for long? Looking at the UN projections of where the world's water will be in 2050 is a seriously sobering issue. Because climate change isn't about just about where it gets hotter. It's all about water. As precipitation and spring thaw patterns change and glacial ice flows melt age-old fresh water ice into saltwater ocean setting up a cycle of melting, this is what the UNDP's projection is for 2050:
Source: UNDP's Beyond Scarcity
Those areas in black have significantly (more than 20%) decreased precipitation and water run-off and hence reduced water availability. (We won't even get into the issue regions in blue that may end up with flooding and saline intrusion...) They will become drier and so will their people. In addition to the dramatic changes predicted in Europe, the southern portion of Africa, much of the Middle East, Brazil and northern portions of Latin American, I hope my American readers take a good long look at the USA. Scary stuff. Because those black regions are largely in agricultural areas. Sure we have plenty of water right now. But we will surely have less of it in much of the US. And how will we adapt to having to conserve significantly when we are so unused to it at present? The US is the single largest consumer of water in the world, with Australia fairly far behind in second.
Source: UNDP's Beyond Scarcity
Sampajañña
For many years I considered myself a Buddhist. Not really in the religious sense, but in the philosophical sense. Perhaps I still do. There's a lot to be said about some of the practice, although it's quite the challenge to maintain in everyday life. But anyone can benefit from some of the basic goals, irrespective of one's belief (or non-belief) system. Number 7 on the Eightfold Path is Right Mindfulness. Mindfulness, or sati, is intricately connected to Sampajañña a concept that permeates some of the earliest Buddhist writings. Sampajañña is generally translated as 'clear comprehension' but is also "constant thorough understanding of impermanence," "fully alert" or "full awareness," as well as "attention, consideration, discrimination, comprehension, circumspection."
I'm making the practice of Sampajañña with respect to water consumption my personal goal. And I want to advocate for it with respect to what we do to our land and water supply, and our energy sourcing. (My readers will remember Gasland, Josh Fox's frightening documentary showing what unregulated "frac-ing" or hydraulic fracturing of shale throughout the USA has done to the drinking water in many communities. I've still got Josh's video over there on the right side panel.) Energy, climate and water are bound into a tighter and tighter cycle these days. Reverse osmosis with sea water is even harder with oil in the water, and it's harder to conserve water on a hotter planet which we get from burning fossil fuels. To make our corner of the planet cooler we use more energy. Or course, when we're hot we consume more water.
It's pouring here, so my outside plants are happy. I don't use my sprinklers anymore. I've tried to xeriscape. But I'm thinking of stashing a rain barrel on the side of the house. I already take short showers but now a bath seems like it would be such an indulgence. And I look at my fancy fizzy water from Whole Foods in its plastic, petroleum-origin bottle and think, what irony there is in that.
It's pouring here, so my outside plants are happy. I don't use my sprinklers anymore. I've tried to xeriscape. But I'm thinking of stashing a rain barrel on the side of the house. I already take short showers but now a bath seems like it would be such an indulgence. And I look at my fancy fizzy water from Whole Foods in its plastic, petroleum-origin bottle and think, what irony there is in that.
