Originally posted by SOT:
quote:
Originally posted by kenlori:
My brother in Indiana has bees as a hobby. He has not been effected at all by the bee loss, but some of his friends have. In fact, he is having record harvests. This summer he harvested 40LBs! He had no trouble selling it without advertising. We purchase local honey from our local road side stand with glass hives for the kids to see. We have a son with allergies, so supposedly, local honey helps...my wife is the family nutritionist...I just eat what she puts in front of me!
I'm seeing a few more individual hives around the area that are surviving, and less multi-hive operators. Maybe the isolation of just a few units helps or maybe certain areas (bees seldom travel over 5 miles) are free from the chemicals that trigger the problems. Either way, it seems to be working on small producers in some caser. The other thing could be the resistant bee varieties are becoming more common through attrition. Any way, home grown honey is one of lifes genuine pleasures and I got enough for several years from my hive last year although it wasn't a full harvest. The drought does limit how much honey a hive can produce so that was there for sure. It is fairly typical for a "deep super" (section of hive where honey is stored) to produce 40-50 lbs. of honey. I had a friend that had hives in Muskogee where lots of landscaping produces flowers all summer that used to harvest twice per year and still have plenty of honey for his bees to make it through the winter. His bees finally died and he finally gave it up.
There is still something very serious out there and everything I see points to the "tree huggers" forcing manufactuers, and ag producer to use the new "approved" pesticides which in some cases are super persistent and super systemic and this doesn't even consider what they may be morphing to in the systemic plant process of transpiration,photosynthesis and nutrient conversions.
In the name of "protecting the environment" the process of fumigating soils to reduce the need for systemic pesticides has been pretty much completely outlawed mostly related to the "Montreal Protocol" which has absolutely zero effect on protecting the Ionosphere because, it forced the replacement of billions of lbs. of refrigerants and actually increased the amount of ODS entering the atmosphere by decommissioning all equipment with certain ODS while replacing them with other ODS (Ozone depleting Substances) approved by EPA, which also resulted in a windfall of multi billions of dollars for corps like DuPont (a major manufacturer of refrigerants and an increase of over 1000% in the price of refrigerants).
At any rate, by the 1980s America's pesticide awareness peaked and the most hazardous and persistent ones had been eliminated while there were still proven GRAS (generally regarded as safe) pesticides to replace them. Then the radical mindset takes over and wants to outlaw them and replace them with ones that they are too uneducated and stupid to regard as dangerous and THAT's when the real bad boys made the scene.
Now we have hundreds of "new generation" pesticides including herbicides that no one has a clue as to what the effects may be.
We now have systemic herbicides that are sprayed by the hundreds of tons in each state and some that have application rates of 1/8 of an ounce per acre that will kill all weeds and clovers (which bees utilize highly) that also remain in the soil for months and no one knows what the real effects are. When you get a pesticide that is toxic to weeds at merely .125 OUNCES PER ACRE (That is 2 millionths of an ounce per sq. ft), what happens to the bees and beneficial insects that use these clovers and blooms as they are dying with such potent systemic pesticides in them?)(Chlorosulfon,+Metsulfuron Methyl Oh, yeah 'nother DuPont pesticide) and dozens of others, all appearing about the same time all because of "environmental" legislation that decided the old stand by methods that did not affect the normal function of our ecosystem were not safe any more (and incidentally of course the "patents had expired or they weren't patentable".
Doesn't it even raise any flags when ALL environmental and government regulation, bans everything that can't be patented and only approves new "patents" that no one knows the real effects of??? Just look at the "new generation" "SAFE" pesticides and refrigerants, all decadently expensive and "PATENTED" just like "GMOs" and almost every other tratitionally developed "NEW" variety.
If it is called "safe" by the EPA you can bet it is Patented and expensive, this also applies to the pharmaceutical industry, if it can't be patented and priced exhorbitantly, it can't get approval. Any flags pop up there????
In all sectors of business, the 40 year trend is to make traditional and effective illegal and replace it with government approved "patented" new generation drugs, pesticides and chemicals. This is across the board and is now getting in the food industry.
It's not just the corporations, they couldn't get it done without ownership of politicians.
This brings us back to the need for a total housecleaning of our crooked politicians and then find a way to make things more transparent.
We do NOT live in a safer more environmentally sustainable world than we lived in in 1980 after 30 years of back room deals and oppressive legislation.
We live in a much more dangerous, corrupt world than it was in 1980 and unless something changes soon, the question of environment and food safety all become moot because the massive corruption that has completely saturated all levels of our society will destroy us and maybe mankind with it.
Just for the record, the "Patent" is merely a Government approved monopoly that is now being abusively applied to all Pesticides, refrigerants, pharmaceuticals and now food products. Patenting is no different than state approved monopolies that occur in totalitarian communist countries.
Patents were originally intended to protect inventors from having innovative ideas stolen and give them a period of time to develop them for the good of mankind. Not so today.
Today lying is regarded as a skill and that alone has the ability to completely destroy civilization.
have a merry Christmas.
