Friday, August 21, 2009

important info

h/t to rambling woods- on honeybees

"The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which has named Aug. 22 the first national Honey Bee Awareness Day.
“Honey Bee Awareness Day will help highlight this important role,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in a news release, “as well as the significant threat honey bees now face from the phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder.”

Why should the public care about honey bees?

Bee pollination is responsible for $15 billion in added crop value, particularly for specialty crops such as almonds and other nuts, berries, fruits, and vegetables. About one mouthful in three in the diet directly or indirectly benefits from honey bee pollination.

3 comments:

Spadoman said...

First of all, I get the page, but an error code. May be my problem, but just mentioning this if it happens to everyone.

I had the pleasure of meeting a guy named Rpy Pence. He was the head of the department at U of California, Berkely (I think), that teaches about bees. I think it's entomolgy??
Anyhoo:-), like you say, Roy was old when I met him. He may be gone now, but for sure, he's very old. He told me about problems with bee pollination when I met him 15 years ago.
I know a woman raising bees in her St. Paul city yard. She spent a lot of money for a high fence, (building code for bee raisers in the city), and then went and bought land 40 miles away to continue to raise bees as she knew the importance of it all. The world is lopsided, nature is tilting because of what we do to Mother earth. The bees and other species are showing us this. We must wake up!

billie said...

i think i fixed the error- i republished with a new link. give it another try- you'll be glad you did :)

libhom said...

If Vilsack really cared about bees, he would work to reduce the amounts of pesticides used in agriculture.