honey?

[sway2sway]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/02/opinion/02berenbaum.html?em&ex=1173070800&en=bef2eb48db438f67&ei=5087%0A

who's holding?
where'd the bees go?

I heard about this yesterday in passing, but I thought, honey schmoney, not even thinking of the flowers and apparently like most other ignoramus', not even considering the real ramifications, like..........

"A decline in the numbers of Apis melllifera, the world’s most widely distributed semi-domesticated insect, doesn’t just mean a shortage of honey for toast and tea. In fact, the economic value of honey, wax and other bee products is trivial in comparison with the honeybee’s services as a pollinator. More than 90 crops in North America rely on honeybees to transport pollen from flower to flower, effecting fertilization and allowing production of fruit and seed. The amazing versatility of the species is worth an estimated $14 billion a year to the United States economy.

Approximately one-third of the typical American’s diet (primarily the healthiest part) is directly or indirectly the result of honey bee pollination. Production of almonds in California, a $2 billion enterprise, is almost entirely dependent on honey bees. Every year beekeepers transport millions of bees around the country to meet the ever-growing need for pollination services for almonds, apples, blueberries, peaches and other crops. This year it is possible that there won’t be enough bees to meet the demand for pollinators."

[tinkerlion]

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/wildlife/article2449968.ece

[sway2sway]

well, another reason to hate the cell phone...why don't we just open it up...another reason to hate talking on the telephone in general and a good reason to cut people off in the middle of the call. "NO, sorry I can't talk now, in an effort to save the bees, all calls must be less than 15 seconds. see ya"

thanks tink, I was still wondering about the bees.

[tinkerlion]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070502/ap_on_sc/honeybee_die_off

[sauce.baby]

Even cattle, which feed on alfalfa, depend on bees. So if the collapse worsens, we could end up being "stuck with grains and water"
and eat like a lot of the asians that are healthy and not *gasp* obese???
heaven's no!
i like how they conveniently forget about poultry and fish.. apparenlty beef is the only meat anymore. i really don't see the decrease in cows as a tragedy considering the effect their methane air biscuits have on the atmosphere.

i'm not fond of beef.. can you tell? ;D

[sway2sway]

oh sauce, grains and water are gonna get old real fast without any fruits & veggies. I have plagarized this passage from an unamed source for your consideration:

Besides make honey, what other things do bees do?

Bees are very, very important as pollinators of fruits and vegetables that we eat, or feed to livestock. Bees also pollinate plants we get our clothes from (cotton) as well as plants that line our rivers and streams and control erosion. Bees and other insects pollinate many plants world-wide, and these plants form the forests, grasslands and jungles that provide habitat for animals everywhere!

[sway2sway]

damn I'm glad it's Friday. I've got a hankering for a sleemans honey brown (ha ha, and it's 6 am, how does that work?)
My people..... if not for the plants, food, cotton, river banks, and habitats...what of the honey beer?

[angischy]

Funny you should mention that, sway. I was having a Honey Amber Rose (http://honeyamberrose.com/) beer yesterday at a cafe, and this bee came along to check it out. Sort of rested on the edge of the bottle, but then realized that there was more beer than honey in there, and went on its merry way.

It's an odd thought to think that the bees are disappearing, but surely this is important and should rise to a greater level of awareness than it has, and soon.
Have you seen or read about this in other media?
I sure haven't.

[sway2sway]

that does look good, I don't know if you get this canadian beer easily, but it's good. I recommend bottles because then you can caress the beaver embossed on the side of the bottle.

honey brown
http://www.sleeman.com/en/html/beer/sl_brands/honey/index.htm

cream ale, also delicious
http://www.sleeman.com/en/html/beer/sl_brands/cream/index.htm

[sauce.baby]

oh sauce, grains and water are gonna get old real fast without any fruits & veggies.
oh i know sway. it's just the way they made that statement about the cattle, i almost expected to hear a collective *gasp!* from the fast foodees. like whatever will they do without their quadruple patty coronary causer with cheese?

what with all the hybrid flowers they keep cross-breeding in labs, you'd think they'd come up with a way to pollinate without bees..

[sway2sway]

I got ya sauce. pollination without bees? makes me think of the media coverage about women's periods being a thing of the past, with medication.
pollination without bees.
periods without women.
creation without love.

funny how the way something is presented, or what is not said, often says more about it than the words chosen.
Last week an oil of olay commercial came on the tv, there was this set of anti-aging serums, like a night serum, a day serum, an eye serum, and some other serum. I commented about how that seems like an awful lot of work to fight something that is meant to happen. The comment then was, that they were missing the most important serum of all...a truth serum. Truth being, you are wasting your money, you are not supposed to look 20 forever, you are in DENIAL.

anyway, bees was the topic.

[sauce.baby]

oh i hear ya sway. i know girls that are SIXTEEN and already worried about wrinkles. i'm just 26 and i've already got some smile lines. but guess what? i love them! they prove that i smile and laugh way too much.

