Colony Collapse Disorder: Meet a beekeeper! Part 3

Continuing our interview with Michele Bennett Decoteau, of Blue Hive Journals, today's topic is Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD, a serious condition that is severely impacting honeybees in the United States. (If you're just joining us, here's part 1 and part 2 of the interview.)

I read recently that nearly one-third of the honeybee population died last year due to CCD. What is Colony Collapse Disorder and how can we help save the honeybees?

CCD is a scary new thing beekeepers are facing. What happens is that beekeeper will open a hive and find healthy larvae and honey but essentially no adult bees. Under typical disease circumstances [only a few adult bees leave and don't return and] there is a decline in bees that is reflected in the larvae and honey. Most diseases show their influence in the larvae [not the adult bees]. The question is where the [adult] bees are and why are they not returning to their hive.

I don’t think a single cause will be found. Some suspects are pesticides, pollution, transporting bees, and disease.

Some pesticides disrupt a bee’s ability to navigate home. One potential culprit is Imidacloprid. When bees get a good dose of this pesticide they act drunk – they cannot fly well, they don’t orient to home, and they get lost easily. This pesticide is banned in other countries but can be purchased [commercially] here in the US. (Mama Joules' sidenote: "Imidacloprid and nicotine have similar activity in the nervous system," according to a 2001 "Insecticide Factsheet" in the Journal of Pesticide Reform.)

Bees are also transported around the country to pollinate large crops. First bees pollinate almonds in California, then they go to Texas to pollinate squash, then maybe over to Georgia for peaches and head up to Maine for blueberries. Bees are eating one single crop at a time and are fed sugar water in transit. This doesn’t sound like a good life for a bee to me. For one thing, the queen and larvae get chilled during transport. I think that all this moving around and single crop feeding is a challenge to the bee’s immune system.

Pollution may affect bees in an unexpected way. Bees use pheromones to communicate within the hive and even to some extent between hives. Pollution can disrupt a bee’s ability to smell and [the bee] may get lost [due to] high levels of pollution.

Disease and bugs that bite bees are an ever increasing issue. Many of these pests come from other countries and were introduced into US bee populations from unmonitored imports of bees. Today, beekeepers use a number of pesticides to deal with these bee-pests.

I am a hobbyist beekeeper and generally we are not affected by CCD. Since we don't know what the cause of CCD is, it is unclear why hobby beekeepers don't see it often. Perhaps it is because we don't transport our hives and feed them a single nectar source or stress them other ways. Stress decreases every being's immune system and a weakened immune system might allow some disease to attack bees. Until we know more about what CCD is, we won't know for sure.

Nonetheless, even hobbyists do keep a close watch on diseases and pests in the hive. Essentially we are just big worker bees taking care of the colony!

Michele's top five things we can do to help the honeybees:

1. Become a beekeeper
2. Buy local honey – Check out farmer’s markets and beekeeper’s organizations
3. Plant native plants for pollinators – Check with your local nursery for ideas
4. Grow organically – Stop using chemical pesticides in your flower and veggie garden
5. Buy organic – The fewer pesticides in use in the environment, the better for bees!

Thanks so much for the insight and advice, Michele! Join us next time as we conclude our interview by learning how to start beekeeping (read the next part of this interview here). Be sure to check out Michele's blog, Blue Hive Journals for more ideas and tips about keeping bees.

Michele says, "Take time to try different honey. It’s OK to have more than one jar of honey! Every honey tastes different. I love lavender honey made from lavender nectar."

If you liked this post, you might like:

Meet a beekeeper!

Meet a beekeeper! Part 2: The intelligence of bees

Meet a beekeeper! Part 4: Learning to keep bees

National Pollinator Week 2009


Photo credits: Michele Bennett Decoteau (top photo); Ryan Wick (bottom photo, through a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license)

***

[10/2/09: Updated to include links to the rest of the interview. Deleted phrase "native honeybees" because it is factually inaccurate. Honeybees were imported to the United States.]

Thoughts about Earth Hour

My family participated in Earth Hour 2009 on Saturday night. I felt a little guilty in the hour beforehand, as we frantically ran the vacuum, brewed coffee, and checked E-mail before turning off our electricity. But then, 8:30 pm arrived and we switched off the main circuit breaker.

