In Praise of Daisies

Bayer Gives Me a Headache (Happy Pollinator Week)

It's National Pollinator Week, so please do what you can, this and every week, to support our insect allies, our songbirds, and the rest of the gang.

One thing we can all do is wake up and smell the coffee (which is, as it happens, pollinated by bees, along with ants and other devalued critters).

Coffee-whiff Part 1:
Press release 5/21/08 Coalition against BAYER Dangers (Germany); "The German Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BVL) has ordered the immediate suspension of the approval for eight seed treatment products due to the mass death of bees in Germany's Baden-Wuerttemberg state. The suspended products are: Antarc (ingredient: imidacloprid; produced by Bayer), Chinook(imidacloprid; Bayer), Cruiser (thiamethoxam; Syngenta), Elado (clothianidin; Bayer), Faibel (imidacloprid; Bayer), Mesurol (methiocarb; Bayer) and Poncho (clothianidin; Bayer). According to the German Research Centre for Cultivated Plants 29 out of 30 dead bees it had examined had been killed by contact with clothianidin. Also wild bees and other insects are suffering from a significant loss of population."

(And that's probably putting it mildly.)

Coffee-whiff Part 2 (as reported by the folks at Bee Culture):

Sierra Club Wants Treatments Stopped, NOW!
From Alan Harman

The Sierra Club accuses the U.S. Department of Agriculture of caving in to lobbyists over massive bee deaths and compares this with Germany taking a major step to keep their bees pollinating crops.

In light of the mounting evidence that new seed chemical coatings are deadly to bees and action by Germany calling for their immediate suspension, the Sierra Club reaffirmed its call for a U.S. moratorium on specific chemical treatments to protect our bees and crops until more study can be done.

It cites Germany's federal agricultural research institute as saying, "It can unequivocally be concluded that poisoning of the bees is due to the rub-off of the pesticide ingredient clothianidin from corn seeds."

At issue are the neonicotinoids, including clothianidin, being used in a new way - as seed coatings.

For years, farmers have been spraying neonicotinoids onto their crops to stop insect infestation. Now Bayer, Syngenta and Monsanto have acquired patents to coat their proprietary corn seeds with these neonicotinoids.

"Part of the equation in the U.S. is genetically engineered corn, as more and more corn seeds are being gene spliced with a completely different species -- a bacterium," says Walter Haefeker of the German Beekeepers Association Board of Directors. "Bayer and Monsanto recently entered into agreements to manufacture neonicotinic-coated genetically engineered corn. It's likely that this will worsen the bee die-off problem."

A Sierra Club statement says American Beekeeping Federation former president David Hackenburg has been urging the U.S. Department of Agriculture to do more study.

"Look at what's time based,” it quotes Hackenburg as saying. “The massive bee decimation started when regulatory agencies rubber stamped the use of neonicotinoid spraying and coating."

Sierra Club genetic engineering committee chairman Laurel Hopwood says the club joins the concern of beekeepers.

"It's unfortunate that regulatory agencies are using double speak,” he says. “They claim to protect our food supply - yet they aren't doing the proper studies. The loss of honeybees will leave a huge void in the kitchens of the American people and an estimated loss of $14 billion dollars to farmers. We call for a precautionary moratorium on these powerful crop treatments to protect our bees and our food."

Like I said, Happy Pollinator Week.

Recent Things

Holy wood.

Fungus.

Fungus-like detritus.

More fungus!

Flirting finches?

Hiding moth.

Cecropia moth a.k.a. Robin Moth, largest moth in North America. (Learn more about this exquisite deity-like creature and be prepared to be totally blown away by the pics.)

Periwinkle in the woods.

Video Interview with Beekeeper Serge Labesque

Chow has posted a nicely done video about a thoughtful beekeeper named Serge Labesque in Sonoma County, California. It's a 7-part video, so stay with it! Serge's comments about beekeeping are sensible and well informed. Highly recommended.