Friday, July 9, 2010
Vanilla
Vanilla planiflora
Image Credit : Everglades National Park (Public Domain-USGov)
Vanilla flavoring is derived from the fruit of the Vanilla planiflora orchid. It is the most expensive spice after saffron, with which it shares a highly labor intensive harvesting method. While the main component of vanilla scent is vanillin, some 171 other aromatic components are found in vanilla beans. Imitation vanilla relies solely on vanillin to achieve its scent and flavor. Subtle components like piperonal are not present in imitation vanilla extracts.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Palate Cleanser #50
Aquilegia chrysantha 'Wild Form'
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Moments of Magic and Solitary Bees, Part 1
The Secret Garden by MACHADOANA
When I was a child some of my most magical moments were had in a backyard garden. Back in the days when the climate was not as harsh (and for those of you who don't think our climate is harsher, all I can say is ask a gardener and get an earful) we used to grow roses and cornflowers and bee balm here in South Florida. While I ought to own up to the fact that some of my least magical moments were had in a garden (weeding has to be one of my least favorite things ever and it's one of the best reasons to have children and the best alternative to corporal punishment of a child you didn't hear that from me) I have magical memories of our garden and bees. Which is rather ironic because I'm actually allergic to bees. (Thelma Lee is reading this and wondering what I'm not allergic to and GlamKitty is reading this and thinking I better quit it with the parentheticals and my mother will read this and wonder why I didn't mention the Weed Fairy, who I am sure follows behind "weeding me" and drops little weeds behind my back to taunt me when I turn around to look back over my weeded beds.)
My childhood introduction to solitary bees looked much like this:
Those are old-fashioned roses which don't do very well in South Florida, where we are so very hot and humid and have no real freeze that lasts in the winter. We just grew the regular floribunda varieties but the blooms aren't really the point at all. Look at those leaves! At the neat and precise little circles cut out of them. As a very vocal and curious nine year old I knew two things. If I couldn't be Elizabeth I (hard because she was dead) and I couldn't be Mad Laurie from Thomasina (I was told I was Irish and not Scottish and that if I brought home one more pet that I was getting in serious trouble) then I wanted to be Mary Lennox in her Secret Garden. The second thing was that there was something messing with our (my) roses!
My mother really encouraged scientific me. She told me to observe and figure it out. Being nine, I put on my hat, moved my lounge chair over near the rose beds, sipped grape Koolaid and promptly got distracted that hot summer afternoon. But eventually, one day while helping to deadhead (I was very proud when I was finally allowed to deadhead) I saw something rather amazing. What I saw was very much like this:
My mystery was solved! The perfect little circles were from Leafcutter bees and after I pulled out an encyclopedia and read the small amount of information about them, I decided that they were allowed to take bits of leaf because they used them to build their nests.
Leafcutter bees are among the solitary bees. Solitary bees are a different species of bee from the common Honeybee. They do not make honey or beeswax and most importantly they are not susceptible to Varroa mites, a very serious threat to Honeybees. Solitary bees are very important pollinators. In fact Orchard Mason bees are solitary and got their name precisely because they are orchard pollinators. Solitary bees are a crucial component of fruit production in the US, Canada and Japan. They rely on building nests rather than hives and they pack their nests with things like plant debris and pieces of leaves.
Orchard Mason Bee on an Apple Blossom
Red58bill, Wikimedia Commons
If you live in an area with Orchard Mason bees or Leafcutter bees, you can provide them with a home by offering structures packed with little tubes. Gardner's Supply has a very pretty one made of bamboo, but you can make your own, too. Christine Farmer's solitary bee page is a revelation and her artwork is simply exquisite. You'd probably be doing a whole lot better with your Sunday if you quit reading my blog and went over to Christine's pages to check out her garden's Leafcutter bee housing and her gallery of beautiful drawings.
Mason Bee House, Gardener's Supply Nesting Tubes, Christine Farmer
In developing this post, I found this delightful video, Leafcutter Bees of Hell's Kitchen, by Helen B. Kennedy of NYC, of Leafcutter bees collecting lilac leaves for nesting. I hope that Helen knows how valuable and endangered bees are becoming. Let's hope those solitary Leafcutters continue to show up to enjoy her lilacs!
I'll have a more facts-based post on solitary bees later this week. It was Sunday after all, and I wanted to write something relaxing, filled with beauty and to distract from all the... all.
Until then, enjoy your Sunday and remember, even in Hell's Kitchen you can be Bee friendly.... Encourage your local bees! If you can have happy bees in Manhattan, you can wherever you are, too!
