In 2015 the bees are still dying in masses. Which at first seems not very important until you realize that one third of all food humans consume would disappear with them. Millions could starve. The foes bees face are truly horrifying – some are a direct consequence of human greed. We need to help our small buzzing friends or we will face extremely unpleasant consequences.
RESTORED: 3/18/22
How can something so small have so much impact? The research for this topic took me down a lot of rabbit holes. I hope that you will find it extremely informative. It is an indepth look at what is happening to our Bee population. I tried to cover all the angels. I may have missed some, so if so, forgive me. As usual, this is not a short article. Nor did it turn into another series. It easily could have because bees affect so many areas of our lives. This is a topic many of you probably have not even considered but it is extremely relevant to your continued existence. So, spend some time with me and enjoy the ride.
There are those who say that if we lose the honey bee, its no big deal. There are those who say that honey is not even good for you. There are those who say that honey bees don’t belong here and are bad for the ecology. Well, I am sorry… they are all wrong!
Honey, sweet, viscous liquid food, dark golden in colour, produced in the honey sacs of various bees from the nectar of flowers.
Honey contains about 18 percent water, is water soluble, and may granulate between 50 and 65 °F (10 and 18 °C). Somewhat acid, it has mild antiseptic properties and has been used in the treatment of burns and lacerations. One of the most easily assimilated foods, it is widely used in baked goods, candies, prepared fruits, cereals, and medicines.
Honey was almost the only source of sugar available to the ancients and was valued for its medicinal benefits. Source
Vitamins, minerals, and a variety of important nutrients
Antibacterial and anti-fungal properties
Nutritional Value Honey contains naturally flavored complex sugars as well as trace enzymes, minerals, vitamins, and amino acids along with a variety of flavonoids and phenolic acids, which act as antioxidants.
Honey is a GIFT from GOD. A perfect food. It is filled with nutrients and designed by GOD to renew, refresh and restore your body. If you run a google search you will find it is good for healing many conditions.
God promised the Hebrew people that he was going to bring them to a land that was flowing with milk and honey…
Genesis 43:11 And their father Israel said unto them, If it must be so now, do this; take of the best fruits in the land in your vessels, and carry down the man a present, a little balm, and a little honey, spices, and myrrh, nuts, and almonds: (So, Honey was considered by the partriarch to be a highly valueable gift.)
Exodus 3:8 And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey;(SO, GOD considers milk and honey to be among the most precious of gifts and most valuable of resources.)
Those who study the bible say that when the Word of God repeats something, that signifies that it is very important. The Word repeats this fact repeatedly. Here are some of the references:
So you can see that GOD meant what he said. To HIM this is a very important fact you need to remember. The following scripture tells us EXACTLY why…
Therefore thou shalt keep the commandments of the Lord thy God, to walk in his ways, and to fear him. For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills; A land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey; A land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness,thou shalt not lack any thing in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass. When thou hast eaten and art full, then thou shalt bless the Lord thy God for the good land which he hath given thee. Beware that thou forget not the Lord thy God,in not keeping his commandments, and his judgments, and his statutes, which I command thee this day: Lest when thou hast eaten and art full, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein; And when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied; Then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the Lord thy God, …And thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth. But thou shalt remember the Lord thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day. And it shall be, if thou do at all forget the Lord thy God, and walk after other gods, and serve them, and worship them, I testify against you this day that ye shall surely perish. As the nations which the Lord destroyeth before your face, so shall ye perish; because ye would not be obedient unto the voice of the Lord your God.
The above scripture pretty much paints a picture of the world today. Modern man has become to “smart” for GOD. Though we have reaped HIS benefits and lived under His blessings, we have become rich, fat, and arrogant. We not only don’t believe we need GOD, we believe we ARE GOD!
Let me tell you that EVERY WORD that comes from GOD will be fulfilled! He does not make idle threats. What HE says HE WILL DO HE WILL DO! We are living in a time when things that were written in the bible thousands of years ago, things that seemed so unbelievable, are coming true on a daily basis. You need to WAKE UP and realize that our very existence is hanging in the balance. These are the end times. The loss of the BEES is a warning… Just like the Parakeet in the Coal Mine was an indicator designed to save the miners… the honey bees being annihilated is a forecast of what is coming for those who refuse to obey GOD.
No, I am certainly not saying that GOD is killing the bees. But, everything that happens on this earth is allowed by GOD. God uses all things. Even evil people and evil deeds, to bring about HIS plan. The death of the bees is due to the works of evil beings, but GOD means it as a warning to save people from eternal damnation. What the devil means for evil, GOD uses for GOOD.spacer
honeybee populations are dying, and we can no longer take pollination for granted. These small creatures are the backbone of agriculture and the food that we eat. While scientists work to better understand declining pollinator populations, and hopefully come up with solutions, these Walmart farming drones could keep agriculture, and fresh produce, alive.
Just like the little canary in the mine, whose death was a warning to the miners of the eminent danger, so the little honey bee is a warning to us all. We are in peril. If we do not repent and change our ways…sudden destruction will come upon us, like a thief!
In Japan, the hornets kill up to 50 people each year. Being stung by one, a scientist told The Times, felt like having red-hot thumbtacks “driven into my flesh.”
Giant 2-inch insects known as “murder hornets” have arrived in the U.S. from Asia for the first time. They got their name because of the potential threat they pose to bees, and now there’s a rush to stop them before they multiply. NBC’s Joe Fryer reports for TODAY
Food prices could rise if the number of bees pollinating crops keeps dwindling. By Julia Jacobo – July 9, 2019, 4:58 AM 10 min read
Scientists are researching the potential consequences of the rapid decline of the honey bee population in the U.S. and how to mitigate its effects before it causes dire problems for crop management and production. Honey bees are essential for the pollination of flowers, fruits and vegetables, and support about $20 billion worth of crop production in the U.S. annually,Matthew Mulica, senior project manager at the Keystone Policy Center, a consulting company that works with the Honey Bee Health Coalition, told ABC News.
Worldwide, honey bees and other pollinators help to produce about $170 billion in crops, Scott McArt, assistant professor of pollinator health at Cornell University, told ABC News.
“Honey bees are one of the most important agricultural commodities in the country,” Geoff Williams, an assistant professor of entomology at Auburn University who also serves on the board of directors for the Bee Informed Partnership, told ABC News.
Over the past 15 years,bee colonies have been disappearing in what is known as the “colony collapse disorder,”according to National Geographic.Some regions have seen losses of up to 90%, the publication reported.
Data shows bee populations dwindling more and more each year
Between Oct. 1, 2018, and April 1, 2019, 37.7% of the managed honey bee population — colonies kept by commercial beekeepers — declined, which is 7 percentage points more than the same time frame during the 2017-2018 winter, according to preliminary data from the Bee Informed Partnership, a nonprofit associated with the University of Maryland.
This past winter season represents the highest level of winter losses reported since the survey began in 2006, according to the report.
For the entire year — April 1, 2018, to April 1, 2019 — the managed bee population decreased by 40.7%, according to the report. The overall loss rate is around the average of what researchers and beekeepers have seen since 2006, McArt said.
“The main take-home from this is these are unsustainably high losses,” McArt said, adding that researchers are not necessarily alarmed at the numbers because they’ve become “a little bit accustomed to these large loss rates.”
The number of hives that survive the winter months is an overall indicator of bee health, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Worker bees tend to live longest during the winter — up to six months — and just four weeks in the spring and summer, according to the American Bee Journal.
Managed colonies are shipped around the country to pollinate our food
Much of the produce seen in grocery stores — watermelon, apples, peppers, cucumbers — and nuts are pollinated by millions of European honey bees, or Apis mellifera, that travel across the country and are managed by commercial beekeepers, Mulica said.
These U.S. crops are produced with the help of 2.6 million colonies transported by 18-wheelers from place to place during peak flowering, McArt said. Of the $20 billion worth of U.S. crop production supported by pollinators, commercial honey bees are responsible for about half. Wild bees and other pollinators take care of the rest.
In February, about 60% of managed colonies head to California to begin almond production, McArt said.
The bees then travel to Florida to pollinate citrus crops before making their way up through the Southeast for the production of blueberries, cherries and other specialty fruits and vegetables, McArt said.
Apple pollination begins on the Northeast in June, and the last pollination event typically occurs in Maine in late June and early July for lowbush blueberries, McArt said.
The bees then go to a set location for several months, where they gather nectar and produce honey, McArt said.
Food prices could rise if populations continue to decrease
While Williams does not believe honey bees are under threat of extinction, if their numbers continue to dwindle they could become a much more costly commodity for farmers, he said.
High bee losses year after year could lead to fewer beekeepers, and rental prices per bee colony could increase dramatically, Williams said.
This could also lead to steeper food prices, Mulica said.
“Really, what’s at stake here is rising food costs and the ability of beekeepers to deliver healthy bees to the crops,” Mulica said.
The first crop that may see a price increase with the decline of honey bees could be California almonds.
“We would not have almonds if it weren’t for honey bees,” McArt said.
The Golden State produces about 85% of the world’s almonds, Mulica said. But the cost for renting bees for almond production has increased to nearly $300 per colony in some cases, Williams said, when contracts for other crops in other states run about $80 to $150 per colony, McArt said.
The cost of colony rentals has not yet affected consumer prices for almonds, Williams said, but those costs could “eventually trickle down.”
How to slow down the bee population decline
All of the reasons for the loss of the honey bee population derive from human error, McArt said.
“Every single one of these stresses that we put on pollinators is man-made,” he said.
To save the bee population, researchers are looking into best management practices for beekeepers, such as how to treat hives for varroa mite, Mulica said.
They are also trying to figure out which pesticides could potentially be replaced with chemicals that are more bee-friendly, and what changes can be made to habitats to encourage more bees, such as planting wildflowers instead of green grass in the front yard and encouraging homeowners to mow their lawns less often, McArt said.
“I guess the question is, who’s willing to do these things, and how can we be more efficient in doing them?” McArt said.
U.S. government to devote less resources to bee research
The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that it has suspended data collection for its Honey Bee Colonies survey due to budgetary reasons, just weeks after researchers reported that nearly 40% of managed honey bee colonies in the country were lost over the past winter.
“The decision to suspend data collection was not made lightly but was necessary given available fiscal and program resources,” a July 1 statement from the USDA read.
The USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service report is only one of three major bee surveys published each year, Mulica said. The Bee Informed Partnership and the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service also file reports that are widely used in the industry, he added.
Williams said it is “surprising” that the USDA made the decision to stop tracking the honey bee population, stating that it compounds the importance for independent studies to continue so scientists can understand the long-term trends of honey bees, not just for the sake of research but to allow policy makers to make sound decisions in the future.
In the 1990s, beekeepers started recording major losses of worker honeybees during the winter months. Since then, there have been mass die offs in many of the other 4,000 species of bees. In 2006, the phenomenon was bestowed with the name colony collapse disorder. No one is exactly sure why the bees are dying off in unprecedented numbers, but some theories include the loss of flower meadows, varroa mites that eat the bees’ blood, climate change, and the use of pesticides. Thankfully, bees are a long way from becoming extinct. Which is good, because as this list shows, it could be disastrous for humanity.
This next video does not mention CLOVER, which is dependent on bees and our meat production depends highly on clover to feed livestock.
Over the past decades, both wild and domesticated insect pollinators are in dramatic decline,which puts at stake the existence of species, ecosystem resilience and global food security.Globally, 87 of major food crops depend on animal pollination. Together these account for 35 % of the world food production volume. Pollinator mediated crops are indispensable for essential micronutrients in the human diet.Many ornamental plants as well as crops for fibre, fodder, biofuels, timber and phytopharmaceuticals also depend on insect pollinators.This article aims to map the current situation of pollinators worldwide, with a focus on the critical role of pollinators in the human food chain and ecosystem sustainability, their intrinsic and extrinsic value, as well as the causes of their declines and the interventions needed to conserve them, in order to develop an argument for the importance of conserving and restoring pollinator populations and diversity. The present pollinator crisis threatens global and local food security, can worsen the problems of hidden hunger, erodes ecosystem resilience, and can destabilise ecosystems that form our life support system. An integrated approach that simultaneously addresses the key drivers is needed. This includes creation and restoration of floral and nesting resources, a global phase out of prophylactic use of neonicotinoids and fipronil, improvement of test protocols in authorisation of agrochemicals, and restoration and maintenance of independence in regulatory science. The authors argue that an international treaty for global pollinator stewardship and pollinator ecosystem restoration should be initiated in order to systemically counteract the current crisis.
