Bees Grow Strong Because of You.
Keep The Beet Media Star, The World's FIrst Talking Bee Plant,
reports on a turnaround moment in the history of Bees called Honeyfest 2012. I am sending you this message:
Bees Grow Strong Because of You!
Date: 1/18/2012 9:14:28 AM ( 12 y ) ... viewed 3365 times
FROM 60 MINUTES REPORT
(CBS) This segment was originally broadcast on Oct. 28, 2007. It was updated on Feb. 21, 2008.
If you want to grow fruits, vegetables or nuts in the United States on a commercial basis you have to have soil, sun, seeds, water, and honeybees -- millions and millions of honeybees brought in from all over the country to pollinate the crops. As correspondent Steve Kroft explains, honeybees are the unsung heroes of the food chain, crucial to the production of one third of the foods we eat. So when billions of bees began to mysteriously disappear last year, there was plenty of concern and no shortage of theories, blaming everything from cell phones to divine rapture. None of the usual explanations seemed to fit. Some of the nation's top scientists are trying to understand this phenomenon, but no one is more immersed in the mystery than the man who is widely credited with discovering it.
“We are inching our way toward a critical tipping point,” said Steve Ellis, secretary of the National Honey Bee Advisory Board (NHBAB) and a beekeeper for 35 years. Last year he had so many abnormal bee die-offs that he’ll qualify for disaster relief from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
--January 13, 2012
WHAT IS POLLINATION?
1. Pollination and pollinators
Pollination is the transfer of pollen from a flower’s male organs to a flower’s female organs. This process is critical to fruit and seed production and is usually provided by insects and other animals searching for nectar, pollen or other floral benefits. Pollination is vital to our ecosystems and to human societies. The health and well- being of pollinating insects are crucial to life, be it in sustaining natural habitats or contributing to local and global economies (Figure1).
Which way is your world headed? Life is a Rock Your Soul Opera, and the birds and the bees are pointing out the direction we need to go.
Keep the Beet Media Star, The World's FIrst Talking Beet Plant
--January 20, 2012
IT IS I, KEEP THE BEET MEDIA STAR, THE WORLD'S FIRST TALKING BEET PLANT THAT COMES TO SPEAK NOW....
Howdy! Keep The Beet Media Star, The World's First Talking Beet Plant here! I want to speak up for the Bees, those small sized, and very large friends of ours who have sex with our plants. Bees work together to keep our world buzzing with beauty. One of the most popular bees, the European Honey Bees, shows us it is possible to live together and work together as a hive, although not all bees live in hives. Some do not even have stingers, yet today most of us are being stung because bees are leaving home. The Bees began to vanish in 2007. This story is told in one of my favorite films called Vanishing of the Bees. Bees are showing us now, that our world is falling apart. As the bees go, so do the beets and the humans. I am rooting for you to hold it together!
AMY LINT AND MALAKI OBADO OGENDI
SHOW WHAT IS POSSIBLE WHEN WE TAKE RESPONSIBILITY
Amy Lint and Malaki Obado Ogendi, a mom and dad, are two of my favorite of your kin who have been turning the beat around with our bees. They demonstrate what each of us can do to help our bees recover. They are running a non profit called Grow Strong that has been building up strength in San Diego as well as in Africa.
Amy and Malaki are now living in Bondo, Kenya where they are helping Beekeepers make a cooperative honey extraction and wax processing facility at their Kienyeji Learning Center. While in San DIego, Malaki did similar work, helping to save bee hives. He also worked with setting up an Aquaponics Center, and is a Beet Keeper.
Husband Malaki continues to eck out an honorable living in Bondo, but he needs our help. He went home to his tribe, knowing that if he did not go now, the last traditional knowledge about how to keep the beat with nature would be lost.
Wife Amy, who met Malaki originally when she was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Africa, has returned with him to Africa. One of San Diego's most beloved sustainability helpers, while in San Diego she guided the growth of the International Rescue Committee New Roots Community Farm. She also guided First Lady Michelle Obama around the IRC Roots Farm in April 2010. The IRC garden is the home of more than 80 plots of land farmed by people from different countries whose only common tongue is the garden.
HONEYFEST SAN DIEGO 2012
Amy and Malaki, before leaving San Diego, helped create Honefest San Diego 2012, January 13-14-15. They got the idea to create the event right before leaving, and the event succeeded through the help of many volunteers working together-- like our friends the bees.
VOLUNTEERS MADE THE EVENT A SUCCESS
Amy and Malaki attributed the success of Honeyfest San Diego 2012 to the volunteers. Many of them will help again this April for the Cultivating Food Justice Event, a yearly San Diego Highlight.
STAGE YOUR OWN HONEYFEST
I hope we all learn from the Honeyfest San Diego example.
Wherever you are, please stage your own Honeyfest. Connect with the beekeepers and your local friends who care about bees.
