+++

I think where I live the bigger problem, this year anyway, is that the bees are “africanized” — not that that’s a big change in the bees, but people are scared of them now and react badly (as in, spraying to kill colonies, where a few years ago knowledgeable beekeepers would’ve been called in to move them away).

Sigh.

I live in the middle of cotton country, too.

Although with industry leaving (the automotive, the biotechnological, the you name it), so are the people.

The skies seem bluer here this year. The sun seems warmer, but the cold is still deep and long, with most nights in the 40s even in summer. There are wildflowers everywhere.

We are surrounded by most of the fresh water in North America.

The University has lost several major affirmative action lawsuits, but we still think of ways to baffle them with bullshit.

As someone who spends much time peering into Shadow, it is difficult for me not to speak of the Dark Side sometimes.

Perhaps excessively.

My sincere apologies if this is the case.

Let me welcome you back.

No Hell below us
Above us, only sky

+++

1. Tomatoes: in June 1 from store, staked, now flowered with a few tiny tomatoes (after a May 15 planting from seed rotted in the cold rain).

2. Cucumbers: in June 1 from seed, now 6 inches. Some more cucumbers transplanted from a friend smaller, but growing

3. Beets, carrots: In June 1 from need, and I should thin them, but that seems so wasteful

4. Squash: Well along. This year I got bushy ones, so maybe they won’t take over everything

5. Pumpkins: Ditto, but taking over everything

This year I am much more into mounds and raised beds. But I’m spending well under an hour a day, not like you, CD.

What I need to deal with is the rhizomes trying to take over the side yard. Now THAT is like “national politics.” But it has to be done. But I truly welcome something deeper, more earthy.

And how nice to have you back, CD. In danger, opportunity. (Or, as Ursula LeGuin has somebody say in The Left Hand of Darkness, I think, “In danger, honor.”

Could we have some photographs of the garden?

No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.

I have not seen a single bee all spring/summer. We are outdoors every day - and all the places I normally see them, nada.

So I have been asking people (it is not on everyone’s radar), “Have you seen any bees this summer?” Most can’t recall, or say they might have seen one.

Remember after the 2004 election I was going around saying “We are so fucked” to anyone that would listen? I think we are fucked in ways that will make losing in 2004 seem quaint.

“A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” - Margaret Mead

Which I wouldn’t have known.

See Here.

Interestingly, the “Pollinator Partnership” is co-sponsored by the Co-Evolution Institute (anyone remember Co-evolution Quarterly?), with offices in San Francisco, Shelburne, VT and, oh, DC. Oddly, the DC office doesn’t even have an address. Encouraging!

I haven’t SEEN any bees, but my plants are flowering. I’m on a well-travelled road, so perhaps they are not frequent.

No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.

No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.

I can’t say anything about numbers because I have nothing to compare it to. Didn’t start paying attention to bees until the stories about hive collapse began going around last year and they finally started calling it CCD.

But just about any daytime hours I can go out to the pond and there is a rotating contingent of 1-2 dozen or so honeybees hanging around the rock next to where Buddha sits. This is one of the support rocks for the waterfall and also has several small decorative stones in front of the Mahasamatman as sort of an improv altar. Water from the (concealed) pump hose spouts out from the rock above, so this one just has a continuous supply of fresh but not quite running water. It’s either that they’re after or something mineral-wise from the rocks. Oddly the support rock on the other side of the falls has a similar water pattern but I never see bees hanging over there. I have no idea what this means.

i can’t figure out where they live because I can’t follow them more than a few feet after they leave the pond. They seem to head east but this time of year, between the tick and the poison ivy situations, I am not about to go prowling into deep woods after them.

The larger view? I read local stories every time I see one and have noticed a trend. Local beekeepers don’t seem to be reporting problems. Not in North Carolina or Tennessee or (I forget—either PA or VA) the other states I’ve seen.

They say they’ve heard of the big commercial bee outfits having problems, particularly the ones that run cross country and most particularly the ones that work the almond orchards of CA. Some of the locals report honey production down somewhat but not outside the normal range of fluctuation mostly.

My own garden? I think a lot of the pollination is being done by wasps. There are more species of wasp/hornet type beasts here than I ever dreamed existed. Mostly ground-dwelling wasps as best I can tell as I see no nests (at least not since the one that was in my east eaves for a couple of years blew down finally in a tropical storm 3 years ago) and do see circa pencil-sized holes in the ground.

And good numbers of bumblebees but I mostly see them on the salvia bush in the front yard.

Maybe. Portland Press Herald in May:

Around the country, beekeepers have lost hundreds of thousands of colonies since November to a mysterious die-off called colony collapse disorder. In Maine, however, beekeepers and their industrious insects appear to have been spared — so far.

Colony collapse disorder has spread since then to about 25 states across the country, taking out about one-quarter of the nation’s 2.3 million beehives. It has not been confirmed yet in northern New England, although beekeepers in Maine have reported isolated instances of empty hives.

“I really think the primary reason we’re losing bees, other than weather, is the parasites — mites,” said Tony Jadczak, state apiarist with Maine’s Department of Agriculture. “Moving bees from coast to coast, from one crop pollination to the other, is a major stress and another reason we’re losing bees.”

