More on the disappearing bees…
Mornin’, earthly gardeners…
I’ve been watching the disappearing bee story carefully. Seems that reports are coming in that colonies of *organic* bees are not being affected as much as the non-organic hives. Huh. Can we say “I’m not surprised”? Anyway, I just ran across this story written by Dan Sorenson in the Arizona Daily Star. It seems that Dee Lusby, the owner of Lusby Apiaries, has 900 hives of “free range” organic bees. She’s only lost several hives since this whole mess started. Fascinating story! (BTW, it seems that the Africanized “killer bees” are also immune to whatever’s bothering the domestic hives.)
The experts now are agreeing that it might be a number of factors causing the disappearance….pesticides, lack of organic (as in, non-genetically modified) crops and plants, or perhaps some mite that has spread among susceptible bee populations.
It never occurred to me that my bees—actually, they aren’t MY bees, but I like to call them that–are a free-range organic hive. That has a nice ring to it! They’ve been BEEzy (groan) this week with the native yaupon holly, which is starting to bloom.
In other news, I’ve been working on a short piece about how you can build your own easy, inexpensive raised bed garden using plain old cement blocks you can buy at any home center, garden center or hardware store, and I hope to run that tomorrow with photos of some of mine.
Until then, dig it!
bobbi c.
Copyright©2007 by Bobbi A. Chukran. All rights to photos and text reserved.
disappearing bees, freerange beehives, free range bees, organic bees
April 3rd, 2007 at 11:02 am
When will more people wake up and realize the environment is taking a detrimental nose-dive greatly attributed to humans? A few adjustments of lifestyle or at the very least supporting new science to discover new ways to curb the issues that would prompt us to use harmful chemicals, would be very beneficial and an overall move in the right direction.
April 3rd, 2007 at 12:02 pm
I agree! It’s not hard to do the right thing, but it’s not always the most profitable. At least not for the large companies that make all the genetically modified foods, etc. When whole colonies of things like bees are affected, people need to wake up and pay attention!
bobbi c.