Týnek’s Busy Bees, Reviewed by Eva Yaa Asantewaa

So pleased to run guest-blogger Eva Yaa Asantewaa's take on Dušan Týnek Dance Theatre’s latest offering, Apian Way. Info on opportunities to see Apian Way this summer are provided at the end of this review and here.

Herewith, Eva's commentary:

Týnek’s Busy Bees

Once a public bathhouse, Brooklyn Lyceum–conveniently located right above Park Slope’s Union Street subway station—remains appealingly unvarnished and down-to-earth. So much of New York is steadily succumbing to sky-high glass. So we’ve got to cherish these old structures–low to the ground and brick-based and all-embracing. Brooklyn Lyceum hosts cultural events of all kinds, including dance, and Dušan Týnek Dance Theatre’s recent season could not have been better placed.

A little café tucked by the front door. A friendly staff. An intimate house with great sightlines from every seat. Hey, maybe you could ask for more, but then the Czech-born dancer-choreographer Dušan Týnek would be the guy to give it to you. Like the Lyceum, Týnek keeps things low, maintaining a comfy relationship to the ground. What his choreography lacks in aerial fireworks, it makes up in clean yet intricate design and performances with real oomph and focus. He and his exquisitely-trained dancers–including Alexandra Berger, Ann Chiaverini, Matthew Dailey, Eden Mazer, Elisa Osborne and Aaron Walter–achieve the sure freedom of well-crafted, expert movement minus the arrogance of Icarus.

The program, continuing on Tuesdays and Thursdays through June 26, reprises the 2007 ensemble piece, Fleur-de-lis, set to music by Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber, and offers the world premiere of Apian Way, set to Bach sonatas and partitas and inspired by the social interaction of bees. Týnek, a student of the natural sciences who strayed and got snared by dance, has been following reports of the disappearance of commercially-raised, crop-pollinating honeybees. The work doesn’t really get into that conundrum; Týnek is the kind of fellow whose work shows rather than tells. But it is perhaps the blending of his dancers’ humble humanity and their bee-like energy, moves and clusterings–arranged with Týnek’s sharp vision–that give the work its power to touch the heart. One is reminded that bees, our hardworking neighbors, do fly but not like raptors. They love the flowers of the earth, and–like Týnek’s performers--they keep it real.

See Dušan Týnek Dance Theatre at Brooklyn Lyceum, June 17, 19, 24 and 26. All performances are at 7:30pm. Subway: M/R to Union Street.

For further information and advance ticketing, visit www.brooklynlyceum.com. For more information about Dušan Týnek Dance Theatre, visit www.dusantynek.org.

Eva Yaa Asantewaa
InfiniteBody dance blog
http://infinitebody.blogspot.com

Do Bayer Pesticides Harm Honeybees?

I Was Stung Once, by Jason Streed

Reprinted here with kind permission from the author, is an essay I relished and am delighted to to share. Thanks, Sam, for bringing this gem my attention. The photo below is titled "Bee Yard, Jan 1979," and shows the hives kept by Sam and Jason's dad. Location: Near Mount Vernon, Iowa.
I WAS STUNG ONCE

I was stung once, but only once, in the five-plus years my father kept bees. I was ten, and my face was at most three feet from a swarm clustered on a sapling. Bees are fairly docile when swarming, so the problem wasn't my location but my reaction to an errant bee landing on my cheek. I slapped it, even though I knew better, and it stung me. Then I panicked and ran, even though I knew better, until my dad stopped me and scraped out the stinger. I was fine by the next morning, of course, and had no hard feelings toward the poor creature who had died in the act of stinging.

There were no real dangers in living so close to so many bees—my tree house was fifty feet from at least 20 hives. Instead, sharing that space offered rare pleasures, privileges I hope to earn again one day.

The most obvious was the abundance of excellent honey. We had gallons of it—more than our family could ever enjoy, even though we enjoyed honey more than most. Dad sold some, and we gave much of it away as a gift. Relations, friends, teachers, and bus drivers were at least annually given beautiful, dusky, amber quarts of a honey that in some years united the tang of alfalfa and the smooth sweetness of clover. In our basement were sometimes scores of gallon milk jugs full of it. (The last harvest from those hives was, I think, in 1983; I finished the last jar I had from that year in 2001.)