Beehives are driven around the country on flatbed trailers. As parasites gradually have reduced the number of hives nationwide from 4.3 million to about 2.3 million, the remaining bees are being worked even harder.

And what if the out-of-state bees are carrying some new disease or parasite? That’s a risk that can’t be avoided, given the importance of those bees, according to Jadczak.

Damned out of staters…

No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.

…and colony collapse disorder:
this article covers a range of theories from viruses and “vampire mites” to gm crops etc….

please lord not the bees

more info links here:
MAAREC / Mid Atlantic Apiculture (Penn State Univ)

*

I saw that Portland story. Knew it was somewhere northeast but couldn’t pin it down. Anyway, aside from the fact that the guy quoted is actually, like, a bee expert which I am noticeably not, what he says makes sense. It is not any one factor but several.

And one other thing that can’t be emphasized enough, imho, is something I never knew before this CCD thing came along: that honeybees are not native here any more than the rest of us Yupeeans are. It would not be the first time a species attempted to colonize a new territory and went along swimmingly for awhile and then just piffered out.

It’s amazing how many of our problems are due to the last few centuries’ custom of transporting things, particularly plants, from one side of the planet to the other. Either they take over because the area they came from is more competitive than the one they move into (fire ants, kudzu, Formosa termites, multiflora roses, etc) so the natives don’t stand a chance, or they bring along a disease or bug that they’re used to but the natives can’t cope with.

I probably should have added “white people” to the above list but no good could come of such a comment. ;)

And thankyouthankyouthankyou for the CoEvolution link! I thought that gang just broke up and wandered off to promote nuclear power (Brand) or start Wired magazine (Kelly) or do other shit once the old Whole Earth/CoEvolution magazine finally folded the last time. Damn but I loved that mag. Had an original Whole Earth Catalog for decades until I needed to used it in a theater production and it, um, got lost. :(

From White Walls gallery, located in SF’s seedy/freaky Tenderloin district.

Current artist is one of my faves, Sylvia Ji. If you look closely she paints little flying insects onto the background. Maybe that’s where the bees went?

Apparently, the “industrial” bee colonies are affected much more severely than “organic” ones.

http://www.celsias.com/blog/2007/05/15/o…

Humanity is a phase that the Earth is going through. If we’re as smart as we style ourselves, we’ll be around to see what happens next.

What up girlfriend.

So pleased to have you back, yours is a wonderful voice regardless of topic, and has been missed. I am the possibly better informed but certainly not brighter reader that exonerated cell phones as the cause of bee colony collapse. I do hope your hiatus was not from anything I said.

Yep, bees are scarce, could be fungus, could be this, could be that. The good news is that bees both domesticated and wild have been through these population declines many times before and they have always recovered. No guarantee but still, my opinion, it is likely bees will stick around for quite some time.

Outside of politics, and Goddess knows the whole political thing is enough to depress Pollyanna, you probably won’t find ecology any more uplifting. The bees will be fine; humans, perhaps not so much. Serious business, turns out the tree huggers and doomsayers were right, time to reach for higher ground.

More uplifting topics could include music (Rap, legitimate art form or RICO violation? Discuss), art in any form, ethnic cuisine (I’ll go first; Sheep’s Eye Soup – rated at zero stars), landscaping (Are exotics ever morally acceptable?), but since you have things in mind why don’t you just leap in with whatever moves you and let the rest of us read adoringly?

You need a mood elevator? Music, dear sensitive creature, stirs and uplifts the soul: Jackson Browne, Warren Zevon, Iris DeMent, all at full volume, work every time for me; your tastes may vary.

Damn good to read you again.

yes… i’m w/ you. and have been for a long time.
you saw Gore’s op ed today in the NYT today?: “WE — the human species — have arrived at a moment of decision. It is unprecedented and even laughable for us to imagine that we could actually make a conscious choice as a species, but that is nevertheless the challenge that is before us….”
the shit is hitting the fan. i have been feeling like the proverbial guy on the street with the placard for years now. i feel so damned depressed about the situation, it’s hard to see what to do. just putting one foot in front of the other, putting food on the table and paying the mortgage is all i can handle most days. though i do email letters, sometimes several a day and sign scads of petitions and i have dug up part of the front yard and planted vegetables. this bee thing is really bothering me, too. the first 10 years we were in this house we had trees full of bees every summer when they bloomed, the last 5 years - none. and who’s to say the microwaves didn’t damage their immune systems and make them more vulnerable to a virus/fungus/whatever that was there all along?

of food.

In my other life that is. Scroll down to the “Before You Go” box and the reference to “boiled calf brains” links to a recipe I dragged out of some 19th century book kicking and screaming into the present day.

And it got a “yum!”. Okay, a sarcastic yum, but still. A yum is a yum. :)

Not to gripe but I could wish the writer had dropped us a note he was planning on giving us a mention. We just announced that we’re taking this week off dammit so will get no particular benefit from it.