And lo and behold ... wait! ... the stove is still on? We learned a valuable piece of information about our new house -- the stove and central air aren't connected to the main circuit breaker!

After finally turning off the power with the aid of a second circuit breaker, we sat in the dark and talked about how quiet it was. How many electrical appliances do we really need? What can we, as a family, do to reduce our electricity usage?

Then we read stories by flashlight and candlelight. It was very quiet and peaceful. The almost four-year-old and baby fell asleep. Itinerant Cryptographer, Kerm, and I read long past Earth Hour until finally, my curiosity got the better of me and I logged onto the computer.

In all, an estimated one billion people in nearly 90 countries participated in Earth Hour 2009, according to World Wildlife Fund, the original organizer of the event. Did Earth Hour really make an impact?

Some places reported a decline in power use during the hour: a one-percent reduction for Calgary and northern Illinois. Statistically significant? Probably not.

But did people world-wide start talking about how much electricity we waste? You bet. And opening that dialogue is tremendously exciting. We have to start somewhere.

Photo credit: Kimberley.♥
Photo available through a
Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Earth Hour 2009

It seems like I was just sitting in the dark, celebrating Earth Hour 2008, yet here we are again -- bigger and better!

This Saturday, March 27, 2009, remember to turn off your electricity for an hour from 8:30 - 9:30 pm (your local time) in honor of Earth Hour. This grassroots movement was started in Sydney, Australia in 2007, when over two million homes and businesses switched off the electricity for an hour. Last year, the movement spread across the globe, with participating cities including San Francisco and Rome. The goal this year is to have 1 billion people participate -- one billion people showing their concern for global warming and their willingness to do something about it. MSNBC reports that 2000 cities will participate in Earth Hour this year, including Las Vegas! I can't wait to see the Strip dark for an hour, can you? Imagine that ...

Website of the Week: Dig It! The Secrets of Soil

The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History is currently featuring a new exhibit called Dig It! The Secrets of Soil.

What is Soil? Here's a handy definition I learned in graduate school -- Dirt is dead. Soil is alive. Soils are dynamic ecosystems filled with living things like insects, worms, bacteria, and fungi.

How do soils form? Check out this handy chart to learn more about the five soil formation factors: Climate (Is the surrounding area rainy or dry? Salty or devoid of minerals?) , Biota (Which plants and animals live and use the soil?), Slope (Did the soil form on a mountainside or in a valley?), Bedrock (What kind of rock has contributed to the soil?) and Time.

How many different types of soil are there? "Scientists recognize about 70,000 soil types in the United States alone ..." according to Paul Reich of the Natural Resources Conservation Service of the USDA, as quoted in this exhibit. His Global Soil Regions Map is shown on the NRCS Soils Website.

Check out the Educators Activity Page for fun ways to learn about soils both at the museum and at home. Learn More about soils by visiting these websites recommended in the exhibit.

(My thanks to Soils Professor Dan Richter for letting me know about this exhibit!)

Website of the Week: EEK!

Photo credit: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
This week's website is EEK! (Environmental Education for Kids!), an electronic magazine for children by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. Are you a kid? Do you like to write about nature or draw pictures of animals? Visit Wanted: Kid Artists and Writers to learn where to send your drawings and observations about nature or outdoor recreation, along with where to share your Big Fish Stories. (I especially like Ronnie's story of The Pole That Got Away.)

Learn how to make a recycled bead bracelet, an ice luminary, a gourd birdhouse, and more at EEK's Rainy Day Activity Page. My favorite activity, owing to my previous career as a hazardous waste investigator, is the Edible Aquifer. (It looks tasty, too!) The EEK! Teacher Pages include Teaching Activities in language arts, math, social studies, and, of course, science.

Nature Blog Network

I recently discovered Nature Blog Network, which bills itself as "a resource for the very best nature blogs on the net." You can sort through member blogs by topic, such as ecosystem (that's where I put Mama Joules), marine, birds (a very popular topic, I learned), mammals, mollusks (three snail blogs at the time of this writing), and flora (plants & trees).