Another pleasure was the extraction of the honey and comb from the hives. I was never involved in bringing the honeycomb in from the hives, but I sometimes helped, while my patience held, in the removal of the honey itself. My mind will always carry the gleam of the stainless steel centrifugal extractor; the aroma of honeycomb yielding in the warming tub; the taste of a mouthful of honey-laden comb straight from the hive; and the hum of bees flying confused circles in our garage as the sun went down.

All around the culture of beekeeping is an air of humility before these small creatures. The life of the hive is extraordinarily complex, and every beekeeping book I've ever read is quick to point out how apiculture often becomes about much more than maximizing honeyflow. Even a straightforward introduction to the discipline like Keeping Bees is full of passages like the following, about getting acquainted with a newly-acquired bees:

Once they've had a cup or two syrup, they'll be happy and you can play around with them for a bit to get used to having bees in your life. A little familiarity will eliminate the fear we all have of stinging insects.

Pour a puddle of syrup through the screen and shake some bees into it. . . . Watch their little tongues go at the syrup. Touch the feet and antenna of bees crawling inside the cage wire. They can't sting through the wire. Blow on a cluster and see what it does. Poke a broom straw through the wire and into the bees. Stir them gently. Fast movement will meet with antagonism. Slow, gentle movement won't be noticed. You are learning two major skills of bee handling: do nothing until you feel safe—have confidence born of know-how—and do everything in a slow, gentle, and deliberate manner.

And again:

Try to decide your top priority [in keeping bees]. Are you keeping bees primarily to harvest the honey, or is the honey a justification (if you need one) for keeping the bees? If you pick the former, I look forward to reading of your 500-pound record in the coming issue of the bee magazines. If you pick the latter, that's two of us.

Here's a passage typical of the very fine The Queen Must Die:

There are said to be at least five thousand species of wild bees in North America alone, but little is known about them. When creatures have little or no commercial value, if they are neither especially harmful nor useful and not strikingly beautiful, fascinating, or bizarre, they are largely ignored to go their own way. This also holds true of most people of little or no distinction.

Growing up among bees, and with a beekeeper, has given me many gifts, even if I am a little late in appreciating some of them. I'm endlessly grateful for the chance I had to watch my father and a few hundred thousand bees work together.

—by Jason Streed

Apian Way

If you know anything about bees, you know they like to dance, though they probably use another word for it.

If I were in Brooklyn on June 12th and thereabouts, I'd go see the world premiere of "Apian Way," a new piece by Dusan Tynek's Dance Theatre premiering this week at the Brooklyn Lyceum. Here's the blurbette from the Lyceum website (love the Lyceum, hate their website!):

"Apian Way" is inspired by the social interaction of bees and the mystery of their modern day disappearance. The dance is a narrative fantasy that addresses the role of the individual within a utopian social structure, be it among insects, animals or humans.

From what I hear, this dance company is excellent, so learn more about it and get your tickets here.

My friend, Tarot consultant, metaphysician, and cyberbuddy, Eva Yaa Asantewaa (dance critic par excellence) will be guest-blogging for us here at GSH after she sees, and reviews, the performance. So stay tuned for that treat from the heavens.

Also, if per chance yer Catskills-bound in mid-August, you'll have another chance to see Apian Way at the Mount Tremper Arts Summer Festival—a cool place for cool people.

Urban Beeking Sweeps the Nation

Yet more on the topic of city slicker beeks.

Haagen-Dazs Help the Honeybees Campaign

As part of its Help the Honeybees campaign, Haagen-Dazs aims to distribute 1 million packages of wildflower seeds this summer.

The seeds are free to anyone with access to some dirt and the desire to stick some seeds in the ground.