Introduction
The Earth’s entomofauna is in an ongoing state of collapse (Bijleveld van Lexmond et al. 2015). This has a number of repercussions including loss of biodiversity and impairment of ecosystem resilience, also outside of the insect realm, and poses a global risk to pollination by insects.Pollinators perform key ecosystem services for ecosystem functioning and global food security. The projected world population of 9–10 billion by 2050, accelerating consumption, negative climate impacts on food production, global pollinator decline (Vanbergen and the Insect Pollinators Initiative 2013) and the failure to end hunger and malnutrition for the present population (Ehrlich and Harte 2015) mean that food security is a pressing challenge. Key dimensions of global food security are availability, accessibility, and utilisation, with a focus on nutritional well-being, stability, and sustainability (Berry et al. 2015; FAO 1996). Global food security, also reliant on several other factors such as weather, political stability, and a non-corrupt infrastructure, is critically dependent on pollinator services (Vanbergen and the Insect Pollinators Initiative 2013; Van der Sluijs et al. 2013a; Chagnon et al. 2015; Bailes et al. 2015) and this also is the case for nutritional wellbeing (Nicole 2015; Ellis et al. 2015). The apparent complexity and multi-causality of pollinator decline and inadequate monitoring systems, particularly for wild species, means that controversy is rife about the scale of this global problem and how to mitigate it. The demand for, and consumption of, animal pollinated crops is currently rising at a greater rate than managed honeybee colonies (Aizen and Harder 2009). Domesticated bees increasingly suffer from bee disorders(Potts et al. 2010; UNEP 2010; Van der Sluijs et al. 2013a), and regionally severe declines have occurred in the USA (59 % loss of colonies between 1947 and 2005)and central Europe (25 % loss of colonies between 1985 and 2005, according to Potts et al. 2010). For the rest of the globe, few data exist to confirm declines, in particular of wild pollinators (Goulson et al. 2015). However, the consensus among experts is that wild pollinators are indeed declining rapidly as a result of multiple stressors including large-scale prophylactic use of systemic insecticides, habitat destruction from changing land use, pollution, and climate change(Potts et al. 2010; Vanbergen and the Insect Pollinators Initiative 2013; Goulson et al. 2015; EASAC 2015). A holistic approach that aims at preserving biodiversity and ecosystem integrity is necessary in order to ensure ecosystem resilience (Senapathi et al. 2015).
Our Scientific community is not very scientific. No mention at all in their list of possible causes, of any technological advances. No mention at all of weather manipulation, geo-engineering or the earth, Microwave and Electromagnetic waves, CERN Experiments, the genetic experimentation with plants, or the experimentation and implementation of deadly chemicals…oh…that is because THEY ARE THE CULPRITS!! It’s called passing the buck…DENY, DENY, DENY, GUILT TRANSFERENCE!
The elite and their scholars and scientists (all trained in their schools) love to blame the average citizens for all the evil that the perpetrate upon us. They have the masses convinced that it is our own greed and avarice that is killing us and everything around us. That is true to a degree. As we have seen, we turned our back on GOD and have entered into spiritual darkness, calling down judgement. However, the culprits in the death of the bees, and the destruction of our environment are not the regular joes. Those who run the world are deliberately working to destroy us. Believe me, they do not share in our risk and peril they have made arrangements for their survival. They have been planning and studying and building for this endtime for a very long time. a few thousand years. The forces behind them, are powerful and intelligent.
The current crisis for the BEES began back in the 1960’s and was recognized as a crisis in 2015. Let’s take a look at some very important contributing factors. Be careful to observe the dates and the progression.
During World War II, military radar operators noticed noise in returned echoes due to rain, snow, and sleet. After the war, military scientists returned to civilian life or continued in the Armed Forces and pursued their work in developing a use for those echoes. In the United States, David Atlas[1] at first working for the Air Force and later for MIT, developed the first operational weather radars. In Canada, J.S. Marshall and R.H. Douglas formed the “Stormy Weather Group” in Montreal.[2][3] Marshall and his doctoral student Walter Palmer are well known for their work on the drop size distribution in mid-latitude rain that led to understanding of the Z-R relation, which correlates a given radar reflectivity with the rate at which rainwater is falling. In the United Kingdom, research continued to study the radar echo patterns and weather elements such as stratiform rain and convective clouds, and experiments were done to evaluate the potential of different wavelengths from 1 to 10 centimeters. By 1950 the UK company EKCO was demonstrating its airborne ‘cloud and collision warning search radar equipment’.[4]
1960s radar technology detected tornado producing supercells over the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metropolitan area.
Between 1950 and 1980, reflectivity radars, which measure position and intensity of precipitation, were incorporated by weather services around the world. The early meteorologists had to watch a cathode ray tube. In 1953 Donald Staggs, an electrical engineer working for the Illinois State Water Survey, made the first recorded radar observation of a “hook echo” associated with a tornadic thunderstorm.[5]
The first use of weather radar on television in the United States was in September 1961. Hurricane Carla was approaching the state of Texas and local Reporter Dan Rather suspecting the Hurricane was very large, took a trip to the U.S. Weather BureauWSR-57 radar site in Galveston in order to get an idea of the size of the storm. He convinced the bureau staff to let him broadcast live from their office and asked a meteorologist to draw him a rough outline of the Gulf of Mexico on a transparent sheet of plastic. During the broadcast, he held that transparent overlay over the computer’s black-and-white radar display to give his audience a sense both of Carla’s size and of the location of the storm’s eye. This made Rather a national name and his report helped in the alerted population accepting the evacuation of an estimated 350,000 people by the authorities, which was the largest evacuation in US history at that time. Just 46 people were killed thanks to the warning and it was estimated that the evacuation saved several thousand lives, as the smaller 1900 Galveston hurricane had killed an estimated 6000-12000 people.[6].
During the 1970s, radars began to be standardized and organized into networks. The first devices to capture radar images were developed. The number of scanned angles was increased to get a three-dimensional view of the precipitation, so that horizontal cross-sections (CAPPI) and vertical cross-sections could be performed. Studies of the organization of thunderstorms were then possible for the Alberta Hail Project in Canada and National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL) in the US in particular.
The NSSL, created in 1964, began experimentation on dual polarization signals and on Doppler effect uses. In May 1973, a tornado devastated Union City, Oklahoma, just west of Oklahoma City. For the first time, a Dopplerized 10 cm wavelength radar from NSSL documented the entire life cycle of the tornado.[7] The researchers discovered a mesoscale rotation in the cloud aloft before the tornado touched the ground – the tornadic vortex signature. NSSL’s research helped convince the National Weather Service that Doppler radar was a crucial forecasting tool.[7] The Super Outbreak of tornadoes on 3–4 April 1974 and their devastating destruction might have helped to get funding for further developments.[citation needed]
NEXRAD in South Dakota with a supercell in the background.
Between 1980 and 2000, weather radar networks became the norm in North America, Europe, Japan and other developed countries. Conventional radars were replaced by Doppler radars, which in addition to position and intensity could track the relative velocity of the particles in the air. In the United States, the construction of a network consisting of 10 cm radars, called NEXRAD or WSR-88D (Weather Surveillance Radar 1988 Doppler), was started in 1988 following NSSL’s research.[7][8] In Canada, Environment Canada constructed the King City station,[9] with a 5 cm research Doppler radar, by 1985; McGill University dopplerized its radar (J. S. Marshall Radar Observatory) in 1993. This led to a complete Canadian Doppler network[10] between 1998 and 2004. France and other European countries had switched to Doppler networks by the early 2000s. Meanwhile, rapid advances in computer technology led to algorithms to detect signs of severe weather, and many applications for media outlets and researchers.
After 2000, research on dual polarization technology moved into operational use, increasing the amount of information available on precipitation type (e.g. rain vs. snow). “Dual polarization” means that microwave radiation which is polarized both horizontally and vertically (with respect to the ground) is emitted. Wide-scale deployment was done by the end of the decade or the beginning of the next in some countries such as the United States, France,[11] and Canada. In April 2013, all United States National Weather Service NEXRADs were completely dual-polarized.[12]
Since 2003, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been experimenting with phased-array radar as a replacement for conventional parabolic antenna to provide more time resolution in atmospheric sounding. This could be significant with severe thunderstorms, as their evolution can be better evaluated with more timely data.
Also in 2003, the National Science Foundation established the Engineering Research Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA), a multidisciplinary, multi-university collaboration of engineers, computer scientists, meteorologists, and sociologists to conduct fundamental research, develop enabling technology, and deploy prototype engineering systems designed to augment existing radar systems by sampling the generally undersampled lower troposphere with inexpensive, fast scanning, dual polarization, mechanically scanned and phased array radars.
In case you are not aware of how our weather has been and is being manipulated, check out my article:
The United States completed six high-altitude nuclear tests in 1958, but the high-altitude tests of that year raised a number of questions. According to U.S. Government Report ADA955694 on the first successful test of the Fishbowl series, “Previous high-altitude nuclear tests: Teak, Orange, and Yucca, plus the three ARGUS shots were poorly instrumented and hastily executed. Despite thorough studies of the meager data, present models of these bursts are sketchy and tentative. These models are too uncertain to permit extrapolation to other altitudes and yields with any confidence. Thus there is a strong need, not only for better instrumentation, but for further tests covering a range of altitudes and yields.”[6]
There were three phenomena in particular that required further investigation:
The auroras associated with high-altitude nuclear explosions, especially the auroras that appeared almost instantaneously far away from the explosion in the opposite hemisphere, were not clearly understood. The nature of the possible radiation belts that were initially generated along the magnetic field lines connecting the areas of the auroral displays were also poorly understood.
Areas of blackout of radio communication needed to be understood in much more detail since that information would be critical for military operations during periods of possible nuclear explosions.
Urraca was to be a test of about 1 megaton yield at very high altitude (above 1000 km.).[5] The proposed Urraca test was always controversial, especially after the damage caused to satellites by the Starfish Prime detonation, as described below. Urraca was finally canceled, and an extensive re-evaluation of the Operation Fishbowl plan was made during an 82-day operations pause after the Bluegill Prime disaster of July 25, 1962, as described below.
The Fishbowl tests were monitored by a large number of surface and aircraft-based stations in the wide area around the planned detonations and also in the region in the southern hemisphere in the Samoan Islands region, which was known in these tests as the southern conjugate region. Johnston Island is in the northern hemisphere, as were all of the planned Operation Fishbowl nuclear detonation locations. It was known from previous high altitude tests, as well as from theoretical work done in the late 1950s, that high-altitude nuclear tests produce a number of unique geophysical phenomena at the opposite end of the magnetic field line of the Earth’s magnetic field.
A test named Kingfish was added during the early stages of Operation Fishbowl planning. Two low-yield tests, Checkmate and Tightrope, were also added during the project, so the final number of tests in Operation Fishbowl was five. THIS INSANITY CONTINUED THOUGH 1962– SEE DETAILS OF ALL THE LAUNCHES HERE: Operation Fishbowl
There is so much about the Nuclear Industry that makes it a horror story for the environment and a danger to civilization that it would be impossible to convey to you hear. But, be aware that NUCLEAR WASTE is forever. There is no way to break it down or assimilate it. It is a hazard that never goes away. They have no idea what to do with it. They have dumped it in our oceans and buried it in the Earth, and then they started using trucks to drive it back and forth across the country perpetually. This waste is killing us and ALL life- slowly. Certainly, it has contributed to the destruction of the Honey Bee. spacer
The world’s most used weedkiller damages the beneficial bacteria in the guts of honeybees and makes them more prone to deadly infections, new research has found.
Previous studies have shown that pesticides such as neonicotinoids cause harm to bees, whose pollination is vital to about three-quarters of all food crops. Glyphosate, manufactured by Monsanto, targets an enzyme only found in plants and bacteria.
However, the new study shows that glyphosate damages the microbiota that honeybees need to grow and to fight off pathogens.The findings show glyphosate, the most used agricultural chemical ever, may be contributing to the global decline in bees, along with the loss of habitat.
“We demonstrated that the abundances of dominant gut microbiota species are decreased in bees exposed to glyphosate at concentrations documented in the environment,” said Erick Motta and colleagues from University of Texas at Austin in their new paper. They found that young worker bees exposed to glyphosate exposure died more often when later exposed to a common bacterium.
Other research, from China and published in July, showed that honeybee larvae grew more slowly and died more often when exposed to glyphosate. An earlier study, in 2015, showed the exposure of adult bees to the herbicide at levels found in fields “impairs the cognitive capacities needed for a successful return to the hive”.
“The biggest impact of glyphosate on bees is the destruction of the wildflowers on which they depend,” said Matt Sharlow, at conservation group Buglife. “Evidence to date suggests direct toxicity to bees is fairly low, however the new study clearly demonstrates that pesticide use can have significant unintended consequences.”
Prof Dave Goulson, at the University of Sussex, said: “It now seems that we have to add glyphosate to the list of problems that bees face. This study is also further evidence that the landscape-scale application of large quantities of pesticides has negative consequences that are often hard to predict.”
