bees – In the gaze of the other

September 3, 2016September 3, 2016

Urban Jungle: Poem 18

Artwork-by-Kevin-Peterson-9

Urban jungle, yes literally, not metaphorically,

though maybe more like a ghetto forest.

Leading the determined coalition, is one sleek fox,

low lying, white tipped tail, like a log on legs.

Following fellow fox is great black bear, also

in forceful forward motion, head level, purpose

in his gait and onward gaze, alongside the girl.

She, decked in tartan plaid skirt, red cap

and sweater, strides along friend bear

among the graffiti’d concrete landscape

peppered with spare thin trees, once patterned

for park pleasure seekers and outdoor fun.

In ruins now, no one in the neighborhood

respects the land, so the conservationists

have taken up extreme measures for the cause:

the children and the animals, who will inherit

the earth when the mature of the human species

go extinct, march forth to the city council meeting

to state their peace: “Who will speak for the trees

and the bees before they’re completely gone?”

March 12, 2016

Six Bee Poems

I Tell The Bees

He left for good in the early hours with just
one book, held tight in his left hand:
The Cyclopedia of Everything
Pertaining
to the Care Of the Honey-Bee; Bees, Hives,
Honey, Implements, Honey-Plants, Etc.
And I begrudged him every single et cetera,
every honey-strainer and cucumber blossom,
every bee-wing and flown year and dead eye.
I went outside when the sun rose, whistling
to call out them as I walked towards the hive.
I pressed my cheek against the wood, opened
my synapses to bee hum, I could smell bee hum.
‘It’s over, honies,’ I whispered, ‘and now you’re mine.’

The Threshold

I waited all day for tears and wanted them, but
there weren’t tears. I touched my lashes and
the eyewater was not water but wing and fur
and I was weeping bees. Bees on my face,
in my hair. Bees walking in and out of my
ears. Workers landed on my tongue
and danced their bee dance as their sisters
crowded round for the knowledge. I learned
the language too, those zig-zags, runs and circles,
the whole damned waggle dance catalogue.
So nuanced it is, the geography of nectar,
the astronomy of pollen. Believe me,
through my mouth dusted yellow
with their pollen, I spoke bees, I breathed bees.

The Hive

The colony grew in my body all that summer.
The gaps between my bones filled
with honeycomb and my chest
vibrated and hummed. I knew
the brood was healthy, because
the pheromones sang through the hive
and the queen laid a good
two thousand eggs a day.
I smelled of bee bread and royal jelly,
my nails shone with propolis.
I spent my days freeing bees from my hair,
and planting clover and bee sage and
woundwort and teasel and borage.
I was a queendom unto myself.

Going About With The Bees

I walked to the city carrying the hive inside me.
The bees resonated my ribs: by now
my mouth was wax, my mouth was honey.
Passers-by with briefcases and laptops
stared as bees flew out of my eyes and ears.
As I stepped into the bank the hum
increased in my chest and I could tell the bees
meant business. The workers flew out
into the cool hall, rested on marble counters,
waved their antennae over paper and leather.
‘Lord direct us.’ I murmured, then felt
the queen turn somewhere near my heart,
and we all watched, two eyes and five eyes,
we all watched the money dissolve like wax.

CCD

My body broke when the bees left,
became a thing of bones
and spaces and stretched skin.
I’d barely noticed
the time of wing twitch
and pheromone mismatch
and brood sealed in with wax.
The honeycomb they
left behind dissolved
into blood and water.
Now I smell of sweat and breath
and I think my body cells
may have turned hexagonal,
though the bees are long gone.

The Sting

When the wild queen leads the swarm
into the room, don’t shut the door on them,
don’t leave them crawling the walls, furniture
and books, a decor of moving fuzz. Don’t go off
to the city, alone, to work, to travel underground.
The sting is no more apis mellifera, is a life
without honey bees, without an earful of buzz
an eyeful of yellow. The sting is no twin
waving antennae breaking through
the cap of a hatching bee’s cell. The sting
is no more feral hive humming in the stone
wall of the house, no smell of honey
as you brush by. No bees will follow, not one,
and there lies the sting. The sting is no sting.

