https://modernfarmer.com/2019/04/book-excerpt-protecting-pollinators-how-to-save-the-creatures-that-feed-our-world/ Farm. Food. Life. Tue, 09 Jul 2024 11:56:53 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://modernfarmer.com/2019/04/book-excerpt-protecting-pollinators-how-to-save-the-creatures-that-feed-our-world/#comment-22283 Mon, 29 Apr 2019 19:37:05 +0000 http://modernfarmer.com/?p=67415#comment-22283 I would have have appreciated links or info on where to become more informed on caring for bees. It would have capped off a concerned report.
Thanks,
Will

]]> https://modernfarmer.com/2019/04/book-excerpt-protecting-pollinators-how-to-save-the-creatures-that-feed-our-world/#comment-22175 Mon, 22 Apr 2019 22:34:47 +0000 http://modernfarmer.com/?p=67415#comment-22175 Disappointed. To suggest that the perceived drama of CCD is largely due to bumbling novices distorting statistics is irresponsible. Moreover, Helmer associates natural beekeepers’ resistance to miticides with those bumbling well intentioned novices who are increasing the spread of disease. Her tone suggests that natural beekeepers are about as Ill-informed, silly and dangerous as the anti-vaccine proponants. Michael Bush is just one among many successful natural beekeepers who are hardly novices. Professional beekeepers would seem to have healthier bees, as Helmer presents it. Yet no where does she note that these so called healthier hives are often sustained by bi annual queen replacement, and bees that are often shipped by pallets from another continent! The wider impact of large scale beekeeping is not even explored other than a brief mention of the traveling disease in truckloads to pollinate crops. When our crops are poisoned with pesticides, and our soil is dying, to finger novice beekeepers as the danger to native pollinators is just myopic. When I grew up, the car windshields were so splattered with various insects we had to scrape them off with the frost shovel in the middle of summer. Today my windshield is perpetually clean. Honeybees are not causing this entomological die-off! Least of all are bumbling novices the cause! There have always, until relatively recently, been backyard beekeepers. Was a time when everyone had a hive in their yard. Yet while large scale operations are putting down hundreds of hives in larger scale almond groves even as the trees are being heavily sprayed, to suggest that novice naturalists are the source of harm to bees is truly a failure to look at the big picture.
I would hope for a more balanced view from Modern Farmer.

]]> https://modernfarmer.com/2019/04/book-excerpt-protecting-pollinators-how-to-save-the-creatures-that-feed-our-world/#comment-22168 Mon, 22 Apr 2019 14:15:23 +0000 http://modernfarmer.com/?p=67415#comment-22168 Wow! Thank you for the informative excerpt. Looking g forward to reading the book.

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