Cool stuff….the flower looks just like a blue agave flower stalk (but slightly bigger)…they’re a Mecca for bats. Tequila farmers now let a certain percentage of plants go to flower (even though that ruins them for tequila) because they are the main food source for Mexican bats during their yearly migration, and the bats are the main pollinators for agave.

Um, I notice their data ends in 2012 - 2015, while CCD was just becoming a serious issue. My last 3 hives had CCD.
Can bees be repopulated, yes, by splitting remaining hives and ramping up distribution channels, but that’s not sustainable and lowers the hive production to dangerously low levels. Hives can produce honey or new bees, but not both in large quantities.
Also, it’s an expensive proposition, rehiving. A nuc costs $200, a new clean hive another $250+- with a near 50% chance it won’t survive each year, it’s an expensive hobby and a real loss when they go down. Eventually people will give up trying in large quantities, then what?
And, as mentioned, wild bees pollinate most plants, and no one is working hard and making money producing large quantities of wild bee hives.

Over the last decade, the numbers have changed. There has been a severe decline in domestic bee population while demand has risen. Also, the commercial hives left often have been split many times, meaning 20000 is a far more normal population of a hive than 80000, and clearly does less pollinating, less honey production, and less new bee production.

It doesn’t have to be an either or choice, I’ve had beehives and fostered wild bee habitat at the same time. I have 30 fruit trees, I need all the bees I can get to visit.

I think the real answer to why you don’t hear about it as much lately is 1) War in Europe and 2) Coup in America, both of which dominate any news reports.

Humans have been using drugs since the first person ate the wrong plant and got high instead of dying.

If you look at most drugs in nature, it is almost impossible to OD on them IN THEIR NATURAL FORM.

It's only when we alter that using chemicals, heat, or modifying the plant's genetic code via cross-pollination that we get drugs that destroy people.

Conversely, drugs that have been distilled from natural sources have also saved millions from death or from chemical imbalances in their bodies.

Man made drugs keep me on a (mostly) even keel. Without them my life is hell. Not from addiction, but because my body's chemicals are out of whack.

Yet some man made drugs are poison and should not be used (or extremely rarely). Most opioids fall directly into that category. Still, it is the corporate greed and misuse of these drugs that make them an ignored epidemic.

I could go on, but TL;DR

Natural drugs are a gift to humankind. Man Made drugs are a mixed bag.

Lol..no.
CCD is barely studied in wild hives because it's not been seen in the wild in statistically meaningful numbers, and it's much more of a problem for commercial hives because they move, making them more prone to weakness and diseases, they are kept together, making them more prone to parasites like nosema and Varroa mites and disease spreading problems like the Israeli virus, and they are constantly in contact with crops sprayed with various pesticides weakening and confusing them. Wild hives don't have these extra deleterious factors, so are far less effected by CCD if at all, and are not noticeably effected by most if not all commercial or hobby beekeeping that targets human agriculture, not native flowers. I kept a hive of bees for years to pollinate my orchard, so I checked on this stuff before jumping in.

Commericalized bee operations (commercial pollinators who's byproducts are honey/bees wax/pollen/royal jelly/bee venom/and bees themselves) don't displace natives. If there were native bees pollinating the crops they are hired to come pollinate, there wouldn't be a commercial bee industry. Honey is mostly a byproduct of the pollination industry, without which America at least would starve. Native bees simply can't pollinate at the industrial scale and timetables required for your vegetables, so without commercial beekeepers we'll all have to eat more meat.

lol Hank Green makes yet another video to tell us he doesn't know about *insert topic* I'm starting to think it's his way of telling himself he doesn't have to do anything to help.

We know exactly why CCD happens https://youtu.be/lKKVznGTni0?t=35

TL:DW

Commericalized bee operations (to sell honey/bees wax etc) ends up affecting pollinating species of bees in the wild. As per usual, industrialized animal farming screws up the environment.

Even local bee farming displaces and infects the wild populations, so all honey is bad.