(Our hits always head for the sewer the week of the Gettysburg reenactment. Farbs and hardcores alike will smuggle booze, either a cooler of Bud or a period-correct stoneware jug of gin or brandy home distilled with an alembic into their dog tents for evening relaxation but neither contingent of reenactors has much tolerance for wireless electronics.)

It occurs to me how many fewer bees I’ve seen in the course of walking across people’s lawns delivering the mail than I did even last year. Think I’ll come out of my writing-my-congressmen retirement and push Wyden and Smith a little bit.

In my modest, heavily mortgaged, but well isolated by fences and high hedges back yard in Michigan the honey bees also seem to do quite well. They are treated with reverence and caution, only having to deal with a small yippie dog who likes to dig for grubs and soccer-obsessed teenagers.

I Do Not ask the bees where they live, though. That would be like trying to catch a faery. Some idiot might see and would come along after me and doubtless ruin things.

Among the suburbs of Detroit it is common to employ these horrid “Chem-Lawn Tru-Geen” people that saturate the yards of the fools that buy their services with herbicides and pesticides, turning real grassroots into astroturf.

Over the years I have had many disdainful looks (and words) from neighbors frantic with the keeping-up-with-the-Joneses jones. They frown at the rush and glory of the dandilions in May and my failure to rake leaves in the fall. I keep the lawn cut, though, because deer ticks are no joke, so they can’t file a formal complaint.

But I have flowers, and wild flowers, and specificaly clover, adored by honey bees, and thus a haven for those small and civilized little insects.

No Hell below us
Above us, only sky

Here in OK there are wildflowers everywhere. I don’t know that the seeds are all from a few years ago (not all the seeds germinate in one year) but there is no shortage of truly wild flowers. The oaks seem to be doing ok as well.

Now, all the WATER, that’s another problem. However, on the up side, the pond is full - for the first time ever (in 8 years) - but on the down side, the pool hasn’t yet made it to 80. Not enough sunshine.

I haven’t seen many bees. A few. Lots of wasps and beetles and butterflies and moths.

Jake

however, depending on where you live, the other pollinators may or may not be able to pick up the slack. people where i live are brutal about killing all wasps whenver they sight them, for example.

i’ll know next year, when those wild plants that reseed come up or not. as xan pointed out, honeybees aren’t native here, but we’ve messed up the environment enough that many growers and farmers depend on them. i think it’s next to impossible in many area, to try to return to only having “natural” species pollinate crops.

: )

Sounds like stopping and smelling the roses is at least a little uplifting if not a cure-all for our partly cloudy age.

If you do decide to haul back into regular blogging, rest assured that the GOP has obliged by continuing to be unremittingly evil. A few more rights stripped away via 5-4 decisions, so it’s just SNAFU: Situation Normal, All Freedoms Undermined.

I’ve seen a fair # of bees in good ol’ liberal Massachusetts, and the flora have filled in pretty nicely after a late start.

As for movies, “Sicko” is kind of uplifting, too, in its way, because it takes a tragically neglected issue and makes reluctant Americans give a damn — even Fox News called it “brilliant.”

Anyway, I do hope you’re happy and getting happier!

www.vastleft.com

And no honeybees….

No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.

Hi, Welcome, ChiDyke. And in my backyard where as kids we used to find horny toads often, haven’t seen one in fifteen years since I’ve been back in N TX. I hear we are fighting the fire ants with insecticides, and both (ants and insecticides) kill the horny toads. Also, that fighting lyme disease from mosquitoes, we spray - and that kills lightning bugs. I still see lightning bugs on my place, since I don’t use any poisons.

Yesterday I drove by a field of cholla cactus in bloom, with a herd of antelope winding through their purple blooms. Out here it’s too big for us to poison ourselves. (And today Woody and I took Buddy up to see petroglyphs.)

Ruth

I heard recently that something on the order of 50% of New Mexico’s songbird populations are in decline due to habitat degradation.
WASF…

(WASF = We Are Soooooooooooo Fucked)

Wonderfully written, too…and look what a fine comments thread it stimulated.

Shystee, love that picture, and we wouldn’t have to feel so badly if we knew for sure the bees had retreated into art.

Oscar, what part of Oregon are you from, or do I mean “in,” - at present?

Kelly B, you should be writing posts.

You too Bringiton: I love that “Rap, legitimate art form or violation of RICO statute”

Jake, Tinhatfoil Boy.

CD, you have been a much missed person, hereabouts. Write about whatever interests you; it will interest us.

In fact, I intend to take inspiration from you and find a way to write about one of my own passions, movies.

What you are talking about here I’ve always felt is at the heart of any politics that matter.

I do have a book recommendation, it’s a small book, a collection of three essays by Terry Tempest Williams, that goes under the title of “The Open Space Of Democracy.” Send me an address via email and I’ll send you a copy.

Your welcome to visit our LA garden anytime you wish.

It has NOT been the same here without cha.

xoxo

Me, I have a tiny patch out back that came with roses, and I’ve been out there adoring them all day and all night. They are richly aromatic, deep red and velvety, and I wish my camera captured the color.

xxx
Avedon
More liberal media at The Sideshow.