Assumed safety of pesticide use is false, says top government scientist
Scientists had struggled to find the trigger for so-called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) that has wiped out an estimated 10 million beehives, worth $2 billion, over the past six years. Suspects have included pesticides, disease-bearing parasites and poor nutrition. But in a first-of-its-kind study published today in the journal PLOS ONE, scientists at the University of Maryland and the US Department of Agriculture have identified a witch’s brew of pesticides and fungicides contaminating pollen that bees collect to feed their hives. The findings break new ground on why large numbers of bees are dying though they do not identify the specific cause of CCD, where an entire beehive dies at once.
When researchers collected pollen from hives on the east coast pollinating cranberry, watermelon and other crops and fed it to healthy bees, those bees showed a significant decline in their ability to resist infection by a parasite called Nosema ceranae. The parasite has been implicated in Colony Collapse Disorder though scientists took pains to point out that their findings do not directly link the pesticides to CCD. The pollen was contaminated on average with nine different pesticides and fungicides though scientists discovered 21 agricultural chemicals in one sample.Scientists identified eight ag chemicals associated with increased risk of infection by the parasite.
Most disturbing, bees that ate pollen contaminated with fungicides were three times as likely to be infected by the parasite. Widely used, fungicides had been thought to be harmless for bees as they’re designed to kill fungus, not insects, on crops like apples.
“There’s growing evidence that fungicides may be affecting the bees on their own and I think what it highlights is a need to reassess how we label these agricultural chemicals,” Dennis vanEngelsdorp, the study’s lead author, told Quartz.
In recent years, a class of chemicals called neonicotinoids has been linked to bee deaths and in April regulators banned the use of the pesticide for two years in Europe where bee populations have also plummeted. But vanEngelsdorp, an assistant research scientist at the University of Maryland, says the new study shows that the interaction of multiple pesticides is affecting bee health.
“The pesticide issue in itself is much more complex than we have led to be believe,” he says. “It’s a lot more complicated than just one product, which means of course the solution does not lie in just banning one class of product.”
The study found another complication in efforts to save the bees: US honey bees, which are descendants of European bees, do not bring home pollen from native North American crops but collect bee chow from nearby weeds and wildflowers. That pollen, however, was also contaminated with pesticides even though those plants were not the target of spraying.
“It’s not clear whether the pesticides are drifting over to those plants but we need take a new look at agricultural spraying practices,” says vanEngelsdorp.
1901: Pharmaceutical company agent John F. Queeny launches Monsanto to produce saccharin, an artificial sweetener then only manufactured in Germany.
Saccharin was first produced in 1878 by a chemist working on coal tar derivatives at Johns Hopkins University. It is 700 times sweeter than sugar. It been shown to raise your insulin levels. They have been putting it in our food for years. No wonder we have so many diabetics. Saccharin clearly has documented health risks and concerns, ranging from allergies to cancer to increased insulin levels. There is nothing natural about saccharin. Nothing. And there’s certainly nothing natural about the side effects it has been proven to cause. Source
1920s and 1930s – Manufacturers sulfuric acid and other chemicals, including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which are later implicated in reproductive, developmental and immune system disorders.
1933: Expanding, the company renames itself the Monsanto Chemical Company. One of its products, styrene, will become critical to the U.S. during World War II.
Styrene is regarded as a “known carcinogen”, especially in case of eye contact, but also in case of skin contact, of ingestion and of inhalation, according to several sources.[19][28][29][30] Styrene is largely metabolized into styrene oxide in humans, resulting from oxidation by cytochrome P450. Styrene oxide is considered toxic, mutagenic, and possibly carcinogenic. Styrene oxide is subsequently hydrolyzed in vivo to styrene glycol by the enzyme epoxide hydrolase.[31] The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has described styrene to be “a suspected toxin to the gastrointestinal tract, kidney, and respiratory system, among others”.[32][33] On 10 June 2011, the U.S. National Toxicology Program has described styrene as “reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen”.[34][35] However, a STATS author describes[36] a review that was done on scientific literature and concluded that “The available epidemiologic evidence does not support a causal relationship between styrene exposure and any type of human cancer”.[37] Despite this claim, work has been done by Danish researchers to investigate the relationship between occupational exposure to styrene and cancer. They concluded, “The findings have to be interpreted with caution, due to the company based exposure assessment, but the possible association between exposures in the reinforced plastics industry, mainly styrene, and degenerative disorders of the nervous system and pancreatic cancer, deserves attention”.[38] In 2012 the Danish EPA concluded that the styrene data do not support a cancer concern for styrene.[39] The U.S. EPA does not have a cancer classification for styrene,[40] but it has been the subject of their Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) program.[41] The U.S. National Toxicology Program of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has determined that styrene is “reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen”.[42] Various regulatory bodies refer to styrene, in various contexts, as a possible or potential human carcinogen. The International Agency for Research on Cancer considers styrene to be “probably carcinogenic to humans”.[43][44]
The neurotoxic[45] properties of styrene have also been studied and reported effects include effects on vision[46][47] and on hearing functions.[48][49][50][51] Studies with experimental animals,[49][50] as well as epidemiologic studies have observed a synergistic interaction with noise in causing hearing difficulties.[52][53][54] Wikipedia
1940s – Manufactures plastics and synthetic fabrics
1960s – Establishes agricultural division with focus on herbicides.
1964–69: As a government contractor, Monsanto manufactures Agent Orange, a highly toxic herbicide used by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War to clear jungles and starve North Vietnamese soldiers. (PROVEN TO BE A VERY DEADLY, DESTRUCTIVE, AND DANGEROUS CHEMICAL)
1974: The company introduces Roundup herbicide, now among the world’s most widely used herbicides. (PROVEN TO BE A VERY DEADLY, DESTRUCTIVE, AND DANGEROUS CHEMICAL)
1982:Monsanto’s scientists are the first to genetically modify a plant cell. Later, the company acquires the Jacob Hartz Seed Co., which is known for its soybean seed. (Now Monsanto pretty much has a monopoly on ALL SEEDS!)
1984: Vietnam veterans settle a lawsuit with Monsanto for its role in exposing troops to Agent Orange, receiving a payout of $180 million, but the company doesn’t admit to liability. According to the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the U.S. military exposed 4.8 million people to the herbicide, causing 400,000 deaths and disfigurements and birth defects in 500,000 babies.
1985:Monsanto buys pharmaceutical firm G.D. Searle & Co., maker of the NutraSweet artificial sweetener. (So, this company started out with an artificial sweetner (Saccharin) and now has acquired NutraSweet…hmmm seems they are working to replace natural sweetners. Do you think they have a motive for killing bees?)
1994:Monsanto begins commercial production of BST (bovine somatotropin), a synthetic supplement for dairy cows. (So, now they are working to pollute cows/milk. Hmm… what did GOD promise? A land flowing with Milk and Honey. Those who work for Satan want to destroy everything that belongs to GOD, including YOU!)
1996: It introduces Roundup Ready seeds, which Monsanto genetically engineered to tolerate its Roundup herbicide. Roundup Ready soybeans, corn, cotton, and other crops have since dominated every market in which they’re sold. The company also signs contracts to license corn and soybean seeds from DeKalb Genetics and buys the cotton and biotech company Agracetus.
1998: Under the leadership of lawyer and former urban affairs professor Robert Shapiro (former head of NutraSweet operations), the company spins off its chemical operations. Monsanto then commits to biotechnology
1999: After an $8 billion licensing and buying spree, Monsanto becomes the foremost producer of genetically modified crops.
2002: Monsanto becomes a publicly traded company.
2010: After a devastating earthquake, Haitian farmers reject GMO seeds donated by Monsanto. The National Peasant Movement of the Congress of Papay calls the company’s charity “a very strong attack on small agriculture,on farmers, on Creole seeds…and on what is left of our environment in Haiti.”
March 2011: The Public Patent Foundation, which consists of 60 farmers, seed businesses, and organic agricultural organizations, files a lawsuit challenging Monsanto’s patents on genetically modified seed.
September 2012: A highly contested study finds that Roundup herbicide and genetically modified maize cause tumors and organ damage in rats.
April 2013: President Obama signs the Monsanto Protection Act, which requires the USDA to approve genetically modified crops even if courts have ruled against them.
June 2013: Connecticut passes the nation’s first GMO labeling law. Three weeks later, Monsanto EVP and chief technology officer Robert T. Fraley wins the World Food Prize (the “Nobel Prize of food”), along with two other scientists who work on GMOs. The company is one of the award’s biggest donors.
October 2013: Monsanto expands weed-management incentive programs, which come with cash, for farmers.
February 2014: The Natural Resources Defense Council petitions the Environmental Protection Agency to review its rules for glyphosate use to save plummeting monarch butterfly populations.
March 2014: Monsanto partners with MIT researchers to form Preceres LLC, a company that will develop new biological products for pest, virus, and weed control.
Monsanto – major cantributor to bee colongy collapse –
When the phenomenon called colony collapse disorder was first identified in 2006, after a record number of honeybees mysteriously disappeared or died outside their hives, it was linked to a variety of factors including loss of habitat and climate change. But the primary culprit was pesticides. Researchers found that a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids was especially lethal to bees.
Last May, the EPA pulled a dozen “neonics” from the market following a successful lawsuit brought by beekeepers and environmental groups.
But there are many chemicals that are not labeled as bee toxic, even though they can make bees sick and weaken their immune systems. While bees may survive the pollination season, they may not last the winter or may take back substances that gradually poison the entire colony.
Those on the almond growers’ side acknowledge there is a huge problem. “The bee mortality rate is too high and is unacceptable,” says the entomologist Bob Curtis, a pollination consultant for the Almond Board of California. “It is only because of the hard work and creativity of beekeepers that [almond growers] have gotten the bees they need.”
Pesticides are used for all kinds of crops, One of the most widely applied pesticides is the herbicide glyphosate (AKA Roundup), which is a staple of large-scale almond growers and has been shown to be lethal to bees as well as cause cancer in humans. (The maker, Bayer-owned Monsanto, denies the cancer link when people use Roundup at the prescribed dosage. So far this year three US courts have found in favour of glyphosate users who developed forms of lymphoma; thousands more cases are pending.) Source spacer
A new study may help agriculture industries to use pesticides more responsibly. By Bopha Phorn – August 30, 2018, 12:58 PM – 7 min read
Agricultural pesticides, particularly neonicotinoids — a class of neuro-active insecticides chemically similar to nicotine — have long been believed to be detrimental to bee populations,affecting their ability to reproduce, limiting lifespans and other potential consequences of exposure to pesticide-laced foods.But the new study, published in the British scientific journal The Proceedings of the Royal Society B, suggest that bees can get hooked on neonicotinoids-laced foods.“In mammals, for example, we know that nicotine is an addictive property, so we could make that inference that maybe these neonicotinoids — considering they act on similar targets — may have similar addictive properties,” said Gill, who led and supervised the research team.“And our behavioral experiments suggest that that might be the case.”Neonicotinoids target nerve receptors in insects that are similar to the human receptors that nicotine binds to, according to the 18-month study, which was conducted by a group of six researchers and scientists.“At the start of the experiment we saw that the bees preferred the food containing no pesticide, with the pesticide-treated food visited and consumed less than the pesticide-free food,” Arce said.“However, as time went by the bees started to change their behavior and they increased the amount of pesticide laced food they foraged on and brought back to the colony.”“We also saw that when the position of the feeders was changed, the bees responded and would still visit the feeders containing the pesticides –- which indicates that they could detect the pesticide and would track it,” Arce said.
I hope that it has become apparent to you that “Scientists” have been studying all life for a long time. They know how our minds and bodies work. Just like they have created chemicals to make things like tobacco MORE addictive to humans, I am certain they created these pesticides to be “addictive” to honey bees”Pesticides much like medications most often work to compound problems, cause addictions, and break down the environment of the earth as well as the internal environments of our bodies. spacer
Although originally proposed in 1989, the web was first launched and used in the early 1990s. Tim Berners-Lee (pictured), with help from Robert Cailliau, was able to connect hypertext with the internet and create the foundation for what we know as the web today. Web browsers such as Mosaic and Netscape Navigator helped popularize the web in the 1990s.
Since its founding in 1989, the World Wide Web has touched the lives of billions of people around the world and fundamentally changed how we connect with others, the nature of our work, how we discover and share news and new ideas, how we entertain ourselves and how communities form and function.