I'm still picking my way through the listings, but I have a couple of early favorites. Ugly Overload is a nice compliment to Mama Joules' Weird Animal Names. Ugly Overload is just what it says -- a website for strikingly ugly animals (with great pictures). According to their website, Ugly Overload is for "giving ugly animals their day in the sun." Check out the entry from May 22, 2008 on Insects and Friends about giant live beetles found unexpectedly in a package at the post office!

I also liked the photographs at tHE tiDE cHAsER, especially the close-ups of sea life. And be sure to check out Bill of the Birds and his giant Goudasaurus!

Website of the Week: National Park Service

Delicate Arch, Arches National ParkPhoto credit: National Park Service
If you are planning any travel in the United States this summer, head on over to the National Park Service and see what interesting places might fall along your route. You can browse through a listing of national parks, monuments, historic sites, (and more!) by state. Many parks have online video and photography like these gems:

Click to see a Live View of Half Dome at Yosemite National Park in California, courtesy of the Yosemite Association.

Take an eTour of Glacier National Park in Montana.

Explore a 60th Anniversary Online Exhibit of Everglades National Park.

Enjoy Photos and Multimedia of scenery at Great Smoky Mountains National Park, like this:

Grotto Falls, Great Smoky Mountains National Park
Photo credit: National Park Service
Or head on back over to the National Park Service headquarters and listen to the nature on the Natural Sounds page. (Be sure to click on the wolf!). You can also join the WebRangers or learn how to join the Junior Ranger program.

Drought for thought

Photo credit: Jon Sullivan
When I was in graduate school, we spent some time discussing natural disasters and their impacts on humanity. I was surprised to learn that drought was considered to be a significant natural disaster. In the United States, yearly drought-related costs are higher (on average) than flood and hurricane-incurred costs combined. (source: Drought for Kids: Comparison of Droughts, Hurricanes and Floods by the National Drought Mitigation Center of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln)

What is drought? Simply put, a drought occurs when there is a substantial lack of rainfall in a given area, enough to negatively impact people, plants, and animals.

The definition of drought, however, is unique to a given location. What would be considered a drought in the wetlands of southern Florida, for example, would be considered an abundance of rainfall in the United States’ desert southwest.

There are a couple of factors that make coping with drought challenging. For one, by the time that you realize you are in drought, it’s already begun. Pinpointing when a drought first starts is nearly impossible, although groups like the United States Geological Survey do an admirable job of searching for signs of trouble. (Among other things, the USGS monitors the flow of water in streams and rivers. Low flow signals a possible drought-related problem.)

Once you realize that you are in a drought, no one can say how long it will last. Rainfall models can only tell you so much. For city planners and others who regulate water flow, it can be difficult to decide when and how to moderate water intake. Imposing water restrictions, ironically, can make a drought situation worse if panic ensues and people begin to hoard water. UNL’s National Drought Mitigation Center describes the challenge of managing drought as "The Hydro-Illogical Cycle".

In the United States, the U.S. Drought Monitor keeps track of drought conditions. One place to check on world-wide drought situations is NASA’s Earth Observatory Natural Hazards: Crops & Drought.

Website of the Week: Earth Hour

Looking for something different to do this week-end? Turn off your lights this Saturday, March 29, 2008 at 8 pm, and take part in Earth Hour.

Earth Hour began in Sydney, Australia on March 31, 2007 when over two million people turned off their electricity for one hour. This event was initiated by World Wildlife Fund as a way to make an inspirational statement about climate change. In one year, it has grown into a global movement. This special hour highlights the fact that we are all interconnected on this planet and that our global efforts to combat climate change – when taken together – could have a real and measurable impact.

Not sure what to do with your hour? Check out Ten Things to Do in the Dark, which includes suggestions such as replacing your traditional light bulbs with energy efficient ones, reading together, or taking the time to discuss environmental topics as a family.

***

[Update: 3/27/10 - changed number of 2007 participants from two thousand to two million, as per the Earth Hour website]

Website of the Week: National Geographic

It's a new year. Maybe it's time to change your computer's wallpaper. Head on over to National Geographic's Photography for some breathtaking images of nature. I was drawn to photos of the Northern Lights, ice caves, and coral reefs. But there's plenty of landscapes, animals, weather-related shots, and images of outer space, too. There's even a Photo of the Day widget. And while you're at the National Geographic website, be sure to visit National Geographic's kids page.

