"bees" news and stories

You've already heard about colony collapse disorder: Honeybees pollinate many of our crops; honeybees are in a state of precipitous decline; without honeybees, our food supply will decline, too. It's a frightening scenario, and if you happened to catch the latest news out of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, you were probably left with a sense of despair. "Bees are in more trouble than ever," warned The New York Times yesterday. "A quick federal survey indicates a heavy bee die-off this winter." Yikes.

Today, however, the same paper explained the situation in more depth, and -- as with most topics -- there's a good-news, bad-news angle here. Marcelo Aizen, a researcher at Argentina's National Scientific and Technical Council, and Lawrence Harder, a professor of pollination ecology at the University of Calgary, say that the truth about colony collapse is "not nearly so dire" as we think. For one thing, while certain crop-growing areas do indeed show a sharp decline in honeybees, the global trend indicates the domesticated honeybee is actually on the rise. Furthermore, not all crops are as dependent on pollination as we imagine. "Overall," the researchers write, "About one-third of our worldwide agricultural production depends to some extent on bee pollination, but less than 10 percent of the 100 most productive crop species depend entirely on it. If pollinators were to vanish, it would reduce total food production by only about 6 percent."

Photo: Justusthane, Flickr.

Florida's honeymakers, already adept at catching flies, have lately been buttonholing politicians, successfully pressing for new legislation that experts say should save the state's honey industry.

The Florida legislature this month approved a bill prohibiting the production and sale of adulterated honey -- a racy-sounding term that encompasses the honey-fructose blends and chemically treated honeys that have flooded the market over the past decade. While Florida is the first state to issue an official honey standard, Nancy Gentry, who chairs the Florida Honey Bee Technical Council, says as many as 28 states are contemplating similar legislation.

"We're already seeing significant changes," Gentry reports. "We're going to take blended honey products off the shelf in Florida."

The American honey industry was decimated in the 1980s by the Varroa mite, which took down more than 20 percent of hives nationwide.

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Seeing sunflowers makes me smile. They are so bright and cheery. Now, however, I have even more of a reason to smile about sunflowers.

I had heard about the mysterious disappearance of the bees. As mentioned previously on this blog, Haagen-Daaz has done a good job spreading the news. They have a wealth of information on their Help the Honey Bees Site. Not surprisingly, most of their campaign revolves around buying ice cream. I love ice cream and support the cause, but what else could I do?

The Great Sunflower Project gives you a great opportunity to help out in another way. Sunflowers attract bees that subsequently pollinate the plants we eat. If you register by June 15, The Great Sunflower Project will send you sunflower seeds to plant in your garden. They then ask that you monitor the bees that visit your sunflowers. Don't worry, they make it easy by giving you lots of helpful hints on how to effectively monitor your backyard visitors. They will use your information to help get a big picture of the state of bees in urban areas.

Is it really bad to say at this point that bees scare me and I'm not sure I want extra bees in my yard? Probably, but I think saving fruits, vegetables, and one of the loves of my life, honey, wins out over my fear of bees. I also don't need to plant the sunflowers right next to my porch swing.

Check out The District Domestic for more on the plight of the honey bee and what you can do to help.

Try Honibe's Honey Drop, which the company claims is the first non-sticky solid honey product.

Each drop contains about a teaspoon of honey, and comes in a little packet just like your typical sweetener. But unlike your typical sweetener-in-a-bag, it doesn't contain any artificial ingredients. The product comes in a regular and a lemon flavor.

Even though I keep reading the company name "Oh-KNEE-bay" instead of "honeybee," the solid honey drop seems like the perfect solution to a problem that has plagued all tea drinkers at some point or another: sticky fingers.

Check out their aptly-named homepage, NoStickyFingers.com, for more info.