Today 's news paper item about vanishing honeybees here coincided with the first sunny calm day and my big flowering boxwood shrub was buzzing with pollen loaded bees. Lovely sound.
Are they the new backyard immigrants?
I heard and read that in California the same mysterious disappearing is going on.
Rumours are running that cellphones are to blame.(???)
Wild story?

N.Y. Times

I caught what may be the last lot of a disappearing species with
my pocket camera. Hard to get.Busy like bees.

bee on boxwood

If the bees are ever "vanished", then the species doing the disappearing would the one wielding the cameras. Four years is a common estimate. And good riddance I say.

Good riddance of who? The bees or the ones wielding the cameras?
(I suppose it would be both)
You mean we got four more years to go, Latishya ? (estimated)

If honeybees become extinct, then 4 years seems to be a fairly common estimate of the time it will take us to follow suit.

Comparing the Times article (2007) and yesterday's report over here of bees missing running up to 30% , while a 10 to 15% is rated as normal and that this 30% loss also occurred 6 years ago it might be just a fluctuation thing.
Or would bees have taken a giant step for beekind and are choosing to return to the wild?

This may be a bit of a "bee-t up" by the media, the actual figures and their interpretation is disputed, but there is a serious depletion of honey bees in north america. It's thought to be at least partly because of a mite that affects the bees, coupled with the practice of the bee industry in north america of no longer using local bees but shipping bees all over the country to pollinate their little hearts out (literally!) - they may be overstressed by this process and it affects their immunity. At least that's one theory. It almost certainly has nothing to do with mobile phone towers, that just smacks of silly conspiracy theory.

It would also tend to spread any local problem around. Send some infected bees from New York state and from North Dakota down to Alabama in the winter and any mites from NYS find themselves some nice fresh ND bees and go back with them.

I have this fancy the bees have taken a giant step for beekind and refuse to be fed on sugar no more and move to hiding places, pollinating whatever flower has their free passion.
(fed up with almond nectar--- or greenhouse choices).

well, here's a few million...

See what a few millions of bees can achieve when they agree to all put their weight to the same side of the crates. :-)

Came across this verb on reading the article:

['to assist in the bee wrangling.']

1. To quarrel noisily, angrily or disruptively: "The bar keeper threw them out, but they continued to wrangle on down the street.".
2. Herd and care for; "wrangle horses".

What strange contradictory two meanings.

>What strange contradictory two meanings.

better get it added to the list of self-contradicting words.

-joe (whatever contrariety is) friday

I don't know about bees, but you gotta wrangle a bit to move groups of horses around, and they are big and noisy and like to argue... maybe not so contradictory! :0)

I got bee pics:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2197/2333383675_5e1c60fbdc.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2334/2334209754_d0bf2cf697.jpg

(I think my pics were removed, so I made them links...)

That's what I was thinking too.

I see the connection, but the second definition: to herd, to care for sounds so much more gentle; as if the total opposite of the first one.

Nice pics. If you present them in a link (blue button up left when you use "reply") one can go to your upload site and print them. I specially asked Maven to link her " one winged hummingbird" to me. Now in my studio it faces the large postcard of the bald eagle I like very much. (talking of opposites). ;~)

As this thread somehow tunes in with today's word, I wonder, would vegans eat honey or strictly shun anything prepared with honey?

I can't see what problem they would have with honey. Honeybees are free to roam, the honey is extra that they can survive without, it is made from nectar, not any animal product, and no animals are killed or harmed in its production or harvesting. But I am not a vegan, so maybe we will hear from someone who is and can explain why honey is objectionable, if it is at all. :0)

Neither am I a vegan, but here's the buzz on honey from a vegan FAQ:


My favorite vegan FAQ is whether fellatio is allowed (link).

/sits down to enjoy a big plate of bee steaks.

Do Vegans worry about the fact that every time they eat vegetables they are ingesting several insects? I can understand people not wanting to eat pork or chicken or other reasonably intelligent animals because of cruelty in farming practices, but I think talk about insect rights is stretching it a bit.

The question of where their authority comes from for deciding any of this is interesting. Unless they are Theists or are leaving it up to individual conscience ("I just feel this is the right thing for me."), there is no way I can see to get from the "is" to the "ought" if you know what I mean. The "is" being that certain animals produce food for themselves and their offspring. The "ought" being that human beings should not eat those things. Is it also argued that other animals should also not eat things made by those not of their species? (or for that matter, what about predation?). And if not, if it's okay for animals on the grounds that it is "natural", how can you argue that human beings eating these things is not also natural, unless you want to argue that human beings are not animals. Most Theists have no problem from their basis arguing that, but most animal rights people seem to tell us that we are just animals. You can't have it both ways. Either we are and therefore it's natural for us to eat animal products just like other animals do, or we're not animals, we're special in some way. Are they smuggling in assumptions that more properly belong to a Theistic world view?

Where does the Authority come from for the prohibition on eating things that "belong" to other species, even if the eating doesn't harm them? Does it come from Reason? From God? From Conscience? Or is it some kind of quasi-religious new age belief promoted by certain gurus? Or just a rather vague philosophy with no rational basis?

Please don't see this as full frontal attack on Vegans, but I'd just like to understand whether there is a well thought out basis for these beliefs.

Very good questions, Pook. I have misgivings, also, about the veracity of the last two statements:

I can't imagine a beekeeper being so careless as to wantonly destroy the source of his/her livelihood! Yes, I can see an occasional accidental death, but then anyone who gets stung by a bee necessarily kills it, too.

The burning of the hives just stumps me completely! Why on earth would a beekeeper destroy all the equipment?!? The only circumstance I can come up with that makes any sense is in the case of contagious disease, and this protects the wild populations as well. In temperate climates beekeepers winter-over their bees, feeding and tending them.

I am not a vegan, but I do have concerns about the treatment of animals (actually, all animals, not just food animals), and I do try to do my part by buying organic, cage-free eggs and the like. It's more expensive, as is most organic produce, but I guess I put my money where my mouth is. I do the same for meat products, and (heaven help me and anyone else trying sort out the whole farmed fish/shrimp mess...) seafood. I try to support those who have ethical practices. Not perfect, but I try! :0)

Cage-free might mean something but free-range doesn't. The birds can be kept in a small building for the first part of their lives. Producers are allowed to call their birds free-range if they allow the birds out of that building for the last few weeks of their lives. The birds almost invariably choose not to leave the building because the outside world is the devil they don't know.

Non 'biological' beekeepers feed their bees on sugar in the
winter period. (Your pictures disappeared when you changed the url,I think, but thanks.The yellows are very beautiful).Your bees are darker than the ones we have here.Well there are many different species.

I've never heard of beekeepers burning the hives at winter.

The beekeepers I've seen all keep the hives sheltered over the winter. No-one I've known purposefully harms bees, they sweep them out of the way when removing the hive top and these slats from the inside. If they are stung, the bee does die, but suprisingly (it was to me at least) they don't get stung all that often.

Why would we all die in four years if there were no more bees? Seems like a very large leap there.

I didn't bring it up. Seems like a large leap to me too, thinking about the fact that there are plants and fruits that are self pollinating and other insects that do their bit in this.
The concern is mostly coming from large scale producers. Glass house cultivaters and such. They buy bees by the crate indeed.

>very large leap there

I don't think it's meant to be a direct, causal relationship; but rather merely(!) says that if things get bad enough to kill all the bees, we won't be far behind.