What about Eric the Half a Bee?
So I can get back to using my Wiimote without fear of misguided bees? Thank God.
Anti-Semite! They’re Israelis!
why wasn’t the article called “blight of the honeybees”?
What the Dutch are doing sounds pretty cool.
I’m not sure if letting wild flowers grow everywhere will go over well in the U.S., so I don’t think this will work here. People really really love their orderly mowed grass lawns here. And not allowing insecticides in the city? They didn’t even mention that later in the article, but man, that can’t be an easy rule to implement.
Didn’t it just say on public lands (re pesticide ban)?
That’s right, it is on public lands. I guess that’s doable.
We have a shitload of highways and public land around them, it could very easily work.
Plus, it would be nice to look at.
Except the pollution part. Our current administration basically wants to increase pollution, not make it more habitable for things they don’t understand like pollinators.
Depends who gets the contract to seed the flowers.
Or we’ll have to wait till 2020.
That’s awesome.
We already do some of that?
There’s been similar efforst around Monarch Butterflies:
https://monarchjointventure.org/i-am-a/department-of-transportation
Anecdotally, I’ve seen more Monarchs the last few years, but who’s to say if it’s because of that.
Yes, in Illinois many road abutment areas are getting planted with milkweed after work is done, for this reason.
Sorry if this is covered back a few pages, but a podcast about food distribution systems (it actually really interesting) that I listened to addressed the beepocalypse and the conclusion I took away is that it’s actually not a huge concern. Reasons: Bee die offs, we’ve recently discovered, are a regular thing and we’ve been due for one. We have a lot more hobbyist beekeepers, and they aren’t terribly skilled at keeping healthy bees, plus modern media makes their failures more visible. Honeybees aren’t often the best pollinators for our crops anyway, compared to bumblebees and other competitive species.
We have Altheas that are blooming right now, and the bushes have gone nuts as they get hyper-fertilized by our Koi pond water. The Bumblebees are a joy to watch as they are practically drunk off the pollen and nectar. Their little legs are packed full, they are covered head to toe by so much pollen you can barely see their coloring, yet they’re still haphazardly plowing into the flowers trying to grab more LOL.