First, don’t go bugs by Merritt Clifton For years I was the fellow whom people would call for help when they had problems with bees and closely related species. I never had much trouble handling bees, wasps, or hornets, but even though handling them may not be hard, there is not any one simple […]
Birds, bees, broiling heat, & adding insect parts to food on purpose
The bees-at-the-airport disaster story went global––but mass media missed the biggest issues KENAI, Alaska––More than 300 Alaskan beekeepers, most of them fruit and vegetable farmers, without native honey bees to pollinate introduced food crops, on April 23, 2022 expected to receive two million bees from Sacramento to help start their short growing season. Soldotna […]
Israeli vegan honey could leave Russia & Ukraine holding the honey bucket
Lab-produced honey goes into industrial-scale production just as global supply from bees is disrupted by Putin’s War JERUSALEM, Israel––Regardless of whether Ukraine staves off the Russian invasion or suffers the genocide threatened by Russian use of heavy weapons against civilian targets, the biggest and perhaps only winner of what is now known worldwide as […]
“Asian murder hornet”: surrogate for COVID-19 terror
Or, how two “great sparrow bees” incited a national hunt for alleged Chinese alien invaders BLAINE, Washington––How did the Asian giant hornet, known for centuries in Japan as the “great sparrow bee,” generally regarded as beneficial to farmers for killing insect pests, suddenly become feared in the U.S. as the so-called “murder hornet”? After […]
Obits: defenders of cats, dogs, wild horses, bees, crabs, & elephants
Elaine Adair, Dayton Hyde, Susan Rudnicki, Alana Cutland, & Matthew Talbot had in common service to animals Elaine Adair Elaine Adair, cofounder of the Mississippi Spay & Neuter Alliance (MS-SPAN), born Elaine Girton on October 15, 1950 in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, died after a long struggle against cancer on October 14, 2019, one day before what would […]
Earth Day dilemma: enviro agencies addicted to deadly chemicals
Catherine de Medici might have considered wildlife poisoning schemes medieval Let me tell you about the birds and bees, and the cats and the rats, and the possums and the pigs, and the chemical-addicted descendants of Catherine de Medici at USDA Wildlife Services, Threatened Species Strategy of Australia, and Zero Invasive Predators of New Zealand, […]
Rising to screams: the buzz on bee-killing neonicotinoids
Canada, Europe act, but Trump administration doesn’t give a flying damn OTTAWA, WASHINGTON D.C.––Bees busily harvesting pollen from almost every flowering plant as the summer of 2018 fades seem oblivious to the buzz against neonicotinoid insecticides, even as the pitch rises to screams everywhere else from down on the farm to courtrooms and the […]
The Bees, by Laline Paull
HarperCollins Publishers (10 East 53rd St., New York, NY 10022), 2014. 352 pages, hardcover. $25.99. Reviewed by Karen Schaefer I’ve just lapped up The Bees, by Laline Paull, the latest honey trap in fiction that, to me, purports to be the Watership Down of the honeybee world. While I have some familiarity with hive colony collapse and […]
The Beekeeper’s Bible, by Richard A. Jones & Sharon Sweeney-Lynch
Stewart Tabori & Chang (c/o Abrams, 115 West 18th St., New York, NY 10011), 2011. 412 pages, hardcover. $35.00. Reviewed by Merritt Clifton Reputedly living on a diet of milk, honey, and locusts, commonly interpreted to mean locust beans rather than the insects, John the Baptist was for centuries regarded as a proto-vegetarian, beginning […]