More about Mama Joules

So ... just who is this Mama Joules? What makes her qualified to write a blog about learning to like science anyway?

When I was a freshman in high school, my entrance scores qualified me to enroll in both Basic Biology and Earth Sciences, a course of study that my adviser chose for me. I thought that my adviser was insane. I had to take two science classes? At the same time? Quickly, I withdrew from my optional Earth Sciences class and settled in to hating Biology.

I disliked both years of high school Biology, with the notable exception of my bean plant experiment. I had to design and implement that study myself. I was crazy about the author Madeleine L'Engle and, in one of her books, she describes a study in which plants were shown to have feelings (To this day, I'm not sure whether she made that up or not; I should look into that someday). So, I decided that I would try her character Calvin's experiment and grow bean plants. I would ignore one set of bean plants, talk kindly to the second set, and scream at the third. My theory was that the plants I loved, the ones I talked nicely to, would outgrow the others. I thought that the ones I ignored would grow normally. And the ones that I yelled at would shrivel up and die, right? Wrong.

First of all, I should never have tried to germinate plants in the dead of winter. Many of my seedling containers grew not beans, but mold. My Biology teacher kindly loaned me a heat lamp and a few of my plants finally sprouted. Which ones grew best? The ones I yelled at. I had to scrap my first theory. Maybe all of that yelling helped my plants to grow by giving them more carbon dioxide.

But I still didn't like science. In my junior year of high school, I did well in Chemistry solely because of my teacher. Maybe he had a great teaching style, I don't really remember. I only remember his arms. That man had the highly chiseled forearms of a Greek god. Watching his arms naturally led to me to read what he wrote on the board, which must have translated into learning.

Unfortunately, Mr. Greek god-arms left after my Junior year. We had a brand-new science teacher for my Senior year, when I took Physics. (I still don't like Physics). I did terribly in this class, as did many of my classmates.

So, when it came to college, I ignored my father's advice to major in math or science and chose Journalism. Well, that lasted for three semesters. You know what? I got bored. I had no science in my life and I missed it. Imagine that!

Well, I can't say I that had no science in my life during that time. I did take one required science course -- I chose Environmental Sciences for Non-Science Majors. I aced that class. It reminded me of all of the things that I loved -- parks, green space, recycling, saving the planet. I was hooked.

I spent my fourth semester of college with one foot in Journalism and one in Biology. After that, I never looked back. I was so far behind in my required science coursework that I went from no science courses to having to pile them on. I really wanted to graduate on time. One semester, I had nothing but science classes! My grades dropped, but I was challenged. I hung in there and finally graduated -- a semester late -- with my Bachelor's degree in the Biological Sciences.

Since then, I've worked both testing animal blood and investigating hazardous waste sites. I've earned a Master's of Environmental Management degree, had three children, and started writing freelance articles (and a blog) about science. In a strange way, that takes me back full circle to when I was a Journalism major.

Except that now, I don't hate science.

***

[Updated 10/22/09 -- Changed "two children" to three. Sorry it took me so long, Baby Princess!]

Is it time for a water audit?

How much water does your family use in a month? If your family is anything like ours, the answer is too much. We routinely take long showers, rewash laundry left forgotten in the washer, and leave the tap running when we brush our teeth.

So ... maybe it's time for a water audit. Find your latest water bill and sit the family down for a meeting. Brainstorm ways to reduce your water consumption. Don't forget to add any silly and outrageous ideas. If your son wants to stop taking baths, add that to the list. If your mom wants to eat out every night so she doesn't have to wash the dishes, write that down too.

When you have compiled a long list of possible choices, discuss your options. Which ones are workable? Which ones are likely to have the greatest impact? Take a family vote and pick your favorite. Try one water-saving idea for the next month. When your next water bill arrives, sit the family down again and see if it made a difference.

If so, keep doing that idea and add a new one. If your first idea didn't make much difference, don't get discouraged. Try another one. Check back monthly and see how much water -- and money -- you are saving.