During Honeyfest San Diego, members of our community came together to teach hands-on beekeeping. Others learned how to make honey cough syrup. This was an eye opener at a time when most of us think that the only way to get rid of colds is with pills from bottles. At Honeyfest, we drank Honey Wine and ate organic food at a local Ethiopian restaurant. We watched the video The Vanishing of the Bees. Some people say the film does not give the full answer about why the bees are disappearing, but from my beet's point of view, if you do what the film suggests, everything is going to be O.K. for our bees. At our Honeyfest San Diego, many put on bee suits for the first time and tasted various bee products that Malaki had made. On Saturday eve, the community had a party to say goodbye to Amy and Malaki and helped raise more than $5000.00 toward their non profit Grow Strong work in Kenya. I know is going to help their local friends and family fighting off modern ways.
On Sunday of Honeyfest San Diego, we all went to our Balboa Park for a "Bee in the Know Bazaar" People sold bee products. We learned about many good projects. There was am expert panel called "What's Beeyond?" Malaki expressed what he would be doing in Kenya. We heard amazing things about the bees. Did you know that bees can remember the faces of their beekeepers?
SO WHAT DO WE HAVE TO DO TO KEEP OUR BEES FROM VANISHING?
So what do we have to do to keep our bees from vanishing? Some answers are easy. Make sure than every dollar we spend on fresh food goes into the pocket of a local organic farmer. Support the endandered species of farmers who are creating a polyculture of diverse and colorful foods, providing bee food 12 months of the year. Big commercial monoculture Ag is an unnatural system that cannot stand up without making chemical warfare on insects. Our little buggers are here to take down what is already dying--our old system of growing food that is too centralized and has no foundation in fertile soil.
Other things that you can do: Follow the lead of cities that are creating friendly zones for urban farms, community gardens, and codes that allow beehives in backyards.
LIST OF EDIBILES TO GROW FOR BEES
Find out what foods and flowers attract pollinators in your area. In our region, we can grow for our pollinators eggplant, legumes, squash, tomatoes, berries, passion fruit, watermelon, lavender, thyme, catnip, and many other plants.
BEING YOUR OWN GOVERNMENT AND YOUR OWN
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
The most difficult shifts that need to be made to save our bees have to do with dealing with our government. Our Federal Gov are now bankrupt through banking on the pesticides and Biotech GMO based agriculture to save us. In the USA, GMO's are not labeled. The FDA position is that if people had them labeled, they might think something was wrong with them,
yet Pesticides and GMO's are giving bees a knock out blow. This is the year, when in California, we will have a chance get a bill on the ballot to get GMO foods labeled.
BECOMING OUR OWN ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
Unfortunately, it was the EPA itself that green-lit clothianidin and other neonics for commercial use, despite its own scientists’ clear warnings about the chemicals’ effects on bees and other pollinators. That doesn’t bode well for the chances of getting neonics off the market now, even in light of the Purdue study’s findings.
“The agency has, in most cases, sided with pesticide manufacturers and worked to fast-track the approval of new products, and failed in cases when there’s clear evidence of harm to take those products off the market,” Towers said.
We need to become our very own Environmental Protection Agency. We cannot look to the EPA To help our bees survive because they are still taking money from the very people who are killing our bees with systemic herbicides and pesticides.
"Because EPA has not adequately regulated certain pesticides, the food system, including many of the foods we enjoy eating most, are at risk," said John Kepner, Project Director for Beyond Pesticides. "We can't afford not to take action to protect pollinators – for wallets and dinner tables alike."
CONTACT:
Paul Towers, Pesticide Action Network916-216-1082, ptowers@panna.org
John Kepner, Beyond Pesticides202-543-5450 x20, jkepner@beyondpesticides.org
SOURCE Beyond Pesticides
SUPPORT FOR THE USDA ORGANIC SECTOR IS ALSO IMPORTANT
At the same time, it is for us to support and reach out to lift up the contingent in Government who what to see more and more People's Garden's and make sure our organic standards survive.
Q & A:
Keep the Beet: I am afraid of bees. I wouldn't want my neighbors having a hive in their backyard close to me. Can you tell me a few things to do about my fears?
Dear Afraid of Bees: The best thing you can do is get intimate with bees. My friend Malaki tells me that even aggressive bees will get friendlier when they get to know you.
Here are a few tips from my friend Paul Maschka, of the Seeds of City Urban Farm in San Diego, about being with bees: Like any meaningful relationship, it all starts with good communication. 1. Don’t blow in a beehive. 2. Don't stand in front of a beehive. 3. Don’t make loud noises around a hive. 4. Don’t wear perfume around a hive. 5. Don’t shine a flashlight in a hive. 6. Don’t shake, bang on or kick over a beehive. 7. Don’t where a dark fuzzy sweater around a beehive; if you do, bees may think you are a bear or animal that has come to ruin their hive.
Being in the Space of Love will help. Everywhere, where ever you are, in every country, be it in an urban center or a rural area of Europe, bees are looking to you for help. Bees Grow Strong now because of you.
