What I’m Not Thinking About Today
Bees. While grabbing a quick lunch in between sanctuary activities today, I happened to glance at this article about what the scientists are calling Colony Collapse Disorder (I guess giving a mysterious emergency a scientific-sounding name makes it seem less scary). That led me to realize that I’ve been avoiding thinking about this emerging crisis.
Crisis? Yes! On what does all animal life (including human life) depend? (1) The sun. (2) Water, which is also in crisis. (3) The plants that convert solar energy into calories that animals can consume. (4) The bees and other pollinators of plants.
The sudden disappearance of so many bees is so scary that, like climate change, we don’t want to think about it. But, if we don’t think about it, then we won’t do whatever we might do (if there is anything we can do) to arrest the emergency.
I’ve got to go back to the birds today but I promise to blog about bees soon. I’ve got a lot of questions that don’t seem to be answered by the recent articles I’ve seen. I’m going to get answers and share them, along with some ideas here. Hold me to that! Let’s all try to remember to think about the unthinkable because superweeds need bees.
May 25th, 2007 at 8:33 am
I’m very concerned about the bees but I honestly don’t know what to do. Some articles cite cell phones as a possible cause, others talk about disease and parasites. The insane amount of pesticides being used on lawns and crops can’t help either. Very sad, very scary.
May 30th, 2007 at 9:43 pm
On top of their essential utility value, I just adore bees. How cool to be sharing the world with these bright little buzzers who explore flowers, get drunk on pollen (or so I imagine), and make honey. Which makes their plummeting numbers all the more tragic. And then there’s our myopic, unthinking selfishness…”So I sprayed the lawn with Roundup…” I overheard one neighbor saying to another the other day.
June 4th, 2007 at 12:55 pm
Here’s something I just learned about bees: In addition to the waggle dances they use to precisely direct each other to sources of nectar, they use dances a part of a process of deliberation and consensus when it’s time for the hive to swarm to a new location.
As reported by George Kennedy in his book Comparative Rhetoric:
Ah, consensus building among beings with the sense and flexibility to change direction when confronted with new evidence. If only our own collective decisions could be made so effectively!