Leave the honey to Winnie the Pooh, and swap your honey out for maple syrup or agave nectar or rice syrup etc, and this whole thing stops.

Or make your own date paste. Bit of water, bit of dates, blend the crap out of it. It's delicious on anything. Particularly with peanut butter.

Pretty sure if we had more bees and other pollinating insects they'd be distributing this pollen rather than it gathering on trees like that.

If you can figure out how to cross pollinate with a high-THC cannabis, I GUARANTEE the "problem" will vanish literally overnight...

Some additional notes based on growing up in a wheat / corn farming family:

My family uses GMO herbicide/pesticide-resistant corn seed (Roundup Ready). It's a tradeoff, because:

1) Roundup Ready seed is somewhat expensive, especially compared to just holding on to a small amount of your own harvested crop as next year's seed.

2) Like the video mentioned, the GM seeds we used have been modified to be sterile, so the grain they produce can't be replanted. Part of the justification for that is not wanting the GM version to intermingle with unmodified strains. But, most is pure profit motivation -- they want you to be forced to buy that GM seed. I don't really see that as nefarious, just business -- but opinions differ.

3) My family discovered that for corn, we could us the GM Roundup Ready seed roughly once every 5 years while still benefiting from drastically reduced insect / plant pests. If corn is within pollination range of another less known crop plant called milo, the plants can hybridize and produce a plant called shattercane. Shattercane is essentially worthless as a food crop, but is very hardy, and can spread and in many cases outcompete the corn or milo that you really want.

Getting rid of it was a very difficult and intensive process -- until the GM seed came along. Now if we see shattercane starting to make incursions, we can plant the GM seeds the next year and then hit the field with a herbicide that kills the shattercane. It works so well that the field remains clear of the pest plants / insects for several years after that without having to use much if any herbicides / pesticides.

4) In our situation, we found that we used way less herbicide / pesticide per year on average once we started rotating in the GM seeds once every several years. That would be close to a wash, but still likely a net savings even if we used the GM seeds every year (seed companies will try to sell it to you every year). Factor in increased crop yields because of the reduced/eliminated pests, and it is a clear win.

5) I'm sort of worried about the potential for a "superbug" effect, similar to overusing / misusing antibiotics. If farmers buy into the GM seed thing 100% and use it every year, I think it will increase the chances / rate of the pests becoming resistant to the pesticides / herbicides used. That's a long-term concern, and in my opinion doesn't even come close to outweighing the "pro" side of the GM argument (at least from the perspective of my family's farm), but it is something to think about.

<3

The tactics of low budget filming ahahahahahahhaaaa... I would be pissed if someone cut down the tree in my yard though! My side, your side, my side, your side -- MY TREE. Sounds like it was a lot of fun -- and stress lol.

Love me some Akira Kurosawa, tooooo. Yoooooooo! Also made Seven Samurai AKA The Magnificent Seven. I love the cross pollination between Japanese, American and Italian cinema. Not to mention British, French, Spanish, German and Russian. (Sorry for leaving your country out, all cinema is connected tbh.)

Anyway, love the scene at the end of A Fistful..More where Clint goes around colleting all the dead bodies on his wagon. Its such a great closer. And Good the Bad and the Ugly is epic af, not low budget at all -- it's a dang war film! If you haven't seen these films, at least watch the g, the b, and the u. It's a grand spectacle.

Duck You Sucka footage in there, which is not an Eastwood film, it's about an Irish terrorist's (James Coburn, the guy who got his luggage shot by Mel Gibson in... Cant remember the name of that film) involvement in the Mexican Revolution. The kill count is pretty impressive. Fuckin good movie, from the Once Upon a Time tril.

I fail to see how the depiction of the luna dance is offensive to Hawaiians. I wonder if she would be offended by my DVD copy of Lilo & Stitch? Or my wife's Lilo bobblehead.

