First they came for the bees
While I can claim no scientific expertise the slightest bit relevant to the disappearing honey bee mystery, I hereby declare myself This entry was posted by Steve on Thursday, April 26th, 2007 at 4:01 pm and is filed under Comment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
April 26th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
Dave Lindorff has a post up at Common Dreams today about this, as he is experiencing it himself. I agree with him and you, Steve - this is downright scary.
April 27th, 2007 at 6:41 am
It IS really creepy… And it’s totally one of those seemingly minor things that could trigger a worldwide avalanche of extinction. Bees. That’s all. Just bees. *shakes head* Seems so insignificant… It’s like something out of a cheesy disaster movie - well respected and surprisingly good-looking scientist notices the bees are dying, tries to make his voice heard, gets laughed at/blown off as an alarmist, etc. “Oh Dr. Combs, it’s just BEES, you leftist loony alarmist loon!” Maybe a sinister gov’t or corporate agent suppresses the true data to prevent… well, something nefarious, anyway. Blah blah blah, by the end of the movie everyone’s dead, the scientist is proven right, Bill Pullman fights the aliens, scientist kisses Jessica Alba or whoever, hooray, credits.
I mean, bees? Bees? Jeez… talk about the PERFECT thing for the windbags on the right to scoff at, and conversely, the perfect little thing for the left to “freak out” about. How poetic.
Anyway, yeah, I’m totally weirded out too.
April 27th, 2007 at 5:43 pm
Me too, weirded out.
This is going to sound a little crazy so just consider the source.
Every year, in the spring I “dance” with a bumble bee. Now , hold on, I’m not saying it’s the same bee. I have a lilac bush beside my deck and I imagine that is why the bee is there, but I do dance with it. It flies at eye level and when I walk toward it, it backs up, when I back up, it flies toward me, follows me left, right, up, down, always staying at eye level. I have witnesses! I have not danced this year and the lilac bush is blooming. Crap. One more thing for me to “freak out” about. Bumble bees are great little pollinators too and we grow a lot of tomatos in Indiana. The fruit and veggies won’t have good seeds and won’t ripen to taste good.
We are screwed without these little creatures!
Tomorrrow, I’m spending the day watching for my dance partner.
April 27th, 2007 at 11:15 pm
Hope:
I love the idea of you dancing with bees. I talk to birds & they talk back to me, at least according to the story I wrote. If you want to read it–It’s only a couple of pages long–write me at .
Chuck
April 28th, 2007 at 12:55 am
Actually, the death of bee colonies is a very serious environmental issue, indeed. It is one of those occurences that people ignore until it is too late. Bees are major pollinators. Butterflies are also declining rapidly. See that dead canary in the cage? All Hell is going to break loose.