All insects show a dependence of the absorbed power on the frequency with a peak frequency that depends on their size and dielectric properties. The insects show a maximum in absorbed radio frequency power at wavelengths that are comparable to their body size. They show a general increase in absorbed radio-frequency power above 6 GHz (until the frequencies where the wavelengths are comparable to their body size), which indicates that if the used power densities do not decrease, but shift (partly) to higher frequencies, the absorption in the studied insects will increase as well. A shift of 10% of the incident power density to frequencies above 6 GHz would lead to an increase in absorbed power between 3–370%. This could lead to changes in insect behaviour, physiology, and morphology over time due to an increase in body temperatures, from dielectric heating. The studied insects that are smaller than 1 cm show a peak in absorption at frequencies (above 6 GHz), which are currently not often used for telecommunication, but are planned to be used in the next generation of wireless telecommunication systems. Source
The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program
(HAARP) was initiated as an ionospheric research program jointly funded by the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Navy, the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).[1] It was designed and built by BAE Advanced Technologies (BAEAT). Its original purpose was to analyze the ionosphere and investigate the potential for developing ionospheric enhancement technology for radio communications and surveillance.[2] As a university-owned facility, HAARP is a high-power, high-frequency transmitter used for study of the ionosphere.
The most prominent instrument at HAARP is the Ionospheric Research Instrument (IRI), a high-power radio frequencytransmitter facility operating in the high frequency (HF) band. The IRI is used to temporarily excite a limited area of the ionosphere. Other instruments, such as a VHF and a UHFradar, a fluxgatemagnetometer, a digisonde (an ionospheric sounding device), and an induction magnetometer, are used to study the physical processes that occur in the excited region.
Work on the HAARP facility began in 1993. The current working IRI was completed in 2007; its prime contractor was BAE Systems Advanced Technologies.[1] As of 2008, HAARP had incurred around $250 million in tax-funded construction and operating costs. In May 2014, it was announced that the HAARP program would be permanently shut down later in the year.[3] After discussions between the parties, ownership of the facility and its equipment was transferred to the University of Alaska Fairbanks in August 2015.[4]
Summary: Glow discharges in the upper atmosphere were generated to explore ionospheric phenomena and its impact on communications and space weather. Source
There has been so much revealed about HARRP and its affects on our environment. Please research for yourselves.
We have NO IDEA the impact of CERN on our Environment, on Ourselves, on Our Spiritual Reality, on OUR WORLD. Everything from bizarre weather, to Mandela Effect, to dimensional portals, to spiritual entities, to black holes. NO TELLING what impact it has already had on our world, worse yet what impact it will continue to have and how it will change us.
09 DECEMBER 1949 – At an intergovernmental meeting of UNESCO in Paris in December 1951, the first resolution concerning the establishment of a European Council for Nuclear Research was adopted. Two months later, 11 countries signed an agreement establishing the provisional council – the acronym CERN was born.
Breaking ground On 17 May 1954, the first shovel of earth was dug on the Meyrin site in Switzerland under the eyes of Geneva officials and members of CERN staff.
The 600 MeV Synchrocyclotron (SC), built in 1957, was CERN’s first accelerator. It provided beams for CERN’s first experiments in particle and nuclear physics. In 1964, this machine started to concentrate on nuclear physics alone, leaving particle physics to the newer and much more powerful Proton Synchrotron (PS). The SC became a remarkably long-lived machine. In 1967, it started supplying beams for a dedicated unstable-ion facility called ISOLDE, which carries out research ranging from pure nuclear physics to astrophysics and medical physics. In 1990, ISOLDE was transferred to a different accelerator, and the SC closed down after 33 years of service.
The Proton Synchrotron (PS) accelerated protons for the first time on 24 November 1959, becoming for a brief period the world’s highest energy particle accelerator. With a beam energy of 28 GeV, the PS became host to CERN’s particle physics programme, and provides beams for experiments to this day. During the night of 24 November 1959 the PS reached its full energy.
By the late 1950s, physicists knew that a huge gain in collision energy would come from colliding particle beams head on, rather than by using a single beam and a stationary target. At CERN, accelerator experts conceived the idea to use the Proton Synchrotron (PS) to feed two interconnected rings where two intense proton beams could be built up and then made to collide. The project for the Intersecting Storage Rings (ISR) was formally approved in 1965. On 27 January 1971 Kjell Johnsen, who led the construction team for the Intersecting Storage Rings (ISR), announced that the world’s first interactions from colliding protons had been recorded.
Seven kilometres in circumference, the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) was the first of CERN’s giant underground rings. It was also the first accelerator to cross the Franco–Swiss border. Eleven of CERN’s member states approved the construction of the SPS in February 1971, and it was switched on for the first time on 17 June 1976, two years ahead of schedule.
With completion of the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) fast approaching, CERN needed a way to control the accelerator’s complex systems. Linking individual cables directly to the control room had worked fine for the Proton Synchrotron (PS), but was not economically viable for a machine 10 times its size. Frank Beck, who later became head of SPS Central Controls, knew the possibilities of existing touch-screen technology, but found their mechanical designs unsuitable. He turned to his colleague Bent Stumpe, who, in a handwritten note dated 11 March 1972, presented his proposed solution – a capacitive touch screen with a fixed number of programmable buttons presented on a display. It was extremely simple mechanically. By 1977 the capacitive touch screen was already available commercially and being sold to other institutes and companies worldwide. Today, the CERN Control Centre no longer uses touch screen to control the accelerators. However, touch-screen technology is ubiquitous in devices such as mobile phones, tablets and computers.
A few months after the signature of the agreement giving the go-ahead for the expansion of CERN into French territory, work began on the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS). Two years later, on 31 July 1974, the Robbins tunnel-boring machine excavating the SPS tunnel returned to its starting point (see photograph). It had excavated a tunnel with a circumference of 7 kilometres, at an average depth of 40 metres below the surface. The tunnel straddled the Franco-Swiss border, making the SPS the first cross-border accelerator. More than a thousand magnets were needed to equip the ring. The civil engineering and installation work was completed in record time after only four years.
(The machine they created to construct this tunnel system has since been used to dig tunnels systems all over the earth deep below the surface. We have no idea how all this tunneling has affected the ecosystem below or above ground.)
The Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) became the workhorse of CERN’s particle physics programme when it switched on in 1976. The first beam of protons circulated the full 7 kilometres of the accelerator on 3 May 1976. The Intersecting Storage Rings produced the world’s first proton-antiproton collisions on 4 April 1981, paving the way for proton-antiproton collisions in the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS)
In 1986 CERN began to accelerate heavy ions – nuclei containing many neutrons and protons – in the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) to study the possibility that quark gluon-plasma was more than just a theory. The aim was to “deconfine” quarks – set them free from their confinement within atoms – by smashing the heavy ions into appropriate targets. The first experiments used relatively light nuclei such as oxygen and sulphur, and produced results consistent with the quark-gluon plasma theory, but no real proof. In 1994 a second generation of experiments began with lead ions, and by 2000 there was compelling evidence that a new state of matter had been seen.
The excavation of the tunnel for the Large Electron–Positron Collider – Europe’s largest civil-engineering project prior to the Channel Tunnel – was completed on 8 February 1988. The two ends of the 27-kilometre ring came together with just one centimetre of error. The picture above shows a tunneling crew after completing a section of the tunnel between points 2 and 3 on the LEP ring.
With its 27-kilometre circumference, the Large Electron–Positron (LEP) collider was – and still is – the largest electron–positron accelerator ever built. LEP consisted of 5176 magnets and 128 accelerating cavities. CERN’s accelerator complex provided the particles and four enormous detectors, ALEPH, DELPHI, L3 and OPAL, observed the collisions. LEP was commissioned in July 1989 and the first beam circulated in the collider on 14 July.
By Christmas 1990, Sir Berners-Lee had defined the Web’s basic concepts, the html, http and URL, and he had written the first browser/editor and server software. info.cern.ch was the address of the world’s first web server, running on a NeXT computer at CERN. The world’s first web page address provided information about the World Wide Web project.
Four years after the first technical proposals, the experiments CMS and ATLAS are officially approved. Both are general-purpose experiments designed to explore the fundamental nature of matter and the basic forces that shape our universe, including the Higgs boson.
The CERN research board officially approves the ALICE experiment. Re-using the L3 magnet experiment from the LEP, ALICE is designed to study quark-gluon plasma, a state of matter that would have existed in the first moments of the universe.
The ATLAS Barrel Toroid, then the largest superconducting magnet ever built, was switched on for the first time at CERN on 20 November 2006. The magnet is called the Barrel Toroid because of its barrel-like shape. It provides a powerful magnetic field for ATLAS, one of the major particle detectors taking data at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The magnet consists of eight superconducting coils, each in the shape of a round-cornered rectangle, 5 metres wide, 25m long and weighing 100 tonnes, all aligned to millimetre precision. The ATLAS Barrel Toroid was cooled down over a six-week period from July to August 2006 to reach –269°C . It was then powered up step-by-step to higher and higher currents, reaching 21 thousand amps for the first time during the night of 9 November. Afterwards, the current was switched off and the stored magnetic energy of 1.1 GigaJoules, the equivalent of about 10,000 cars travelling at 70 kilometres per hour, was safely dissipated, raising the cold mass of the magnet to –218°C. Read the press release
At 10.28am on 10 September 2008 a beam of protons is successfully steered around the 27-kilometre Large Hadron Collider (LHC) for the first time. The machine is ready to embark on a new era of discovery at the high-energy frontier. LHC experiments address questions such as what gives matter its mass, what the invisible 96% of the universe is made of, why nature prefers matter to antimatter and how matter evolved from the first instants of the universe’s existence. Explore the resources prepared for press.
The ALPHA experiment at CERN reported today that it succeeded in trapping antimatter atoms for over 16 minutes: long enough to begin to study their properties in detail. ALPHA is part of a broad programme at CERN’s antiproton decelerator investigating the mysteries of one of nature’s most elusive substances. ALPHA studied 300 trapped antiatoms. Trapping antiatoms will allow antihydrogen to be mapped precisely using laser or microwave spectroscopy so that it can be compared to the hydrogen atom, which is among the best-known systems in physics. Any difference between matter and antimatter should become apparent under careful scrutiny.
On 4 July 2012, as a curtain raiser to the year’s major particle physics conference, ICHEP 2012 in Melbourne, the ATLAS and CMS experiments present their latest preliminary results in the search for the long-sought Higgs particle. Both experiments have observed a new particle in the mass region around 125-126 GeV. The next step is to determine the precise nature of the particle and its significance for our understanding of the universe. Are its properties as expected for the long-sought Higgs boson, the final missing ingredient in the Standard Model of particle physics? Or is it something more exotic? The Standard Model describes the fundamental particles from which we, and every visible thing in the universe, are made, and the forces acting between them. All the matter that we can see, however, appears to be no more than about 4% of the total. A more exotic version of the Higgs particle could be a bridge to understanding the 96% of the universe that remains obscure. Explore the resources prepared for press.
In 1956, researchers imported honey bees from Africa into Brazil in an effort to improve beekeeping in the New World tropics. These African bees were well suited to conditions in Brazil, and they began colonizing South America, hybridizing with European honey bees (hence the name “Africanized” honey bees) and displacing European bees. Compared to European bees, Africanized honey bees are much more defensive. Large numbers of them sometimes sting people and livestock with little provocation. They are also occasionally known to take over European bee colonies by entering them and killing the resident queen. Because of these noxious behaviors, many beekeepers abandoned beekeeping, and the media widely publicized these so-called “killer bees.”
The bees spread northward at a rate of about 200 to 300 miles per year, and today every country in Latin America except Chile has established populations of Africanized honey bees. In October 1990,the first natural colony of Africanized honey bees was found in the United States near Hidalgo, Texas.In subsequent years the bees moved in a westerly manner, eventually occupying much of theAmerican Southwest and the southern counties of Nevada and California.By the summer of 2005, Africanized bees were confirmed east of the Mississippi with established populations in Florida.
MIKE MCRAE – 7 JUNE 2018 – A few clipped neuropeptides make all the difference between a chill honey bee and one that has an irritable need to shiv anything that moves.
“Scientists” are constantly playing around with EVERYTHING and conducting experiments about which the general public is not provided any information. Sometimes we learn about these experiments long after they have been conducted, sometimes we don’t ever find out. I would not be surprised to learn that the Killer Bees were created deliberately or accidentally by such an experiment.