Some history: Protestants banned hula in the 19th century, so the celebration of this traditional dance seems to me to be empowering versus the censorship of what the Protestants called "heathen". Sure, the introduction of the Portuguese ukulele and other Western aesthetics changed the art form, but it's practiced in both modern and traditional forms today.

You also can't simply demonize the cross-pollination of cultures, because cultural values are always changing. Hawaiian and Polynesian culture went through many changes and forms long before anyone from the West showed up on their shores. The luau itself is partly symbolic of women's rights (as well as lower class rights) in Hawaiian culture, as before the luau, women were not allowed to eat the same food as men, and commoners could not eat with royalty or eat their royal Hawaiian food.

This change didn't happen until the 1800s, so it's likely that this level of equality within the Hawaiian culture is due in part to European contact, including the the King who himself became a Christian -- and yet also encouraged the luna dance.

When cultures make contact with each other, they become entangled. They influenced us and we influenced them -- and they're Americans now so deal with it. I once had pictures of Italian Americans on my wall (Godfather/Scarface posters) and my grandma has a Jew on her crucifix. Neither of us are Italian or Jewish. LOL

That is clearly not true. It may be one of the less toxic human made functioning, profitable herbicides, but that's not what you said by far.

Roundup is not a pesticide, it's an herbicide. Conflating it with pesticides is ridiculous and incredibly misleading. Roundup is used to control weeds and remove genetic 'contamination' of specific crops. EDIT: Many of those crops are genetically modified to act as pesticides without spraying chemicals, which is a good reason to want to limit cross contamination in either direction.

Other alternatives are no chemicals at all, or only ecologically safe (usually natural) chemicals. I don't use chemicals on my farm, I weed, I spray horticulture oil, I spread ashes, I grow twice what I can eat so some loss to insects won't matter, and I remove insects, slugs, and snails by hand. It takes more work, but the statement that the only alternative to Roundup is worse chemicals or agriculture collapse is completely and obviously false and indicates a total ignorance of the issue you speak about.

"Modern Agriculture" today means hydroponics, aeroponics, and aquaponics, none of which can benefit a whit from Roundup. You mean to say "Industrial Agriculture". The collapse of industrial agriculture might not be a bad thing, as it's incredibly destructive and produces a sub par product. More people farming on smaller farms puts more people to work, makes better product, and makes the people who work on the land feel responsible for it's upkeep, not consider it a resource to be exploited as efficiently as possible.

Mentioning Monsanto's involvement in the project is not the same as saying "neither Einstein or Openheimer or others were behind the Manhattan project, it was Monsanto all along that plotted to destroy Japanese cities with nuclear weapons". They clearly implied that Monsanto joined the project as a way to 'cozy up to' the political elite, and it worked.

Where did you hear this ridiculous hypothesis about their motive? Do you see and hear things that other people don't see and hear? It's clear that the motive in all cases was profit, either directly, or future profits secured by 'making friends' in government by cooperating with them or by forcing farmers into untenable contracts and positions where, in some cases, farmers that don't use Monsanto crops were sued because Monsanto said the pollen that pollinated the crops came from a neighbors Monsanto crops, so the seed belongs to Monsanto. Monsanto does not set out to cause damage and harm, they simply don't care if it happens as a side effect of their profit making methods, which they will protect with any means possible.

Just wow, a more deliberately misleading description of the video would be hard to create.

I have paper wasps that look an awful lot like bees ( https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Wasp_May_2008-11.jpg )

I get dirty looks from my hippy neighbor when I'm spraying for them b/c he's retarded. Know the difference, paper wasps do pollinate, but they are fucking dangerous. I got stung once removing a nest (on accident, i was sawing a low hanging branch and didn't see the nest at all) and got stung on the top of my head. That fucking sting felt like a hot nail being driven into my skin by a hammer. And it felt like every few minutes someone hit the hammer again.

