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Tag: Bees

  • A Couple of Notes on Agriculture

    A Couple of Notes on Agriculture

    These two stories are a bit outside my normal purview. I typically only care about Ag and Ag related topics when they intersect with the climate cult or national security/military. These two – one good news, the other bad – don’t. Let’s start with the good news.

    It turns out all the gloom and doom about honeybees is a bunch of hokum. The ‘beepocalypse’ was always fear porn, and a new study proves it.

    https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1773960419117298019?s=20
    I know, WaPo, but they actually do some good reportage occasionally.

    From the article:

    After almost two decades of relentless colony collapse coverage and years of grieving suspiciously clean windshields, we were stunned to run the numbers on the new Census of Agriculture (otherwise known as that wonderful time every five years where the government counts all the llamas): America’s honeybee population has rocketed to an all-time high. 

    We’ve added almost a million bee colonies in the past five years. We now have 3.8 million, the census shows. Since 2007, the first census after alarming bee die-offs began in 2006, the honeybee has been the fastest-growing livestock segment in the country! And that doesn’t count feral honeybees, which may outnumber their captive cousins several times over.

    And while it turns out that while colony collapse is a thing, it’s not the threat that it’s made out to be. It also appears to be cyclical.

    I should also point out that other agriculture is the prime driver of the bee resurgence. Bees are used to pollinate several crops, almonds being the largest of them. There’s also an odd thing going on in Texas. There are agricultural property tax breaks for people who keep bees. Since that became law in 2012, Texas went from 1851 bee ‘farms’ to 8939. If you want to know more, check out the WaPo article. It was an eye opener. . .

    Now for the bad news. A major egg production facility in Farwell, Texas has halted operations due to an outbreak of Avian flu. From HotAir:

    Cal Maine Foods, a national egg producer with locations across the country, has multiple locations in Texas. The Farwell facility reported a positive test for bird flu so it is required by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to depopulate 1.6 million laying hens and 337,000 pullets at the facility in the Texas Panhandle. The hens account for about 3.8% of the company’s flock as of early last month.

    “Depopulate”. Yeah. They’re killing and incinerating 1.9 million chickens – pullets are immature hens that haven’t started laying yet. Regardless of the terminology, this is bad news, at least for Texas. Egg production is regional, and this shouldn’t have too much of an effect on egg prices or availability for most of the US as long as the outbreak is limited to this facility.

    So far, there has only been 1 human case of bird flu attributed to this particular outbreak. However, there have been several cases related to dairy farming operations across the country. Five human bird flu cases have been recorded in dairy facilities. Eleven dairy herds have had positive tests in Texas, Kansas, Michigan, and New Mexico. There is a presumptive positive test pending results in an Idaho facility.

  • In California, bumblebees are now fish

    In California, bumblebees are now fish

    (AP Photo/Andy Duback, File)

    JAZZ SHAW | HotAir

    Before you ask, no. This wasn’t stolen from the Babylon Bee or the Onion. But since we’re talking about California, it can be hard to tell sometimes. Fortunately, this isn’t some new progressive push to provide social justice for bees or even fish. And the underlying issue that was taken up by a California State Appellate Court is a serious one. But the results were simply bizarre, as with so many other things in the Golden State. At issue was a request from an agricultural group to have the state protect California’s collapsing bumblebee population under the Endangered Species Act. Following the letter of the law, bees would not qualify, but fish do. So the court declared them to be fish. (Fox News)

    A bumblebee is a fish under California law, a California court said in a ruling this week.

    And thus, the bumblebee should be protected by the state’s endangered species ordinances, court documents show.

    In the case, Almond Alliance of California v. Fish and Game Commission, the California State Appellate Court of the Third District said the “issue presented here is whether the bumblebee, a terrestrial invertebrate, falls within the definition of a fish,” according to legal documents.

    The law is fairly broad and generous when it comes to which living things can or can’t be put on the endangered species list. Pretty much any plant can be included. The animals are defined a bit more specifically, though it applies to nearly all aquatic creatures, land animals, or birds. But they didn’t include insects.

    The judges appeared to admit that this was a “liberal” definition of the word fish, but they had an explanation for that as well. They wrote, “although the term fish is colloquially and commonly understood to refer to aquatic species, the law, as it is written, makes the legal definition of fish… not so limited.”

    Well, thanks for clearing that up for us. Apparently, anyone can be a fish at this point. Of course, I probably shouldn’t be giving the transgender lobby any new ideas or we’ll have people identifying as fish on their driver’s licenses before the end of the year.

    But seriously, how did they wind up settling on fish as the default substitute classification? Fish are aquatic by nature. Bees don’t go into the water of their own free will. Couldn’t they just have classified them as some sort of land animal? After all, they do alight on the land sometimes. For that matter, why not just classify them as birds? They both fly and hang out in trees. But again, I have to remind myself that this is California we’re talking about.

    I’m not trying to make light of the situation with the bees, by the way. Bee colonies across the United States have been dying off at an alarming rate. The phenomenon has since been officially defined as “Colony Collapse Disorder,” and it’s still not well understood. If you find yourself wondering why we should care, bees are involved in the production of far more than just honey. They pollinate one-third of the fruits and vegetables that people consume. If you lose all of the bees, a large segment of the world’s food production ceases. And that includes coffee.

    The average person sitting down to dinner probably doesn’t realize the important role bees played in preparing that meal. Here’s something that might surprise you: One out of every three mouthfuls of food in the American diet is, in some way, a product of honeybee pollination—from fruit to nuts to coffee beans. And because bees are dying at a rapid rate (42 percent of bee colonies collapsed in the United States alone in 2015), our food supply is at serious risk.

    The bees aren’t entirely gone yet and there are signs that they may even be experiencing a recovery. But it’s worth keeping a close eye on the situation. If the bees need to go on the endangered species list to keep them chugging along, I’m not going to oppose the idea.

    Original Here