Tag: bees

the NYT article is better, but behind a registration wall. boo.

Scientists and the army team up, figure out what’s causing honeybee colony collapse.

Over the last four years, 20 to 40 percent of the honeybee colonies in the U.S. have mysteriously collapsed. The killer has remained unknown–until now. A team of entomologists, along with military scientists from the Department of Homeland Security, have a new prime suspect (or rather, suspects), as shown in a new report on the science website PLoS One. A tag-team of a virus and a fungus show every sign of being the culprit. Now it’s just a matter of eradicating that dastardly partnership.

[…]

Of course, just identifying the culprit is only the first step. The entomologists still have to find a way to stop the tag-team attack. It looks as though they’ll focus on the fungus, which is easier to block and defeat than the virus, and which, if defeated, should be enough assistance to help get honeybee populations back on track. And there’s always more to uncover–the tendency of the bees to wander off just prior to death is still a mystery (a University of Montana doctor actually uses the phrase “insect insanity” as a possible explanation), but that should all come in time.

black and white grainy fear films

Chocolates shaped like Hep-C.

The rain against the glass wall sounded like ice-sheets breaking. He found me last night in the hall, a knot of velvet resolution reading at the door. Ninth floor. I held my hand to his heart and felt as he fell asleep. A smile and his entire body sighed.

Ukrainian Fairy-Tale Graffiti.

There are four hundred stainless steel rods precisely equidistant in a field in a valley approximately 200 miles south of Albuquerque in New Mexico. You are not allowed to take pictures. In July and August, the cost to visit is $250 per person. Reservations must be made through written correspondence and you may only reserve one night only. The delineated space of these four hundred rods is a grid exactly a mile long and a kilometre wide. They were placed there by a man named Walter De Maria. They are lightning rods. That is their purpose, their conversation, their drop-dead-gorgeous meaning, to call down the gods. The Lightning Field is available for visiting from May 1 through October 31, seven days a week. I have never been, but I am still in love.

“Tyger, Tyger, burning bright.”

The most terrifying thing I have learned this week is that bees are disappearing. The worker bees are leaving the hives and never returning, and without them the queen and larvae aren’t cared for and the colony collapses. My belly goes cold, reading the articles. No one is finding drifts of dead bees, only that the hives are now barren. Millions of them have vanished. It feels unreal. There is a range of theories regarding the missing bees, but none with any explanation. Most presume the bees are presumably collapsing in the fields from exhaustion or becoming disoriented and dying in the cold of night, unable to find their hives again, but do not say why these guesses are likely. Researchers have given the mystery a name, presuming it’s an illness they call colony collapse disorder. I am scared, understanding only that this is a sign of a ruin far greater than the articles seem to see. Cue music, run credits. Black.