© Bright Nepenthe, 2010
Until then, enjoy your Sunday and remember, even in Hell's Kitchen you can be Bee friendly.... Encourage your local bees! If you can have happy bees in Manhattan, you can wherever you are, too!
Karen Strickler
www.pollinatorparadise.com
© Bright Nepenthe, 2010
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Odds and Ends from Beloved Readers
First up this morning is a link for the film "What is Organic about Organic?" which I received earlier from La comtesse révisée. Cette comtesse is keeping her eyes wide open for treasures and found the trailer for the film over at Feministing. (Les Comtesses are very feminist in their philosophy, 'tis true.) This film looks like a must see and I want to see if I can put together a group of interested people for a screening here where I live. Maybe Le Chef son will attend. C'est bien! It definitely looks like a film all of us should see. Merci ma chère!!
And as mentioned in one of my posts a while back, oil-soaked birds do not fare well even after they have been meticulously cleaned. The damage seems to be irreparable from the moment they have been in contact with the oil. Jane found this article in today's NY Times quoting studies from UC Davis that show that not only do oiled birds do not recover well (less than ten percent survive), they do not breed if they survive. They are, sadly, lost...
Dying Shore Bird (Image credit: Associated Press)
Some believe that the best efforts are to be made remediated oil damaged habitats. Which is exactly what Jen was doing. It is still just such a heartbreaking situation. Perhaps euthanasia is better. Personally, I can't envision not attempting to save an oiled bird. But it's a hard situation.
And finally, on a somewhat more promising note, Thelma Lee found this excellent resource for those interested in helping bees and our environment. The Great Sunflower Project is operated by San Francisco State University. They invite you to join the hunt for bees, and to plant for bees. You can join the 50,000 participants counting urban and suburban garden bees for The Great Sunflower Project. Everything you need to participate is right there on their link. Being bee friendly (and here) is important to our agriculture and environment. Even solitary bees, which I'm working up a post on, are important. Without bees fertilizing our crops, where will we bee, um I mean, be? You can grow sunflowers and help encourages bees then count the number of bees in your garden. Some gardens didn't have a single bee in their fifteen minute surveys. That's a very bad thing. Help measure how much work your community might need to do to encourage and help sustain the bee population. Plant the seeds and count bees!
Photograph by Jozsef Szentpeteri for National Geographic
Edited to add:
Readers interested in contributing to bird rescue organizations and the reasons why there should still be hope are directed to Uzza's comprehensive post:
Thursday, June 3, 2010
The Buzz in the Bay Area
A honeybee enjoys verbascum (Image credit: Annie's Annuals)
Well, friends in Sonoma County have alerted me to the fact that Annie's Annuals in the East Bay Area is hosting a bee-friendly lecture by Diana Sylvestre of the Yellow Dot Project this Saturday. Yellow Dot is a project of the Sonoma County Beekeepers Association which helps identify bee-friendly plants in nurseries.
Since my mother pretty much lives and breathes Annie's Annuals, I can't miss the chance to mention how cool I think it is that they are encouraging homeowners to have bee-friendly plants and to consider keeping bees.
Oh, and I just wanted to say thank you to my very kind friend, who found this picture of the dahlia that I can't grow, about which I was ranting about only last month, with a bee on it. It's just the perfect marriage of good and evil.
Dahlia imperialis with bee. It wouldn't really look good in my garden, anyway. Right?
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Bee Friendly, Part Two
(Photo credit: CarolinaBees.com)
1. Become a beekeeper
Beekeeping is a most enjoyable, fascinating and interesting hobby – and you get to eat your own honey too. Every year local beekeeping associations run courses to help new people to take up beekeeping and even help them find the equipment they need and a colony of bees. Training programmes continue to allow enthusiasts to become Master Beekeepers. For information on courses visit the British Beekeepers' Association (BBKA) website or the US Beekeeping Associattion.