Three Mile Island, shown in 2011, is scheduled to shut down in September 2019. It’s one of a wave of nuclear plant closures across the country that is cutting millions in tax dollars from local school districts. (Jeff Fusco/Getty Images) Photo Credit
The first advanced gas-cooled reactor is built at Calder Hall in England.Intended originally to power a naval vessel, the reactor is too big to be installed aboard ship and is instead successfully used to supply electricity to British consumers. A smaller pressurized-water reactor, supplied by the United States, is then installed on Britain’s first nuclear-powered submarine, the HMS Dreadnaught.(Do you buy that lie? They accidentally made the first nucelar reactor too big for it’s intended purpose and just as an after thought used it to power British households? Seriously??) 1963 December — The Jersey Central Power and Light Company announces its plans to construct a nuclear power plant at Oyster Creek as an economic alternative to a fossil-fuel plant. The company contended that its research indicated that nuclear power would generate energy less expensively than fossil fuels. 1964 December — The Atomic Energy Commission issues Jersey Central Power and Light Company a construction permit to begin building the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant. 1965 November — A major electrical power outage in the northeastern U.S. prompts proponents of nuclear power to push it as a necessary alternative energy source. 1966 October — The Enrico Fermi experimental breeder near Detroit, Michigan is the site of what is considered an “uncomfortably close call,” as its core partially melts.Although a runaway reaction was prevented, the reactor was permanently disabled. 1969 The Zero Power Physics Reactor (ZPPR), a specially designed facility for building and testing a variety of types of reactors, goes operational at Argonne National Laboratory-West in Idaho. Equipped with a large inventory of materials from which any reactor could be assembled in a few weeks, ZPPR operates at very low power, so the materials do not become highly radioactive and can be reused many times. Nuclear reactors can be built and tested in ZPPR for about 0.1% of the capital cost of construction of the whole power plant. 1973 October — The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) cut oil production by 25 percent and joined with other oil-producing nations in an embargo of oil shipments to the United States. An “Energy Crisis” gripped the U.S. resulting in price gouging, gas lines and rationing. 1974 October — President Gerald Ford abolishes The Atomic Energy Commission and replaces it with two new agencies: the Energy Research and Development Administration and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The two new bodies were charged with the task of regulating the nuclear industry. 1977 April — President Jimmy Carter announces a policy banning the reprocessing of used nuclear fuel. 1978 September — Dedication ceremonies for Three Mile Island Unit 2are held in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Deputy Secretary of Energy for the Carter Administration, John F. Oน Leary called the plant a “scintillating success,” and added that “it is fair to conclude…that nuclear power is a bright and shining option for this country.” 1979 March — Three Mile Island disaster. Equipment failures and human error contribute to an accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. A series of events led to the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history.
October — Reacting to public and political outrage over events at Three Mile Island, the U.S. nuclear energy industry creates the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations to address issues of safety and performance 1981 October — Reversing a decision made by President Carter in 1977, President Ronald Reagan’s administration decides to lift the ban on reprocessing used nuclear fuel. The Reagan administration went on to introduce a policy calling for the need for a high-level radioactive waste storage facility. 1983 January — The Nuclear Waste Policy Actis signed into law by President Ronald Reagan. The act established a timetable for designating permanent underground facilities for the storage of nuclear waste.
April — The Atomic Industrial Forum, a pro-nuclear power group, publishes a statement that the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island did not fundamentally change its otherwise unblemished safety record. In its bulletin, the AIF contended that, “No member of the public has been injured or killed from a reactor accident at a commercial nuclear power plant. …No plant employee ever has exhibited clinical evidence of serious injury from radiation. …The nation’s most serious commercial nuclear plant accident…did not alter this unparalleled record of safety.”
October — Congress votes to kill funding for the Clinch River Breeder Reactor project in Tennessee. 1984 May — A report made by Oak Ridge Associated Universities and the University of North Carolina links incidents of cancer in workers at the Savannah River nuclear power plant, located near Aiken, South Carolina to exposure to radiation. 1986 April — Chernobyl disaster. Runaway reactions during a test at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor near Kiev, located in the what was then the Soviet Union, causes a series of explosions that rupture the containment structure and send massive amounts of radiation through the Northern Hemisphere. Soviet troops were dispatched to help fight the fire and contain the reactions in the melted core. The incident at Chernobyl was the worst nuclear accident in history and resulted in over 75 million people being exposed to dangerously high levels of radiation.
August — Soviet medical experts predict an increase of nearly 30,000 cancer-related deaths over a 50 year period due to fall-out from the accident at Chernobyl. 1988 May — New York State, led by Governor Mario Cuomo and the Long Island Lighting Company (LILCO) reach an agreement to close and dismantle the Shoreham nuclear power plant. The $5.3 billion loss was absorbed by the utility’s investors, electricity customers on Long Island, and federal taxpayers. (Understand, that there is no way to totally shut down and dismantle a nuclear reactor. They continue to affect our environment, long after they have ended their contribution to our energy demands.) 1992 August — Uniform nuclear plant designs are submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for certification and approval. The designs were drawn up in the hopes of establishing a single standard for nuclear power plant construction in the U.S.
October — President George Bush signs into law the Energy Policy Act, setting the U.S. on course for planning its energy needs. The act also reformed the licensing process for advanced, standardized nuclear power plants.The updated process was designed to afford the public more timely opportunities to participate in decisions concerning the construction of nuclear power plants. It was also drawn up to provide investors with a more stable financial environment. 1993 April — The Comanche Peak Unit 2 nuclear power plant in Glen Rose, Texas, goes on-line. The plant went on to provide 1,150 megawatts of electricity to consumers. 1994 January — The United States purchases uranium from the Russian Federation, planning to blend it down into power plant fuel. The U.S. made the purchase to keep the uranium from being used for missile warheads. (sure)
July — The Nuclear Regulatory Commission issues its final design approval of the first two of four advanced nuclear power plant designs for General Electric’s Advanced Boiling Water Reactor and ABB Combustion Engineering’s System 80+. The two plants were the first to obtain final design approval under the NRC’s regulations for licensing standardized plant designs. 1996 February — The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is granted a full-power license by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for its Watts Bar 1 nuclear power plant. The licensing brought the number of operating nuclear units in the U.S. to 110. June — District Court Judge Sylvia Rambo dismisses a class action lawsuit filed against the Metropolitan Edison Company, on behalf of individuals and businesses said to have been exposed to and injured by gamma radiation exposure during the 1979 Three Mile Island accident. The judge cited a “scarcity of evidence” in dismissing the case. 1998 January — President Bill Clinton announces that China has issued support of international nuclear proliferation efforts. The announcement paved the way for the sale of U.S. nuclear technology to China, a move protested by many members of Congress. 2000 – USA has a fleet of more than 100 nuclear power plants operating annually at more than 90 percent capacity for the last decade Elsewhere in the world, nuclear power energy production grows, most notably in China, Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, where more than 28 gigawatts of nuclear power plant capacity is added in the last decade of the century.
Across the United States, nuclear waste is accumulating in poorly maintained piles. 90,000 metric tons of nuclear waste requiring disposal are currently in temporary storage. Read More Here
VANDALISM – It is baffles me to learn about these events, and I have to wonder what reason would anyone have for killing bees and destroying the breeders equipment and in effect their livelihood? Not that EVIL needs a reason.
14 acres that make up Eden’s Organic out in Balch Springs, Texas
And nestled among the trees way back on Marie’s 14 acres, a ten-minute walk from the road, far out of sight from any passerby, are two hives loaded with tens of thousands of honeybees. Susan and Brandon Pollard of the Texas Honey Bee Guild run a program called “Zip Code Honey,” which places hives all around North Texas. Marie was more than happy to have the hives, and felt the secluded acres in the back of her property would provide a sweet life for the bees.
And they did. Until last week, when, for unknown reasons, someone nearly destroyed the two beehives.
“Marie’s farm has wild hogs that will knock over and trample the ‘girls’,” says Susan Pollard with the Texas Honey Bee Guild, referring to the bees. “And wild hogs do have the snout and disposition to rout out precious honey. Yet human vandalism is an ignorant, unfortunate act.”
When Marie found the vandalized beehives, she snapped some photos for the police and her own records. Large rocks that were kept on top of the hives as anchors were smashed into part of the meshing that goes inside the beehives, an act unlikely committed by a wild animal.
The Pollards immediately came out, found the queens, who were still alive, and reconstructed the hives.
Marie knows that kids from the surrounding neighborhoods occasionally wander through the back part of her property, leaving some trash and toys behind as evidence. But other than the prospect of them perhaps getting hurt, Marie doesn’t mind too much. She wants kids to have the opportunity to explore nature, so much so that she is averse to posting “Keep Out” signs along her fences. Her view of nature seems to be that it’s there for everyone.
She’s still astounded, though, as to why anyone would try to destroy a bee colony. And this has forced her to take more extreme measures to keep wandering feet out.
“Bees are responsible for two out of every three pieces of vegetable we put in our mouths,” explained Marie. “And considering all the difficulties they already have working against them from pesticides, viruses and everything else, I don’t understand why anyone would create more hazards for them. They already have enough working against them.”
After carefully fixing the hives, the Pollards think the bees will persevere, but worry what another intrusion would do.
“Wintering over has its vulnerabilities,” Susan Pollard explains. “The honeybees already have reduced their numbers for winter cluster. Ideally we would have 60,000 bees in each separate colony going into winter. Hostile violations further reduce by many thousands the winter refuge population and repeated exposure to the cold and wrecked food stores can spell their doom. Any one particularly vicious attack, stomping or chomping, dismantling their sanctuary and killing their queen may prove a lethal encounter.”
And if Marie had the opportunity to talk to vandals, it might not be what you would expect. More than anything she wants to educate them on the importance that bees play in all our lives. She’d probably even have them taste a little of their wonderful nectar. Then maybe hand them a basket of fresh veggies she’s pulled from her own garden as a lesson in pollination.
For now, the bees endure. And while Marie worries about the hives surviving another attack, from either wild boars or people, and has taken measures to protect them. View the entire article the title.
Last week in Alvin, Texas, a group of beehives were knocked down by vandals. KHOU explains that the beehives are “used to help pollinate crops for local farms, so the damage may have a greater impact than just some angry bees and broken boxes.”
It could be theorized that a hungry animal knocked over the hives in search of honey, but the Brazoria County Beekeepers Association puts the Pooh Bear theory to rest in their latest Facebook post. They write that none of the frames that were covered in honey were missing, nor eaten, so they can only assume that humans knocked over all of the beehives out of “meanness.”
The vandals most likely received many stings from upset bees trying desperately to defend their colony and queen. Sadly, once honey bees sting, they die soon afterwards due to leaving behind their stinger and part of their abdomen lodged in their victim’s skin. The Brazoria County Beekeepers Association says that dozens more died while reassembling the boxes since the bees were distraught after being left in the rain in a disrupted hive all night.
According to Facebook, the hives are back together now, and nerves are winding down
SIOUX CITY, Iowa – Sioux City police have arrested two boysin connection withvandalism at a honey business that resulted in the destruction of roughly half a million bees.The Sioux City Journal reports Wednesday that police arrested the boys, ages 12 and 13, on felony charges of criminal mischief, agricultural animal facilities offenses and burglary. The boys also were charged with the aggravated misdemeanor possession of burglar tools.Their arrest followed the December vandalism at Wild Hill Honey, where owners found all of their 50 hives had been knocked over, killing at least 500,000 bees. Damage was estimated at $60,000.“They knocked over every single hive, killing all the bees. They wiped us out completely,” owner Justin Engelhardt told the Sioux City Journal in December. “They broke into our shed, they took all our equipment out and threw it out in the snow, smashed what they could.Doesn’t look like anything was stolen, everything was just vandalized or destroyed.“He told the paper the crime was “completely senseless.“The operation wasn’t insured, as companies typically don’t offer beehive coverage. However, people have donated tens of thousands of dollars, and owners Justin and Tori Engelhardt say they will rebuild their business.:To view the video click this link:2 juveniles arrested
“It’s bad enough to think in today’s world this would happen but dumping them over and then setting fire to them is beyond comprehension.”
Brazoria County Beekeepers AssociationVandalized remnant of the Brazoria County beehives.
At 2 a.m. on April 27, a sheriff’s deputy on patrol in Brazoria County, Texasdiscovered 20 beehives engulfed in flames. According to The New York Times, the sheriff’s deputy quickly grabbed an extinguisher out of his patrol vehicle and tried to put out the flames.
Despite the officer’s best efforts, most of the hives were severely burned with roughly 600,000 bees killed in the process.In addition to the arson, some of the hives on the local beekeeping plot had been tossed out into a nearby pond or thrown across the field.
This case of deliberate beehive destructionhas left the local community stunned and saddened.
“I was just in shock that somebody would actually do that,” said Steven Brackman, the president of the Brazoria County Beekeepers Association. “That’s what we don’t understand. Three years they were there, and most neighbors know about it.”
Brazoria County Beekeepers AssociationBurned remains of the vandalized beehive.
All 24 colonies located at the plot were under the care of the organization, whose 300 beekeepers are among one of the 50 beekeeping groups in Texas. Twenty hives were either burned, drowned, or entirely busted apart.
Collectively, the bees that were killed belonged to four owners, who were hobbyists just getting started in beekeeping. Some had gone into the beekeeping business as a learning experience, while others wanted to begin selling their own honey at a market nearby.