I didn't see how they're getting 'resourceful', or really how they're doing anything about it. Importing bees is nothing new, and it's not a solution. CCD is happening in Europe as well.
At least they FINALLY determined that it is at least partially the neonicotinoid pesticides that are causing the bulk of the problem, and combined with numerous parasites, hives don't stand a chance. Now they need to take some action based on that finding or we'll end up like China where people must pollinate their fruit and vegetables by hand with tiny brushes because the bees are gone.

I'm not disagreeing with you that there are farms where the animals are treated well in comparison. But the majority of food does not come from these farms. Like you said these are usually small scale operations like your aunt. We're talking 50-60 billion animals a year. Millions of animals per hour in the US alone. They simply need to kill them as young as possible to even meet the demand, through industrialized means. They call it factory farming for a reason.
And no factory farmers don't care about the well-being of animals. Any minor growth benefits of happy animals are easily outweighed by a few hormone injections. It's cheaper and faster. If they cared: They wouldn't rip piglets balls off with their bare hands to neuter them. They wouldn't keep "cage less" chickens in the dark to save on electricity. They wouldn't hold a chickens head to a sander or iron to de-beak them. They wouldn't grind up baby male chickens in a blender alive. They wouldn't cut off pigs tales without anesthetic. So on and So on. Your food might comes from some nice farm like your aunts, but for most of people it does not.

You're right that eating animals that died of old age is probably the only truly ethical way you could eat them. Though they'd have to have reproduced naturally too.

I'm not a fan of the eat less concept because of the morality aspect. It might work for some people, and it's probably not a bad short term stepping stone to get to people thinking about the consequences. But it just doesn't add up to me ethically: I wouldn't go from kicking a dog 10 times a week to just 3 times a week, because it means I'm kicking 7 less dogs. It's still a terrible thing to do, so why even be part of that cycle.

Because most people are raised as meat eaters, I think their perspective is completely wrong, as was mine. When they talk to vegans they always give reasons to not give up animal products. But to me the question really is: What is the reason TO eat any animal products at all?


Health wise it's a no-brainer there are a ton of good books about nutrition, like "How Not To Die" by Dr. Michael Greger, or any book by Dr. Neal Barnard, Dr. Cadwell Esselstyn, or Dr. John McDougall. ( all their work is based on thousands of peer reviewed and published research papers ).

Animal compassion wise it's a no-brainer. Animals want to live and be happy period. Everything else is just an excuse to keep exploiting them.

With documentaries like Cowspiracy and Earthlings coming out, it's people are becoming aware that we're all on one planet and if people went vegan overnight, that's 1/2 of the global warming gone. That's 1 football field a second of rainforest (and all of the animals and unique species ) being destroyed. That's the fish not going extinct in the next 10 years. That's GMO's not killing the pollinating bees and earthworms (which are necessary part of the ecosystem, we'll die without them).

So what reason is really left to eat any animal products?

Taste. People don't want to become vegan because they think they are giving up something and it's not true. It's more like trading a bad habit for something truly great. And it's free. And it has the potential to change the world.

I'm yet to hear a good reason to eat any animal product.(from anyone I mean)

BWAAAHAAHHAAAHAAAHAAA!!!!! That's so awesome!
I grow a plant called dracunculus, which has the same, fly attracting flowers/scent, and look quite similar to yours. I grow them outside! They're both closely related to the corpse flower....


***World's Largest Flower (inflorescence) Amorphophallus titanum, or Titan arum
An enormous flower found in Indonesia, also called the "corpse flower" for its unpleasant odor. It emits the smell of rotting flesh and attracts pollinators. Technically, the Titan arum is not a single flower, but a cluster of many tiny flowers, called an inflorescence. The Titan arum has the largest unbranched inflorescence of all flowering plants. The plant can reach heights of 20 feet) and weigh as much as 170 pounds!


I would suggest putting it outside (not in direct sun) and let the flies go nuts. Congratulations on having a really weird, beautiful, and stinky flower! I hope you grow to like it (if not it's smell, at least it's look). ;-)