[tinkerlion]

oh i hear ya sway. i know girls that are SIXTEEN and already worried about wrinkles.

and yet those are generally the same girls that will go and bake themselves in a tanning bed:rolleyes:

[sauce.baby]

funny li'l world, isn't it lol

[sway2sway]

oh I hear y'all.
(I just like the way it sounds and I like it that you said it back to me sauce)
funny how much titillation I can find in words.

[sway2sway]

hmmmm the organic bees are apparently not dying. Silly me, I naievely thought that since bees were so small, how much screwing around could beekeepers do with them....apparently a lot.

http://www.correntewire.com/organic_bees_not_dying

from the above link, some environmental bee-lady says:

"I’m on an organic beekeeping list of about 1,000 people, mostly Americans, and no one in the organic beekeeping world, including commercial beekeepers, is reporting colony collapse on this list. The problem with the big commercial guys is that they put pesticides in their hives to fumigate for varroa mites, and they feed antibiotics to the bees. They also haul the hives by truck all over the place to make more money with pollination services, which stresses the colonies. "

and just from the article, not from the aforementioned bee-lady (I like to say bee-lady) :

"Who should be surprised that the major media reports forget to tell us that the dying bees are actually hyper-bred varieties that we coax into a larger than normal body size? It sounds just like the beef industry. And, have we here a solution to the vanishing bee problem? Is it one that the CCD Working Group, or indeed, the scientific world at large, will support? Will media coverage affect government action in dealing with this issue?

These are important questions to ask. It is not an uncommonly held opinion that, although this new pattern of bee colony collapse seems to have struck from out of the blue (which suggests a triggering agent), it is likely that some biological limit in the bees has been crossed. There is no shortage of evidence that we have been fast approaching this limit for some time."

[Miss Shark]

Ha ha ha I like the last line of the article:

Everything supersized must fall….

[angischy]

Well, the bees are alive and well "for this guy (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070718/ap_on_fe_st/quite_a_buzz;_ylt=A9G_R24jSZ5GL2cBORMZ.3QA) in Pennsylvania...much to his dismay.
At least he's handling it in an environmentally-friendly and responsible way, having beekeepers help remove the thousands of honeybees that have taken up residence in his new home.
I'd love to pay a visit and collect some of that. Talk about a honey pot ;)

On a side note, I had some fresh honey a few weeks ago. My friend's dad had some bees and they produced an amazing honeycomb at their farm in central WI. Unfortunately, the bees didn't survive a deep freeze early this spring, and now all he has left is the honeycomb and its delectably sweet contents.
He said he'd like to do more bee-keeping, but wants to study it a bit more so that he doesn't end up losing his colony again.
I don't know how bees usually survive a WI winter, but something obviously went very wrong that they all died.

[angischy]

On a side note, I had some fresh honey a few weeks ago. My friend's dad had some bees and they produced an amazing honeycomb at their farm in central WI. Unfortunately, the bees didn't survive a deep freeze early this spring, and now all he has left is the honeycomb and its delectably sweet contents.

Video here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Keg4YB_9II)...not really exciting, but still neat to see. If he does any more beekeeping like this guy does, (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5a4a-Tw-qFI) I'm going to don the full suit and check it out, for sure.

Oooh I like that sound of a thousand bees buzzing. It's kind of nerve-wrackingly cool!

Okay, this may become a new obsession. Sway, I'll see your cheetahs and raise you a hive of bees!

[sway2sway]

fair enough, I 'll let you keep the bee church.
I don't really like honey and I'm one of those people that spazzes out when a bee gets in a 20 foot radius of me, spazzes to the point that the thing ends up stinging me cause I run around flapping my arms which seems to attract the bees. I am working on standing very still, closing my eyes, and going to my special place in my head- when I see a bee. It's very traumatic, but apparently I need this sort of therapy. people always try telling me what to do
whatever, reality has nothing to do with things, does it, not like I'm cross breeding myself with a cheetah to make a cheetah-man race of the future (that really meant nothing, just like a hairball coming up)

Power to the bees. Power to the obsessives. Power to the cheetah.

[sway2sway]

here's a beeUtiful present for you. it was my avatar when queen bee was my favorite song. it was actually a sparkly jewel pin on ebay, but I just appropriated it's likeness for my own uses and now I pass on her on down.



http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i60/marley_lin/89362250658080_0.jpg

[lietuvaite]

sway, were you ever stung by a bee when you were younger?

[sway2sway]

yeah, a few times, but not like attacked by a swarm or anything. the first time I can remember I was about 6 and running carefree through a field and somehow managed to capture one inside my little fist, what are the odds?
it's just one of those things, I know in my head that they don't want to sting me if I don't bother them, but the message doesn't make it through in the moment.

[angischy]

Middle East Virus Likely Cause of Honeybee Collapse (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14212150)

Beekeepers lost one-quarter of their colonies from "Colony Collapse Disorder" — about five times the normal winter losses. The problem seems to have spread to 27 states, with similar collapses reported in Brazil, Canada and the U.K.
There's an article in the journal Science saying that Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV) may be the cause.
There was even a hearing in the House (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9213661) of Representatives ag council on this, back in March 2007.

Also found a website dedicated to the mission of solving the disappearance of the bees...
Heed the buzz! Beware the silence of the honey bee: HoneyBeeQuiet (http://www.honeybeequiet.com/).