Eight of the hives — housing about 60,000 bees each — that were destroyed belonged to 69-year-old Sam Degelia. The retired welder had been raising colonies of Buckfast bees and selling their honey at the local farmer’s market to supplement his income.
His small honey operation gave him an extra $8 for every pound of honey that was sold. But now, thanks to the fire, Degelia has suffered almost $8,000 in losses.
“I don’t want to say it’s like losing a kid, but you put all your hard work and pride in it, and somebody kicks the bucket from under you,” Degelia said. “First there is the shock of losing the bees, and then you say, ‘Well, there goes my honey flow.’”
The beekeepers association has likewise put out a statement on Facebook, expressing their own utter disbelief.
“It’s bad enough to think in today’s world this would happen but dumping them over and then setting fire to them is beyond comprehension,” the post read. “Club has offered a reward to lead to conviction and anyone with info please forward it to the sheriff’s office.”
Local authorities have struggled to make sense of the heinous act, especially in light of the worrying bee colony collapse disorder epidemic that has swept the U.S. in recent years, in which workers bees abandon a hive for unknown reasons, leaving the local ecosystem in trouble due to the lack of bees there to pollinate.
Unfortunately, in this case, there was not much evidence left at the scene of the bee slaughter for investigators. The beekeeping site was located in an isolated three-acre patch of land on the outskirts of the city of Alvin with the closest residence about 50 yards away. On top of that, no surveillance cameras were ever installed, leaving authorities with no footage to examine.
For now, Brazoria authorities still don’t know if the vandalism was carried out by a single culprit or if there were more.
To that end, the department is looking to its residents to help solve the case, offering a handsome sum of up to $5,000 for any information or tips. In addition to that sum, the beekeepers association is offering a $1,000 reward as well. View the entire article
First of all, anyone who believes for one minute that these horrendous crimes were committed by teenagers or young boys just for kicks is an absolute idiot. Whoever did this had to come prepared to be attacked by thousands of bees highly motivated to protect their home and their queen. It took time to destroy all that property while swarms of angry bees are trying to find any inch of you to attack. These crimes were committed in a manner that shows planning, preparation, tremendous courage and knowledge of the industry. I believe these were organized by “environmentalist extremists”, probably paid and supported by powerful individuals.
Honey Bees may have been introduced to our nation and not a native species. They migrated here along with the White Europeans and shortly after we did. So, don’t they have as much right to be here as we do?? They have been nationalized and a very positive element of our food supply and our economy. Honey bees are not the enemy.
Industrial Farming is the money making driving force behind the migration of bee hives around the country and forced pollination. The bees are not the enemy. Industrial FARMING is the enemy. Not only of bees but of ourselves. That industry is the cause of so many things that hurt the economy. Industrialized Farming has destroyed the soil, the air, the water and poisoned our food supply. That is a story for another day.
I do want to say that “ecologists” can be extremists capable of very violent acts.
I am not going to post these articles here, I won’t give them the time of day. I am only posting the links so anyone who chooses can view them. I will tell you, that articles like these incite people for all the wrong reasons. spacer
Jan 27, 2018 … There are thousands of bee species. Almost all of them live in the wild, hiding away in the ground or in odd cavities, like hollow plant stems. They ...
honey bee considered a threat a priori be- cause it is exotic? This review endeavors to. * Present address: Department of Applied and Environmental Sciences, …
Aug 21, 2019 … Bees are in danger, but contrary to the buzz around National Honey Bee … such as bees play a fundamental role in the environment and in our food … 35 species of UK bees are under threat of extinction, and all species face …
How Worried Should We Be About the Bees? Fast Talking Propagandist of the New World Order. Villainization of Honey Bees and proliferation of the Ecological Agenda.
The items posted here are only a small representation of what the bizarre weather we have seen over the last 30 years has done to our environment and especially to our honey bees. These “weather” disasters are happening with frightening regularity and severity.
A VERY DIFFERENT KIND OF FIRE – very limited excerpts posted here, this is a great article, I recommend that you review it in its entirety.
By: M.E.A. McNeil
What Californians know about tornadoes is that they happen somewhere else. Ask anyone – not here, no way.
But tornadoes did come to California. They were made of fire. They blew, gyres of flame, unstoppable, igniting wildfires that raged uncontained for nearly two weeks.
Although a dozen big fires burned simultaneously across Northern California, the Tubbs Fire in Santa Rosa, about 55 miles north of San Francisco, “was a very different kind of fire,” according to Ken Pimlott, the director of Cal Fire.
“Almost horizontal. It generated so much heat that it created its own circular patterns.” Those vortices of air rose into twisting columns – fire tornadoes. Their rare occurrence has never been so devastating. They left 22 people dead and 36,432 acres burned. They peeled off roofs, lifted and flipped trucks.
It started in the hills above Santa Rosa, about 55 miles north of San Francisco on Sunday night, October 8, 2017 at 9:43 pm.
Not far away, beekeeper Mike Turner went to bed around 11:00 that night. There was a faint odor of smoke in the air, not unusual from a barbeque in his neighborhood of family homes. The weather was still warm. Unusually warm. He checked and saw nothing before he went to sleep.
Mike Turner’s Marin Coastal Bee Honey. His 2017 harvest was nearly all burned in the fire that demolished his Santa Rosa home. Photo credit: Mike Turner
Beekeepers Mike Turner and Thea Vierling outside Austin Creek Elementary School where they teach about bees in an outreach program for the Sonoma Beekeepers’ Association. Turner lost his home, work space and equipment in the fire. Vierling is part of a taskforce organized to support beekeepers with loss. Photo courtesy of Thea Vierling
Mike T garage: Beekeeper Mike Turner used a three-car garage to extract and bottle his honey. It was a complete loss, including the specialized tools he had made, such as bee vacs and a cell incubator.
At about 1:15 am, he drowsily took note that his clock was blinking. Ok, the power had gone out and come back on. He drifted off – a distant roaring sound could have come from the freeway half a mile away. The roar grew louder. A smell of smoke thickened the air. If he was not completely awake when he stepped onto his porch, he was jolted to see the sky glowing orange.
“Go now!” screamed his neighbor.
Turner is a gentle, well-liked guy in his early 50s. He and his wife Deborah run a beekeeping business. They have apiaries in adjacent counties, market their Marin Coastal Bee Honey, extract bees and yellow jackets, teach beekeeping, and manage about 100 colonies for clients.
It’s honey harvest season. Turner has been working in his rented three-car garage, skimming the wax cappings off of frames full of honey with a hot knife, one by one. It’s tedious, sticky work. He’s finished spinning the honey out of the frames in his stainless steel centrifuge, and, to get every last drop, he’s squeezed oddly shaped comb in a fruit press. That’s done. The honey is in buckets, each labeled by apiary location within Mill Valley, San Rafael, Russian River, Rincon Valley, Santa Rosa, Tiburon. His label says, “Know where your honey comes from,” and he’s specific. After all, it’s a taste of place if anything is. Now it’s ready to bottle, and orders are coming in.
As Turner and his wife slept that Sunday night, a high pressure system over the Central Valley of California was forcing air north into a low pressure system. The systems were bent on equalizing. The contrast between the two fronts was so great that air moved fast. Really fast, up to 80 mph – hurricane force.
The fire came so close to this hive that it melted the plastic top and scorched the paint. The colony survived. It was one of the fortunate ones. Photo credit: Lizanne Pastore
While 20 area beekeepers lost their bees, the fierce Tubbs Fire swept to within feet of these hives and stopped, miraculously sparing them. Photo Credit: Lizanne Pastore
A beekeeper surveys what’s left after the fierce Northern California Tubbs Fire swept through the area with little notice. The squares of ash were once colonies of bees. Photo credit: Mike Turner
“Just like water flows from higher to lower elevation, winds flow down a pressure gradient as they go from high pressure to low pressure,” said Max Moritz, a wildfire specialist with the University of California Cooperative Extension. “When they get concentrated, like through a mountain pass, they will speed up, like a river going through a narrow channel.”
Overnight, gusting winds had funneled into a steep drainage ravine down Mark West Springs Road in Santa Rosa. What happened then is best described by a phenomenon called the Venturi effect. A science teacher might demonstrate it with a pressure hose nozzle in a paper towel tube: The compressed air pulls on the room air to equalize the pressure between the two, creating an intake, a vacuum. It might vacuum up sawdust. Or, on this night, vehicles.
An hour later, at 2:30 am, Hector Alvarez woke to his phone ringing. “What fire?” he said.
He is a hard working commercial beekeeper, in his 40s. Now he manages some 900 hives for honey and pollination. He has two farms and other yards where he keeps bees and a truck and trailer to move them.
That night, he stepped outside and saw orange in the sky, in the direction of his second farm, where all his equipment was kept.
Alvarez drove as far as he could. Vehicles were evacuating out, taking both of the two lanes, so he parked and walked. “At first I couldn’t see the fire,” he said. “It was dark. Then I saw the flames in the hills and heard explosions. It was like a big monster, a fireball from the top of the hill to the bottom spraying everything with fire, going down toward the farm.”
Lizanne Pastore expects some wind, but not like it was and not so early in the season. She has two small apiaries at the 40 acre vineyard that she and her husband farm, Old Hill Ranch in Glen Ellen, south of Santa Rosa. Early that Monday morning of October 9 the wind kicked up so fiercely that she drove out to check some hives. She keeps rocks on the covers until her last hive inspection of the year, which would not be for weeks, the end of October. At that time, she straps each one down against the winds that normally come later in the year.
This street, in the Kenwood area of Santa Rosa, CA, had three beekeepers on it. In the terrifying and mercurial fire that swept through, one lost only a fence, another lost her hives and the third lost her house but not her hives.
A beeyard burned through by the Northern California fire that raged through the Santa Rosa area in October. Photo credit: Rory Dorman Tira
A beeyard wiped out by the fire that swept through Santa Rosa, California. Photo credit Rory Dorman Tira.
She arrived at her apiary to find the rock weights blown off the hives and the covers scattered far. She scrambled to find them. She replaced the covers and strapped the hives to their stands – the wind blowing so hard she embraced a hive to keep it upright.
“I was so focused that I didn’t realize the smoke,” she said. “I looked up, toward the northeast, and saw orange.” A blaze above the hills was punctuated with booming flashes of blue. A diagonal wall of flames was coming down the mountain, half a mile away. It was time to gather the animals and leave.
When Alvarez phoned to check on another beeyard, one in Sonoma, he was relieved to hear that the bees were ok. On Tuesday he took his truck to move them. The road was blocked by a Highway Patrol woman. He explained. He pleaded. “By the next day, Wednesday, the fire came. I was hoping that they survived but I could see it on the news, and there was a big orange cloud of fire. It was frustrating. I had time to rescue the bees, a whole day. The people wouldn’t let me in the road. I tried.” Hector Alvarez lost all 60 strong, healthy colonies in that yard.
Lizanne Pastore, with her husband and nephew, had come back through neighbors’ properties with a truck loaded with buckets of water. They cleared brush and put out spot fires – efforts that did not save their office, shop and guest house. But they, and the greenery of their vineyard, saved their house.
Afterward, she went back to her apiary. “I broke down crying,” she said, “It was scorched everywhere around it and a hive miraculously survived.” She discovered a sinking beehive, still alive, with a tree root burning underground below it.
Mike Turner found his bee yards had survived, some within a mile of the fire line. Then he went back to his house site “just to stand there and stare.” He’d thought at least to salvage some metal, especially some specialty tools he uses for fitting the metal tops on telescoping hive covers. He found that the temperatures had been so extreme that metals had all become brittle. A stack of iron frying pans was welded together. He found coffee cups with the glaze melted; a ceramicist friend told him that would have taken 3000°F.A stone façade around the front door had collapsed through the garage wall and crushed his extractor. He found a wry humor in that, since the stainless steel was already a flimsy shell. “Insult to injury,” he said. There was nothing but a charred ruin. But in the ashes he found a small ceramic crèche.
Alvarez, still unable to get into his burned beeyard, was told that there were some bees still flying. To the notion that colonies of bees abscond with smoke, he said, “I don’t believe that. There’s no way they can leave. Maybe if the fire came in the day, it is only foragers left.”
Although it is widely believed that honey bees escape fire by absconding, observation by researchers concludes, with Alvarez, that they do not. The belief likely comes from the fact that bees gorge on honey before swarming or absconding in order to sustain them as they resettle. But a laying queen is too heavy to fly, and it is a suicide mission to leave without her. It takes many days for bees to prepare their queen to swarm, diminishing her feed and running her on the comb until she is fit to take wing.
At flashpoint, Alvarez’s beeyard would have detonated into 60 roaring chimneys, the boxes still intact, blackening until they caught, too. Turner saw the remains of four beehives at a winery – only squares of white ash remaining on the ground.
