Where are the Good Guys?
One more rant and I'll lay off.
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Unless our little experiment with the corn planting turns out to be ugly. Then you can be sure I'll be back at it.
This present experiment continues to be ugly:
Bees keep piling up. Foragers and nurse bees alike.
The researchers have gone home. The reporters have gotten their story. The EPA has been notified.
I continue taking samples:
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| Hey Barbara Bloetscher! Reed Johnson! Robert Miller! Want more? |
But will anything become of it? I'm very skeptical.
And here lies the rant...
It's so painfully obvious that something is wrong here. It was obvious in 2012 with Jim's bee kill and beekeepers nationwide during the last decade.
Something is wrong!
Why are the wheels turning so slow?
Why does it take months to run a test on a few bee samples?
A small beekeeper in podunk Williamsport Ohio garners some attention for just a moment... and then gets ignored.
Big beekeepers, Jim Doan, Dave Hackenberg, scream about neonics... and get ignored.
Jim North had the spotlight:
and got ignored...
Maybe "ignored" is the wrong word. There are people working on this, I know. Very smart people.
But the money is on the wrong side. The good guys don't have the money.
It's hard to read the above article, but one maddening thing that caught my eye was the spokesman for Bayer CropScience. His explanation for the 2012 dead bees was the early spring: "...bees are coming out earlier and there is not enough available food for them."
Are you kidding? Not enough food?
There were flowers everywhere! The bees were making honey!
What a load of crap! And that statement actually stood. It got published... and believed! I had a friend who works for the ODA repeat much the same thing when I confronted him with the issue.
What we needed was a good guy. Someone to step in and say, "Um, Mr. Bayer CropScience you should shut up now because you sound like an idiot."
"Bees don't starve in big dead piles in front of the hive."
"Bees don't starve when it's 70 degrees out and the honeysuckle is in bloom."
Where was our good guy? Someone to point the finger, unleash the hounds, make the laws, change the chemicals...
Muffled and choked, that's where. Bayer has the money.
And speaking of honeysuckle. It's blooming!
Bees just love this stuff.
And as I said in that blog post that got all the attention, this plant lines the fields. It's a great thing but could turn deadly... if millions of flowers happen to be catching dust from a corn planter.
Should it really have to come to that?