January 18, 2012
7:59 am
ART BY LESLIE GOLDMAN YOUR ENCHANTED GARDENER
A TRIBUTE TO HONEYFEST SAN DIEGO 2012
Made January 17, 2012
MICHAEL R. NIGGLI, Chief Operating Officer for SGD&E,
hooked up with KEEP The BEET Media Star,
The World's First Talking Beet Plant
at the STAND FOR LESS RALLY.
They had a lot to share. Michael got the heat a year later
when the power went out in San Diego costing millions of dollars. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44449688/ns/us_news-life/t/feds-launch-probe-sout...
Participation in the Honeyfest San Diego 2012 supported Beekeepers in Bondo, Kenya to establish a cooperative honey extraction and wax processing facility at GROW Strong's Kienyeji Learning Center.
Honeybees have been mysteriously disappearing across the planet, literally vanishing from their hives.
Known as Colony Collapse Disorder, this phenomenon has brought beekeepers to crisis in an industry responsible for producing apples, broccoli, watermelon, onions, cherries and a hundred other fruits and vegetables. Commercial honeybee operations pollinate crops that make up one out of every three bites of food on our tables.
Vanishing of the Bees follows commercial beekeepers David Hackenberg and Dave Mendes as they strive to keep their bees healthy and fulfill pollination contracts across the U.S. The film explores the struggles they face as the two friends plead their case on Capital Hill and travel across the Pacific Ocean in the quest to protect their honeybees.
Filming across the US, in Europe, Australia and Asia, this documentary examines the alarming disappearance of honeybees and the greater meaning it holds about the relationship between mankind and mother earth. As scientists puzzle over the cause, organic beekeepers indicate alternative reasons for this tragic loss. Conflicting options abound and after years of research, a definitive answer has not been found to this harrowing mystery.
TRT 90 min http://www.vanishingbees.com/
WHY THE BEES ARE VANISHING
COMMENTS BY LIORA LEAH MOTHER EARTH HEALS BLOG
WHAT IS WIPING OUT OUR BEES?
BY LIORA LEAH OF MOTHER EARTH HEALS BLOG
"The Bees have immune deficiency syndrome. Once their immune system is weakened, they are getting these parasites that are killing them. Commercial bees are being exposed to the commercial herbicides and pesticides. Once they get this parasite, then the farmers treat them. Then they are further weakened and malnourished and stressed. Between the pesticide exposure, the malnouishment, and the stress, their immune systems are weakened. This all goes back to poor bee keeping practices. That is my take. It is a complex situation. Scientists do not know for sure. It is a combination of factors. If everyone went organic, we would not have this problem. They call it colony collapse syndrome. This is a modern phenomena." --Liora Leah, Mother Earth Heals Blog [Viewed 3278 times. January 9, 2012]
You can turn your beat around with nature and in doing so end the
Vanishing of our bees.
GROWING PRODUCE CAN BE EASIER THAN YOU THINK
Brook Larios of the San DIego Examiner writes a wonderful story here about Leslie and Keep the Beet.
According to Leslie Goldman, a San Diego-based activist passionate about healthy living through the art of drawing closer to the Earth, the beet is one of the easiest vegetables to grow. He spreads the word about this concept through Keep the Beet Media Star – a mascot of sorts that has drawn attention from locals, diplomats and celebrities like model Ashley Van Dyke and actor Ed Begley Jr., known for his dedication to the environment. Keep the Beet and Goldman’s message is traveling so widely that they earned a piece of cyberspace last year on The Huffington Post, continually one of the highest-ranked political websites on the Net.
OUR THEME SONG FOR KEEP THE BEET IS OF COURSE
TURN THE BEAT AROUND
LET'S MOVE TODAY!
Leslie in the Let's Move Tent,
April 15, 2010, the Day Michelle Obama Came
to get San Diego Moving and Gardening!
Michelle Obama asks us to Let's Move!
The Secretary asked the 4-Hers to use their pledge of head, heart, hands, and health to help guide them to success. The heart, said Vilsack, represents a commitment to the voice of youth, and he encouraged kids to hold a youth roundtable – register here – about issues that are important to them and their communities. Health, he said, represents a commitment to healthier living. 4-Hers are already taking steps towards better health through programs like the Presidential Active Lifestyle Award challenge. The Presidential Active Lifestyle Award recognizes those who log their recommended physical activity for six consecutive weeks, five days a week (60 minutes for kids, 30 minutes for adults).
beekeepers get bigger and bigger and want more and more and THEY ALONE compromise their own values and knowing of right and wrong for $$$$$. it is so sickening. i blame commercial beekeepers as much as i blame big ag for the honey bee decline and ccd. beekeepers need to reassess what they know in their hearts to be right and build a business with that foundation instead of building it on a foundation of profit. how then are they any different than big ag/big business when their goal too is BIG BUSINESS. easier said than done you say? lame response! nothing worth a thing in this life is easy.you are killing the bees so do the hard work to make a change. stop waiting for monsanto, the epa, the congress, the president to create laws to protect A BEE!!!! are you kidding. it wont happen. stop thinking in terms of your needs, your $$$$ loss, your farm and do some inner work, meditate, trust and surrender and be the one guy who changes things. maybe you will inspire others to do the same thing!
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