“We had already built the bridges,” said Christine Kurtz. The SCBA is divided into geographic groups called clusters. “We have smaller communities of beekeepers that know each other socially, have been into each other’s hives. We’re doing this all together.”
Over a terrifying week they learned that about 15 beekeepers in the group have suffered total loss of home and outbuildings from the fire. One, an organic farm, lost two houses, greenhouses, a barn filled with antiques, an apiary. Group members helped put up fencing for her surviving chickens. Many others, like Turner, also returned to the ruins of both home and workplace. In addition, many beekeepers in the group lost their equipment.
“People told me they said good-bye to their bees when they evacuated,” said Kurtz. What they found when they returned has varied: “Some colonies looked like an angel enveloped the hive. Fire marks all around but the hive untouched and others destroyed.”
Thea Vierling, of the SCBA taskforce, is gathering donated replacements for burned-out beekeeping equipment and has commitments from Dadant and Mann Lake. “We are a tight group and are really there for each other,” she said. “We all believe that ‘my bees are your bees’.” A bee sharing program was already in place to promote local bee stocks. The burned-out apiaries will be the first to be restocked with swarms and splits. Their website sonomabees.org is taking donations.
No one knows yet how the surviving bees will do. In many areas the smoke was so dense they did not fly for five days.Kurtz reported a dramatic drop in the population of her colonies, more perhaps than normal attrition for that time of year.
Alison Dance 10 daily video producer – Thu 09 Jan 2020 3.43 PM
Apiarists are calling for NSW National Parks to open to beekeepers after bushfire wiped out 7,000 hives and destroyed “prime honey country”.
Fourth-generation honey producer Stephen McGrath still doesn’t know if all his bees are safe from bushfire, but even if they survive, there’s nowhere to put them — especially after several hives were vandalised.
McGrath has been working to protect his hives and a mate’s property from bushfire on the South Coast.
“We’ve been taking bees out because we knew fire was coming,” he told 10 daily.
“We just left the ones we thought would be safe and there’s one lot we couldn’t get to. We don’t know if they’ve all survived.”
McGrath said cars ramming into hives is sadly not uncommon. Photo: supplied.
Frustratingly, moving the hives further inland near Yanco and Darlington Point hasn’t kept the valuable insects safe.
“Forty plus hives have been knocked over in the last six weeks and around half the bees are dead – it’s lost us thousands of dollars,” he said.
I don’t expect country people to do that sort of stuff. It just makes you angry and disappointed.
McGrath isn’t alone, as beekeepers affected by fire now look to find safe areas to move their hives into.
“It’s going to actually have serious consequences for bees and beekeepers because we’ve got nowhere for our bees to go now,” he said.
Vandalism like this costs beekeepers thousands of dollars. Photo: supplied
The NSW Apiarists’ Association (NSWAA) put in a request this week to the NSW Parks and Wildlife Service, asking for beekeeping to be permitted in more national parks.
“Beekeepers get the majority of honey from the forest but 43 percent of forest has been burnt and that was prime honey country around Batemans Bay and Tumbarumba,” NSWAA President Stephen Targett told 10 daily.
Instead of a government handout we’d prefer to be allowed to put bees in National Parks that haven’t been burnt, like Kosciusko, for the next four to five years.
Beekeeping is allowed in some national parks and NPWS can waive or reduce fees “for beekeeping sites during droughts, bushfires and other natural events when those events clearly have an impact on beekeeping activities.”
“The Government appreciates the concerns raised by the NSW Apiarists’ Association,” a departmental spokesperson told 10 daily.
“The NPWS will meet with the NSW Apiarists’ Association to discuss possible solutions that take into account the needs of native wildlife, which may rely on the same food sources.”
Beekeepers are already battling drought. Photo: David Trood via Getty
In the meantime, those with a sweet tooth can expect to see a small price hike for honey.
“After this month there won’t be honey production until spring except maybe for a little bit in unburnt areas,” Targett said.
“Buy Australian honey – that will help beekeepers who get the majority of money from honey sales.”
However, it’s not only honey production affected, with bee pollination services worth around six billion to Australian agriculture.
Bees are vital for pollinating many of Australia’s crops. Photo: Getty
Almonds rely solely on bees for pollination, while crops like blueberries, macadamias and broccoli also use bees.
“There are 32 agricultural industries that rely on bees for pollination and almond pollination happens in August,” Targett said.
“With 7,000 hives destroyed and many of their field bees killed by fire, bee numbers are down so many beekeepers won’t be able to offer pollination services.”
McGrath’s sole income comes from his bees and he is determined to continue his family’s 110-year beekeeping legacy going.“We’ve got to buckle down and try and get the bees through,” he said.
“There are a lot of beekeepers who lost houses, bees and hives out there and it’s going to be about mates helping mates to survive.”
Josh Butler – 10 daily Senior News Reporter Sat 09 Nov 2019 11.42 PM
This could be “the worst season on record” for Australian honey, with beekeepers saying climate change has killed off their hives and the flowers they rely on.
Some beekeepers are reporting an 80 percent drop in production, amid predictions prices could jump 10 percent or more in coming weeks.
“The persistence of this drought over several honey seasons is making it hard for bees and beekeepers in turn,” Ben McKee, chief operating officer of Hive + Wellness, told 10 daily.
“The trees don’t flower, and when they do, they don’t produce anywhere near the nectar they usually would.”
Most of our honey comes from eucalypts, and most of them are on flowering patterns of every one to two years,” McKee explained.
“The trees are dying from a lack of rain, and the stress on trees is a lot worse. Last year was a bad honey production year, and this year is considerably worse. We’re concerned about having a honey industry getting us through to the next season in spring.”
Jacob Stevens, a fourth-generation beekeeper from Warwick in south-east QLD, said he knew some farms which were looking at an 80 percent drop in production from last year — which, itself, had already been seen as a particularly poor year for honey.
We’ve been calling our beekeepers ‘the forgotten farmers’. It’s a small industry but it has a big impact. Bees are really important to pollination and industry, it’s really the cornerstone of agriculture in Australia,” he said.
“While the industry itself isn’t a billion dollar industry, we support those billion dollar industries.
We’ve been calling our beekeepers ‘the forgotten farmers’. It’s a small industry but it has a big impact. Bees are really important to pollination and industry, it’s really the cornerstone of agriculture in Australia,” he said.
“While the industry itself isn’t a billion dollar industry, we support those billion dollar industries.
You might all have heard this famous quote, “If the bee disappeared off the face of the Earth, man would only have four years left to live.” which is mostly attributed to famous scientist Albert Einstein probably, but there is no correct attribution and evidence that Einstein ever said that, said Michael Pocock, an ecologist with the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. Despite whoever quoted this, it is quite worthy and an eye-opener for all of us. If bees get extinct, do we just realize that it will not be all about just lack of honey, but there is a very important and lethal fact about declining bee population which is rapidly decreasing than expected. These tiny creatures are of very important to maintain an ecological balance. It is quite an alarming situation and of great concern that if bees go extinct, we will suffer from a pollinator apocalypse followed by extreme food scarcity and human extinction nearly after it.Even if we find other means of novel technologies to fulfill the food scarcity it won’t be enough to fill the needs of such a blooming population worldwide. Though bees are not the only pollinators that play this role of pollination, these tiny creatures contribute a lot in the pollination of around most of the crop species that feed 90% of the world (sources). They are responsible for most of the food production by pollination of our important crop plants by acting as a mediator of pollen transfer between the different flowers. We already know that the population of bees has started to decline considerably and it’s leading to “Colony Collapse Disorder” (CCD) the name given to mass dying of bee populations by experts. Then two weeks ago Tropical Storm Imeldapaid it’s a visit to Conroe and in the processes wiped out Conroe residents Pat Sturgeon’s hundreds of beehives. Sturgeons who resides near the intersection of FM 1485 and SH 105 East woke up the morning the rains pounded Conroe. At 5 am he looked out and there was some water outside. An hour later he was standing in water in his mobile home. From there on the water kept rising to the point it was over SH 105. Never in his life has it come up this high, He said even during Harvey it came up to the road but went down quickly. This time was different and by the time it was over hundreds of his beehives, boxes and frames had washed away.He has spent the past two weeks retrieving his hives from the woods and the creek beds in and around his home. Currently, he is attempting to find a way to move over fifty of them back across 105 to his property. He doesn’t know what it will take to set them up again and get them active. Currently, not one bee is to be seen around the hives.
CELLPHONE TOWERS ARE AFFECTING OUR ENVIRONMENT
Technology is quite literally destroying nature, with a new report further confirming that electromagnetic radiation from power lines and cell towers can disorientates birds and insects and destroys plant health.
There are 97 different studies on how electromagnetic radiation and how it may affect the environment. The Telegraph reported that these studies support the conclusion that radiation could indeed pose a potential risk to bird and insect orientation and plant health,
This finding is not new. There are studies dating back for years that have come to the same conclusion. One study from 2010 that becauseradio waves can disrupt the magnetic “compass” that many migrating birds and insects use, electromagnetic radiation may be playing a role in the decline of certain animal and insect populations. These creatures are becoming disorientated, AFP reported.
Electromagnetic radiation interrupts the orientation of insects, spiders and mammals, and may even disrupt plant metabolism, according to The Telegraph.
Matt Shardlow, CEO of Buglife said “We apply limits to all types of pollution to protect the habitability of our environment, but as yet, even in Europe, the safe limits of electromagnetic radiation have not been determined, let alone applied,”
Honeybees on flowers outside the Presidential Palace in New Delhi. The electromagnetic waves emitted by mobile phone towers and cellphones can pose a threat to honey bees, a study published in India has concluded.
The electromagnetic waves emitted by mobile phone towers and cellphones can pose a threat to honey bees, a study published in India has concluded.
An experiment conducted in the southern state of Kerala found that a sudden fall in the bee population was caused by towers installed across the state by cellphone companies to increase their network.
The electromagnetic waves emitted by the towers crippled the “navigational skills” of the worker bees that go out to collect nectar from flowers to sustain bee colonies, said Dr. Sainuddin Pattazhy, who conducted the study, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.
He found that when a cell phone was kept near a beehive, the worker bees were unable to return, leaving the hives with only the queens and eggs and resulting in the collapse of the colony within ten days.
Over 100,000 people in Kerala are engaged in apiculture and the dwindling worker bee population poses a threat to their livelihood. The bees also play a vital role in pollinating flowers to sustain vegetation.
If towers and mobile phones further increase, honey bees might be wiped out in 10 years, Pattazhy said.
1973 The first ever mobile phone call was made by Dr Martin Cooper, a Motorola employee, in New York using a prototype Dyna TAC phone. Cooper called his friend who worked at rival AT&T. The phone weighed over a kilogramme and took 10 hours to charge!
1979 Japan has always been at the forefront of technology and in1979 they launched the first ever commercially available automated cellular network, it was however only available in cars. We now call this “1G”.
1981 1G reaches western shores,first in Scandinavia and then the UK and North America.
1983 The first mobile phone goes on sale in the shape of the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X. It cost an eye-watering $4000 USD.
1985 Michael Harrison made the first ever mobile phone call in the UK. He called his father, the then Chairman of Vodafone, Sir Ernest Harrison.
1989 The first ever truly portable mobile phone hits the shelves – the Motorola 9800X which features a flip down to cover the keypad. 1991 GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) phone launched and 2G digital cellular networks replaced the 1G analogue system. 2G made Text messages, picture messages, and multimedia messages (MMS) possible, creating a whole new way for people to communicate. 1994 IBM brought out the Simon which had a touchscreen and a very early form of what we all know today as ‘Apps’. It cost $899 and only worked in 15 states in the US. Nokia also launched the 2110 in Europe, it was one of the smallest GSM phones available and a choice of ringtones which brought us the iconic Grande Valse, now known as the Nokia tune.
1996 The first ever phone with the ‘slider’ form factor came in the shape of the Nokia 8110. It had the nickname the banana phone due to its shape and even made an appearance on the big screen in the Matrix. It was also the first device to feature a monochrome LCD screen. Another first came from the Motorola StarTAC as the first ever flip phone or clamshell device. It sold over 60 million units worldwide. 1997 The iconic game Snake is launched on the Nokia 6110 which marks the start of mobile gaming. Hagenuk launched the GlobalHandy with no external aerial; Ericcson brought out coloured keyboard panels and Siemens brought us the first coloured screen phone – the S10. In the UK Mercury One2One started the first ever pay as you go services called ‘Up 2 You’. It allowed customers to top up their call credit and later became T-Mobile and then EE. 1999 WAP launches on the Nokia 7110 making it the first phone capable of browsing the web albeit a trimmed down version which didn’t provide the full HTML experience we know today. 2000 The Sharp J-SH04 becomes the first camera phoneon the market but only available in Japan. BlackBerry launch their 857 which support email and web browsingsignifying the start of BlackBerry’s reign as the business phone kings. Nokia also launched perhaps the most iconic phone of all time – the Nokia 3310. It sold 126 million units. 2001 full-colour displays start to hit the marketfirst with the Mitsubishi Trium Eclipse but the Ericcson T68i. Qwerty keyboards also made an appearancein the shape of the Nokia 5510 but It was the 8310 that proved the popular phone due to its slick design and cutting edge features including Infrared, a fully functional calendar and an FM radio. 2003 The Finnish giant’s best-selling phone of all time, the Nokia 1100, hit the shelves and has since sold over 200 million units. 3G networks begin to be rolled out across the globe, providing data transmission speeds three to ten times faster than 2G. This enabled users to watch video clips, participate in video conferencing and utilise location-based services for the first time.