We did our part. Now it's your turn. Just send your request (including how many packages you want and what you plan to do with them) to: hdloveshb@gmail.com

By the way, I asked what was in those packages and was told they contain the following mix:

• Cosmos bipinnatus
• Zinna elegans (single flower variety)
• Shasta Daisy
• Baby Blue Eyes
• Rose Mallow - Lavatera trimertris
• Purple Coneflower
• Sunflower
• Lobularia maritime - Sweet Alyssum

More flowers in the world can't be bad, so go for it! And while you're at it, why not plant a tree or three? We can't save the honeybees unless we also save the earth.

The Larger Sanity

An example of what Gary Snyder might call "the larger sanity":

A man with vertigo scales the 52-story New York Times building without rope, harness, or parachute to make a statement about the urgency of global warming.

Thank you, Alain, for popping over from Paris to remind us of what we already know and aren't yet doing nearly enough about.

Alain Robert: The Solution is Simple

Recent Things

Cloud formations.

Almond sprouting in compost pile.

The spider that lives by Hive Orange.

Comb cut from the dead hives to be melted down to wax.

Asparagus seedling.

Reaping What We Sow

The Players:

Cecil "Bee" DeMille

Queen Bee Wren

Blogger Bee

MollyBGoode

Sencha Bee

The Assignment:
To do our part for the Help the Honeybees campaign sponsored by Haagen-Dazs, maker of the world's best chocolate ice cream (no, they are not paying me to say that). HD is distributing mass quantities of wildflower seeds that will, we hope, spring to life to provide food, pleasure, and moral support to our honeybee friends and other pollinators.

The Action Steps:
Step one was to don suitable attire. Cecil "Bee" was good enough to acquire antennae and a bee suit, so we could imbue the occasion with the appropriate level of gravitas. Queen Bee Wren was elected to wear the honorary bee suit, which came equipped with a stinger. (Fortunately, she was not called upon to use it.)
Here's Wren double-dipping on the antennae supply in search of extra-sensory perception and then some.
Step two: transfer the wildflower seeds from their cheerful, well-branded seed packages into old (but clean) yogurt containers with which we could readily travel with said seed.Our only disappointment here was the absurd ratio of packaging to seeds.An ecological annoyance, especially given the matter at hand. More seeds per package would have made a lot more sense; with all due respect to their delicious ice cream, someone @ Haagen-Dazs should have noticed the eco-irony here and taken steps to avoid the paper-wastage problem. We were not amused by all the garbage, and wished the paper had at least been less slickly treated and more compostable.
But, it being a beautiful day, and we being women on a mission, we pulled ourselves together and cheerfully prepared to carry out the appointed task of spreading our seed hither, thither, yon and wherever else we could find an appropriately sunny and fertile-looking spot.(We knew not what type of seeds were in the packages, as this info was mysteriously absent from the ample packaging. Let us hope this is not some bizarre plot to lure the trusting and unwitting into propagating bio-engineered corn, jellyfish-enhanced rhubarb, or some other form of hellacious whatnot. The seeds were in fact quite beautiful and diverse—a concert of slate, mustard and sepia shapes and textures.)
Step Three: Cecil B. took wing (and camera, and videocam—and of course, seeds) and we followed her down the road toward points well known.Along the sunny roadside, we promiscuously disbursed our seeds with a wing and a (paganistic) prayer.Then we flew back to the hive!
But not before being spotted in our bee paraphernalia by our neighbors! Fortunately, these are the friendliest and most simpatico of neighbors—Linda (foreground) and her mom—my good friend—Irene. Linda, a former beekeeper herself , did not miss a beat, asking us if we were swarming...Not every neighbor would be so witty and astute.
As we chatted with Linda and Irene, I had a minor fit of ecstasy because I realized we could clearly see ourselves reflected in all our stripy glory in Linda's compound-eye-like sunglasses. Here we are!
It was getting all too intertwingular, so we bid farewell to Irene and Linda, perked up our collective antennea, and headed back to the ranch. We'll keep you updated if anything comes of our casual sowing-bee. All in all, it was a good and happy afternoon—fun to spread a little future-life in the field of dreams.

The End.