About this poem

First published in 2011.

Jo Shapcott

Jo Shapcott won the National Poetry Competition in 1985 and 1991. Her collections include: Electroplating the Baby(1988), which won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for Best First Collection, Phrase Book (1992), and My Life Asleep (1998), which won the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Collection). Her Book: Poems 1988-1998 (2000), consists of a selection of poetry from her three earlier collections. Her latest book of poems, Of Mutability, (Faber, 2010) was shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize and won the Costa Prize for Book of the Year. She was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2011 forOf Mutability. She is also co-editor (with Linda Anderson) of a collection of essays about Elizabeth Bishop and co-editor with Matthew Sweeney of an anthology of contemporary poetry, Emergency Kit. She teaches on the MA in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London.

March 11, 2016March 11, 2016

Basho’s Bee Meets Monsanto

…Monsanto’s contribution to the vanishing bee population is detailed. From genetically altered corn, Monsanto produced an insecticide called Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), which once ingested by bees, Bt binds to receptors within the bee’s stomach lining that keeps the bee from eating. Of course this weakens the bee, causing the breakdown of the inner stomach wall, which in turn makes the bee susceptible to spores and bacteria. To further compound the problem, for years the lobbying power of the chemical giant denied causing damage to the bee’s internal immune capacity for resistance to parasites, which of course only continued to kill off the bee population worldwide. Thus, continued chemical use, especially in America, only exacerbates this growing problem.

Death and Extinction of the Bees

By Joachim Hagopian

Global Research, March 07, 2016

February 17, 2016February 17, 2016

Bee Heists

It is not enough that bees are vanishing: sick, stressed, overworked or poisoned. No one source of colony collapse and disappearing bees can be pinpointed by consensus. Now, due to vanishing supply but unrelenting demand, bee hives are the latest coveted commodities to steal.

The Washington Post reports in As bees vanish, bee heists multiply the following:

The bee economy in California is immense. Eighty-two percent of the world’s almonds are produced within a 400-mile stretch in the state. There are hundreds of thousands of acres of un-gated almond orchards in California, all of which need to be pollinated in the span of a few weeks in February — by an ever-dwindling bee population. Beekeepers come in from across the country to fulfill contracts with farmers and brokers, moving hives to and fro on forklifts and flatbed trucks. And they come with a steep price that’s getting steeper every year.

At the start of pollination season in 2010, the average hive cost $130 to rent. Rental fees are $200 this year, and will continue going up as hives continue to die off. The industry is becoming increasingly volatile, increasingly expensive and thus, increasingly criminalized.

Bee keepers forego income most of the year, banking on readying themselves for payday when the season arrives. When their hives are stolen, they cannot recoup their losses and despite the article’s keen detective (a beekeeper himself) on the trail of these thieves, few of these crimes get solved. This business runs on slim profit margins, so keepers are unlikely to break tradition and invest a whole lot on gps and other tracking, stamping and registering technologies.

The answer lies in saving the bees, not in tracking and imprisoning the criminals (though that too should happen). Finding the cause(s) of the bee scarcity to eliminate roots out the entire chain of victims and perpetrators. Banning known pesticides that weaken, confuse and/or blind (mutes sense of smell) bees, breaking down colonies and affecting bee populations seems like a logical start–globally.

Investment in and cultivation of local beekeeping so that a variety of bee species thrive rather than feeding traditional worker bees like honey bees on intense single crop diets, i.e., all almonds or fruit trees, is another solution. Keeping local native bees to pollinate a variety of local crops has been known to grow bee populations

Bees are responsible for over 75% of our food supply. I am baffled why more attention, funding and efforts are not thrown at their plight. The bees’ lament is our own: industrialized agricultural production is killing us. We are too far from nature, mother and human.

October 26, 2015October 26, 2015

As it should bee…

Assembly Bill No. 1789

CHAPTER 578

An act to add Section 12838 to the Food and Agricultural Code, relating to pesticides.