2004 Motorola launches the Razr V3 – one of the most popular ‘fashion’ orientated phones between 2004 and 2006. It sold over 130 million units and is the best-selling clamshell device of all time and arguably set the standard for future sleek designs to come. 2005 Android, the mobile operating system was acquired by Googlewhich sent the message the Mountain View giant was serious about mobile technology. The Casio G’zOne became the first waterproof handset sparking a movement towards phones gaining IP certifications. 2006 The Nokia N95 launched providing the first real smartphone experience. It ran on Symbian, had 160mb of RAM, the world’s first 5-megapixel phone camera, Bluetooth and Wi-FI. 2007 June 2007 saw the launch of the 1st generation iPhone. Unveiled by Steve Jobs, it featured an auto-rotate sensor, a capacitative screen that allowed multiple inputs while ignoring minor touches. Needless to say, it was an instant success. 2008 The first Android phone is released called the G1. It has a limited touchscreen and a slide out keyboard. Elsewhere Microsoft decides to bin Windows Mobile citing that it cannot compete with iOS or Android. It begins work on a brand new OS – Windows Phone.Apple also launches the App store with 552 apps available to download. 2009 WhatsApp launches, its co-founder, Jan Koum Koum came up with the idea for the messaging app during a movie night at a friends place. In Sweden & Norway TeliaSonera becomes the first operator to offer customers 4G services. In practical terms, 4G boasts data transfer speeds five times what can be achieved over 3G networks. 2010 Apple launched the iPhone 4 but antenna problems plagued it. Google finally released a branded smartphone – the Nexus One. 2011 Samsung cements their place as the biggest global smartphone vendor thanks to the Galaxy S II which packs an 8MP camera and an AMOLED display. 2012 Five years after the first iPhone hit the shelves, the fifth generation model lands in September. The iPhone 5 sells 5 million units in its first weekend. 2013 Fingerprint scanningwent mainstream when it launched on the iPhone 5S via the touch button. 2014 3G coverage is now available to 99% of the UK population.Elsewhere Facebook acquires WhatsApp for $19 billion. 2015 Chinese firms Huawei and Xiaomi make strides in Western Markets, but both Samsung and Apple continue to dominate with the Galaxy S5 and iPhone 6S respectively holding 38% of the global market share between them. 4G data traffic surpassed 3G for the first time. Although 4G represents only 14% of mobile connections in 2015, it already accounts for 47% of mobile data traffic. 2016 Google ditch their Nexus branding and replace it with the Pixel, releasing two new high-end smartphones; the Pixel and Pixel XL. Both are hoped to compete directly with Apple’s iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. 2017 Microsoft ends support for the Windows Phone OS, just 7 years after its response to Android and iOS. Screen design dominance continues to rise, with Samsung Galaxy S8 and iPhone X adopting over 82% screen-to-body ratios. The focus on screen real estate sees the rise of the ‘notch’ trend. The Sharp Aquos S2 and Essential Phone first to sport the feature before the iPhone X gave it true prominence. SMS messaging celebrates its 25th anniversary. After struggling to gain widespread adoption due to poor coverage, the service now transmits 22 billion messages daily. 2018 Chinese manufacturer Ulefone launches the Power 5 incorporating a 13,000 mAh battery, the largest ever seen in a mobile phone over four times greater than Apple’s flagship, the iPhone XS Max released in the same year. 2019 The UK & US begin to deploy 5G network, initial indications point to real-world data transfer speeds 10 times faster than 4G.
Charles Malki, Biologist & Plant Expert for http://ivorganics.com/ has an educated discussion with Judy Frankel of https://www.judyshomegrown.com/ on the several studies on 5G (5th Generation) Cellphone Towers, and the approximately 10x more powerful (than the 4G Cell Tower) electromagnetic fields (EMF), and its effects on bees, birds, plants & people. For more sources on this topic, here are some supporting links: Dr. Martin Pall To The NIH: “The 5G Rollout Is Absolutely Insane. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lulKq… Dr. Sharon Goldberg Testifies at Michigan’s 5G Small Cell Tower Legislation Hearing October 4, 2018 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CK0Al… 5G and Health: Vermont Deserves Better – Iishana Artra, PhD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwY7U…
Honey bees at a hive entrance: one is about to land and another is fanning
Colony collapse disorder (CCD) is an abnormal phenomenon that occurs when the majority of worker bees in a colony disappear, leaving behind a queen, plenty of food, and a few nurse bees to care for the remaining immature bees.[1] While such disappearances have occurred sporadically throughout the history of apiculture, and have been known by various names (including disappearing disease, spring dwindle, May disease, autumn collapse, and fall dwindle disease),[2]the syndrome was renamed colony collapse disorder in late 2006[3] in conjunction with a drastic rise in reports of disappearances of western honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies in North America.[4] Beekeepers in most European countries have observed a similar phenomenon since 1998, especially in Southern and Western Europe;[5][6] the Northern Ireland Assembly received reports of a decline greater than 50%.[7]The phenomenon became more global when it affected some Asian and African countries as well.[8][9]
Colony collapse disorder causes significant economic losses because many agricultural crops worldwide depend on pollination by western honey bees. According to the Agriculture and Consumer Protection Department of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the total value of global crops pollinated by honey bees was estimated at nearly USD$200 billion in 2005.[10] In the United States, shortages of bees have increased the cost to farmers renting them for pollination services by up to 20%.[11]
In the six years leading up to 2013, more than 10 million bee colonies across the world were lost, often to CCD,[12]nearly twice the normal rate of loss. In comparison, according to FAO data, the world’s beehive stock rose from around 50 million in 1961 to around 83 million in 2014, averaging about 1.3% annual growth. Average annual growth has accelerated to 1.9% since 2009. Honey-producing colonies in the United States increased 4% to 2.8 million in 2018.[13]
Several possible causes for CCD have been proposed, but no single proposal has gained widespread acceptance among the scientific community. Suggested causes include pesticides[14]; infections with various pathogens, especially those transmitted by Varroa and Acarapismites; malnutrition; genetic factors; immunodeficiencies; loss of habitat; changing beekeeping practices; or a combination of factors.[15][16] A large amount of speculation has surrounded the contributions of the neonicotinoid family of pesticides to CCD, but many collapsing apiaries show no trace of neonicotinoids.[16]
By 2014, they already had their “solution” to the “problem”. Ever hear of the hegalian dialectic? YOU CAUSE the problem, and then YOU Provide the SOLUTION! And once again, why is the”scientific community not even investigating or considering all the above mentions Technological advances as the cause or causes for this “colony collapse”?
Well, now we are going to see what is being studied, and developed by the “scientific community”. They have already been working on replacements.
Robot bees could save agriculture while real bee populations dwindle.
The robot bees would operate using sensors and cameras to help them navigate to crops. Flying around autonomously, these drones could potentially pollinate as effectively as the real thing. (they cannot produce honey, and there are so many other aspects of the honey bee that we don’t even understand. Do you really want a world full of these nasty bees? Do you really believe that modern scientists can improve on the work of the CREATOR?)
Image Credit: Polynoid/Greenpeace/Vimeo
Oddly enough, this is not the only farming patent that Walmart has filed recently. According to CB Insights, this is only one of six Walmart patents for farming drones that would do everything from monitor crop damage to spray pesticides. Incorporating autonomous robots into farming could cut costs and increase agriculture efficiency. (For who? How does this benefit our society as a whole? Seems to me, it only helps the rich get richer.)
The thing that’s so puzzling about this move is: why Walmart? (If you are a truther, you know that Walmart is very active in the NEW WORLD ORDER. Research it for yourself.)
Photo Added 7/28 – Photo Credti: AMORQ The best in the World!
The retailer hasn’t publicly commented on the patents yet, so the reasons behind Walmart’s sudden interest in farming drones has to be left up to interpretation. Yet since many Walmart locations do carry produce, it’s possible that the company is looking to gain more control of the food it’s selling. Perhaps by taking such a significant role in agriculture, the company will be able to improve quality and cut costs. (Ya, sure! No doubt that is what they have in mind! NOT!!!)
Photo Added 7/28 – Photo Credti: AMORQ The best in the World!
The buzz about pollination drones is more important than ever, and companies like Walmart want in on the action.
Bees supply more than just honey. Without busy bees pollinating plants, domestic crops such as various fruit and vegetables could be hit hard.
More than 75 percent of the world’s food crops rely at least in part on pollination by insects and other animals.
Between $235 billion and $577 billion worth of annual global food production relies on direct contributions by pollinators, according to a 2016 report from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
Now Walmart wants to get in on the act of giving bees a helping hand while investing in advanced robotics.
Walmart filed a patent in March for autonomous robot bees that can pollinate like their real insect counterparts. Tiny cameras on the robots — also called pollination drones — not only detect and spot the locations of the crops that need pollinating, but the sensitive sensors on the drones will assure that successful pollination occurs.
Five other patents were also filed that same month by Walmart for additional farming drones, including one drone that monitors the ongoing health of various crops and another that can hunt down plant pests, hopefully erasing the need for use of harmful pesticides that endanger bees in the first place.
Walmart is no stranger to utilizing advanced robots. This year, the large chain starting using using sophisticated scanner robots built by Bossa Nova Robotics to monitor store inventory.
Walmart may be one of the largest companies to currently invest in robotic bees like those in the patent, however researchers are hoping to offer more kinds of pollination drones for additional companies to fund.
Back in 2013, Harvard University researchers introduced autonomous flying microrobots calledRoboBeesthat were the size of a penny and used two wafer-thin wings that flapped 120 times per second to fly.
More recently in 2017, a student studying at Georgia’s Savannah College of Art and Design created Plan Bee — a pollination drone that could be controlled by a smart device.
Hopefully more companies will follow suit in robotic bee investing, until then Walmart may be the front runner in looking towards the future when it comes to replacing dwindling bee populations with advanced technology instead of relying on environmental friendly legislation.
There are things that we can do to counteract the evil efforts working against us. Things we can do to save the bees and other pollinators. Things we can do to show GOD that we are not among the ones who are against HIM. spacer
Organize and work against CORPORATE FARMING. Help to support those who are working to re-established traditional farming.
Gardens provide essential habitats for bees, so make sure you are maximising the pollinator potential of your outdoor space. If you don’t have a garden, then check whether your public spaces, parks and road verges are bee friendly and let local councils know how they can improve. Put up a planter box and be sure to fill it with pollinator friendly plants native to your area.
Bees need to eat, so fill your garden with flowering plants that are rich in pollen and nectar. Watch out for ornamental hybrids that have been bred to produce showy flowers that contain little or no nectar. Remember that variety is key. Include plants with a wide range of floral shapes and colours to increase the number of bee species attracted to your garden.
Wooden decking and concrete paving may be low maintenance, but impenetrable surfaces prevent ground nesting bees from finding a home. Increasing the size of your flowerbeds lets you plant more flowers and creates space for more bees to locate nesting sites. Cavity nesting bees look to nest in masonry or old plant stems, but you can provide them with additional nesting sites by buying or building a “bee hotel”.
Lobby for bans on agricultural use of neonicotinoid pesticides in acknowledgement of the harm they cause to bees. These chemicals are found in common garden pesticides, so do your best to minimise their use.
Immaculate lawns and flower beds may be impressive to folks who only care about appearance, but they are detrimental to ALL pollinators.. Many of our fast growing “weedy” plants provide rich sources of pollen and nectar, so ditch the weedkiller and let the wild flowers grow. Lazy gardeners who mow their lawn less frequently can also expect to see a rise in bee abundance of up to 30% due to the increase of “weeds” such as dandelion and clover. To do your bit for bee conservation, forget taking up beekeeping, but instead take a science-backed break from mowing your lawn.
Who decided what is a weed and what isn’t? Dandelions and clover are lovely flowering plants and good for many things. They make great tea and have medicinal properties. All wildflowers are beautiful and much more environmentally friendly than well manicured laws that require excessive watering and pesticides to maintain. Find out what is native to your area and plant some seeds.