[ExI] Neonicotinoid pesticides 'damage brains of bees' reports

[spike]

-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of BillK
...
>...The bee status varies from state to state.
See USDA Honey report for March 2013.
<www.ams.usda.gov/mnreports/fvmhoney.pdf>

>...Apparently there is a known shortage of bees in California this year.
BillK
_______________________________________________


Excellent, thanks.  This report agrees with my own observations and confirms
some of the unbelievable rumors I had heard: that both the spot price of
honey and the rental price of hives had gone completely crazy, in some
places 6 bucks a pound for honey in the jar and over 200 bucks each for hive
rentals.

All this reinforces what I had suggested earlier: stop buying honey, help
drive those prices back down to reality levels, let the bees eat their own
honey over the winter.  The beekeepers get to stop stressing the hives by
honey extractions, and it would be a great deal all around.  In the
beekeeping business, honey extraction is a filthy, exhausting, backbreaking,
dangerous task, and the bees don't like it either.  But at those crazy high
prices, 200 bucks per hive, the beekeeper can do the nice pleasant easy safe
job of just moving hives around.  He can show up at work in a three-piece
suit and a bee veil, all he has to do is drive a forklift, place pallets of
bees in 2x2x3s, collect 2400 bucks per pallet, come back a couple months
later when the blossoms are gone, rinse and repeat, no messing with all the
traditional problems of colony health maintenance, most of which is actually
caused by extracting honey.  (You knew that extracting honey stresses and
harms the colonies, ja?  Think about it next time you are tempted to buy a
jar, and don't make me come down there and put you on moderation for
honey-buying.)

Making a living on bees without extracting honey is capital intensive,
because it requires a forklift and a flatbed truck, but we are in times when
capital is relatively cheap.  Furthermore, if the whole scheme doesn't work
and the price of hive rental returns from the stratosphere, the beekeepers
can always make a good living smuggling dope from Mexico inside the hives.
Show me a border agent who would ask to check inside one.  Show me a dog
which would try to sniff a beehive.

If you guys are on other internet forums, do feel free to do the right
thing: suggest to your friends and colleagues to stop buying honey
forthwith.  I can imagine that you have a lot of credibility there, wherever
it is, so they would let you get away with posting that simple request even
if it is off topic.  You can explain your reasoning or send them to me, but
the simple summary is that if you stop buying honey, everyone wins: the bees
win immediately, the beekeepers win in the long run, since it drives up
colony rental prices and economically coaxes them into a much easier, safer,
cleaner, more pleasant job; the banker wins, by loaning money for capital on
forklifts and flatbed trucks with safe surety (the bee colonies); the grocer
wins, for she gets to sell more fruit rather than the lower profit
overpriced honey; the consumer wins, perhaps devouring more fruit which is
probably more healthy than honey; the dopers win, since they have a more
steady and consequently perhaps lower priced supply from migrant beekeepers
hauling dope from Mexico in beehives.  I can't even think of a loser in that
scenario, perhaps only the doctor who is kept away by the honey-eschewers
devouring an apple a day.  

This is a rare case of environmental activism in which everyone wins, so DO
IT please, do it enthusiastically, jump at every opportunity to not buy
honey, don't buy it early and often, encourage your friends to do likewise,
thanks.

spike