Hard to believe anyone paid for this… yet there is a darker side to it…
“The study suggests that management strategies that reduce the local use of pavement and increase natural habitat within the landscape could improve nesting opportunities for wild bees and help protect food supplies around the word.” [EurekAlert]
I’ve been been stung by bumble bees, several times – but never by a honey bee. Their stingers aren’t barbed so you don’t get as much poison. It still leaves a welt on your skin.
I thought it was caused by a mold or a mite or something.
You bring up a funny point.
I just saw a video about a lizard researcher in Australia, who sets up these lizard collection pits and sets up barriers to trap them in the pits. After 20 years of collecting – and killing these lizards, He decried the fact that since he started researching the lizard population has gone down 15% – he blamed it on Global Warming – no kidding. I blame it on him killing lizards for 20 years in the same area, and constructing barriers that prevent their normal activities.
It is never the fault of the eco-nuts. It is always something else, and if you can’t think what – just blame Global warming..
So we want people accidently stepping in bumble-bee and hornets nests. Much better than having them in a tree.
Same difference 🙂
Answer to question: to kill bugs harmful to agricultural plants.
It’s too earlier to start hauling out conspiracy theories. Please wait until later in the discussion. Thank you.
It seems to be a case,of: to achieve he Green’s utopia, a planet where Mother Nature rules supreme, all we have to do is eliminate all human activity, but preferably humanity itself. Perhaps they’ll allow fellow greens to survive as unpaid gardeners in the new Eden.
We know what kills bees – GM crops and insecticides, the question: is that their real purpose?
Bricks and pavement cause global warming. The urban heat sink thing. Your city is going to fry those poor bees, the lucky ones that still find flowers.
The part about bumblebees not stinging just sunk into my consciousness! I think they do–and can keep on stinging, unlike honeybees. They do seem less inclined to sting.
AAAAAAAAUUUUUUGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!
Actually, there are some crops that are pollenated by humans. However, this possible future employment area seems to be a job that cries out for more green cards and legal alien work. Or an end to unemployment benefits so Americans are more motivated. Whichever.
Dang. And my city just spent a lot of extra money on select brick streets and school parking lots trying to be green. And they failed to take into account how they might have helped the bumblebees. Another opportunity to publicly model inefficiency and ineffectiveness down the tubes – for now.
Actually practically all hothouses use bumblebees for pollination. They can pollinate much more in shorter time and they don’t sting.
Yup, she wacked the bees…bet that helped their diversity….
Um..bumble bees nest in the ground….. These are not the kind that are attacked by africanized bees.
I have actually heard that the dimnishing bees really are a serious problem. If there are no bees, all the polinating will need to be done by humans. Want the job?
She checked the genetic diversity of collected bees? Does that mean she whacked the bees???
Perhaps they should check out my windbreak. I have to mow when it’s kind of chilly or the bumble bees attack@
Just what we need … bee nests in trees in parking lots where people coming and going will stir up the bees — especially if africanized bees take up residence.
Good thing money grows on trees.
“yet there is a darker side to this”
Isn’t there always??