2. Help to protect swarms
Swarming is a natural process when colonies of honeybees can increase their numbers. If you see a swarm contact the local authority or the police who will contact a local beekeeper who will collect the swarm and take it away. Honeybees in a swarm are usually very gentle and present very little danger. They can be made aggressive if disturbed or sprayed with water. Just leave them alone and wait for a competent beekeeper to arrive.
3. Plant your garden with bee friendly plants
In areas of the country where there are few agricultural crops, honeybees rely upon garden flowers to ensure they have a diverse diet and to provide nectar and pollen. Encourage honeybees to visit your garden by planting single flowering plants and vegetables. Go for all the allium family, all the mints, all beans except French beans and flowering herbs. Bees like daisy-shaped flowers - asters and sunflowers, also tall plants like hollyhocks, larkspur and foxgloves. Bees need a lot of pollen and trees are a good source of food. Willows and lime trees are exceptionally good. the BBKA has leaflets on bee friendly trees and shrubs.
4. Buy local honey
Local honey will be prepared by local beekeepers. This keeps food miles down and helps the beekeeper to cover the costs of beekeeping. Local honey complies with all food standards requirements but is not mistreated to give it a long shelf life. It tastes quite different to foreign supermarket honey and has a flavour that reflects local flora.
5. Ask your MP to improve research into honey bee health
Beekeepers are very worried that we do not have enough information to combat the diseases that affect honeybees. Pollination by honeybees contributes £165m annually to the agricultural economy. Yet the government only spends £200,000 annually on honeybee research. Beekeepers have costed a five-year, £8m programme to secure the information to save our bees during which time pollination will contribute more than £800m to the government coffers. Even the Defra minister, Lord Rooker, who holds the purse strings to finance this, has said that without this extra research we could lose our honeybees within ten years. Write to MPs in support of the bee health research funding campaign.
6. Find space for a beehive in your garden
Many would-be beekeepers, especially in urban areas, find it difficult to find a safe space for their colony of bees. If you have some space contact your local beekeeping association and they could find a beekeeper in need of a site. It is amazing what a difference a beehive will make to your garden. Crops of peas and beans will be better, fruit trees will crop well with fruit that is not deformed and your garden will be buzzing!
7. Remove jars of foreign honey from outside the back door
Believe it or not but honey brought in from overseas contains bacteria and spores that are very harmful to honeybees. If you leave a honey jar outside it encourages honeybees to feed on the remaining honey. There is a good possibility that this will infect the bee and in turn the bee will infect the rest of the colony resulting in death of the colony. Always wash out honey jars and dispose of them carefully.
8. Encourage local authorities to use bee friendly plants in public spaces
Some of the country's best gardens and open spaces are managed by local authorities. Recently these authorities have recognised the value of planning gardens, roundabouts and other areas with flowers that attract bees. Encourage your authority to improve the area you live in by adventurous planting schemes. These can often be maintained by local residents if the authority feels they do not have sufficient resources.
9. Learn more about this fascinating insect
Beekeeping is fascinating. Honeybees have been on this earth for about 25 million years and are ideally adapted to their natural environment. Without honeybees the environment would be dramatically diminished. Invite a beekeeper to come and talk to any local group you support and give an illustrated talk about the honeybee and the products of the hive. They might bring a few jars of honey too Honeybees are a part of our folklore and are one of only two insect species that are managed to provide us with essential services.
10. Bee friendly
When kept properly, bees are good neighbours, and only sting when provoked. Beekeepers wear protective clothing when they are handling bees. If a bee hovers inquiringly in front of you when unprotected, do not flap your hands. Stay calm and move slowly away, best into the shade of shed or a tree. The bee will soon lose interest. It is worth remembering that bees do not like the smell of alcohol on people, the "animal" smell of leather clothing, even watchstraps. Bees regard dark clothing as a threat – it could be a bear! Bees are sometimes confused by scented soaps, shampoos and perfumes, best avoided near the hive.
Thanks to a blog reader for this lovely list and article.
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