[ Approved by Governor September 26, 2014. Filed with Secretary of State September 26, 2014. ]

LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL’S DIGEST

AB 1789, Williams. Pesticides: neonicotinoids: reevaluation: determination: control measures.

Existing law requires pesticides to be registered by the Department of Pesticide Regulation. Existing law requires that a pesticide be thoroughly evaluated prior to registration, and provides for the continued evaluation of registered pesticides.

This bill would require the department, by July 1, 2018, to issue a determination with respect to its reevaluation of neonicotinoids. The bill would require the department, on or before 2 years after making this determination, to adopt any control measures necessary to protect pollinator health.

The bill would require the department to submit a report to the appropriate committees of the Legislature if the department is unable to adopt those control measures and to update the report annually until the department adopts those control measures.

DIGEST KEY

Vote: majority Appropriation: no Fiscal Committee: yes Local Program: no

BILL TEXT

THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA DO ENACT AS FOLLOWS:

SECTION 1.

(a) The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:

(1) Honey bees are vital to the pollination of many of California’s crops, which are critical to our national food system and essential to the economy of the state.

(2) Annual colony losses from 2006 to 2011, inclusive, averaged about 33 percent each year, which is more than double what is considered sustainable according to the United States Department of Food and Agriculture.

(3) Scientists now largely agree that a combination of factors is to blame for declining pollinator health, including lack of varied forage and nutrition, pathogens and pests such as the Varroa mite, and chronic and acute exposure to a variety of pesticides.

(4) Based on data submitted to the Department of Pesticide Regulation showing a potential hazard to honey bees, the department initiated a reevaluation process for four neonicotinoid compounds in 2009: imidacloprid, thiamethoxam, clothianidin, and dinotefuran.

(b) It is the intent of the Legislature to set a timeline for completion of the reevaluation of neonicotinoid compounds to ensure that the Department of Pesticide Regulation completes a thorough, scientifically sound, and timely analysis of the effects of neonicotinoids on pollinator health.

SEC. 2.

Section 12838 is added to the Food and Agricultural Code, to read:

12838.

(a) On or before July 1, 2018, the department shall issue a determination with respect to its reevaluation of neonicotinoids.

(b) (1) Within two years after making the determination specified in subdivision (a), the department shall adopt any control measures necessary to protect pollinator health.

(2) If the department is unable to adopt necessary control measures within two years as required in paragraph (1), the department shall submit a report to the appropriate committees of the Legislature setting forth the reasons the requirement of paragraph (1) has not been met.

(3) The department shall update the report submitted to the appropriate committees of the Legislature pursuant to paragraph (2) every year until the department adopts the necessary control measures specified in paragraph (1).

October 25, 2015

Something About the Bees

In fits of nostalgia, I have bemoaned the loss of bygone items and activities. No, not 8 tracks or vinyl, but more like the bliss of ignorance. Somehow, not knowing what everyone I know ate for dinner last night or that a hit and run accident happened in some town called Smartsville hundreds of miles away is something that strikes me nostalgic. I miss the quietude of select pieces of information entering into my sphere of knowledge. I miss the word intrusion that had meaning, not like now where it will be erased from common usage given that there is nowhere to hide from anyone else in the world.

In particular, however, I will miss the bees.

Not just because I grew up with them, just like I grew up with aluminum street roller skates and homemade skateboards of wood blocks mounted atop those skates. But because our world depends on them, more than we know. I am not an alarmist. I shy away from ringing any alarm bells for a cause as I am a subscriber to the crying wolf wisdom. Save the fire alarm for what most needs sounding. The bees need a five alarm fire warning, for they are sounding bells for us in their departure. Why are the bees leaving us?

Not that they are going off for good. Most bees abandoning us are domesticated slaves to the agriculture industry, shuttled from farm to farm to pollinate crops, but it’s not only the pesticides that are killing off these slave bees. Those in the wild know better than to go where the pesticides waft in the wind through miles of wheat stalks or almond trees. It’s also the stress. The suffering, farm-raised, overworked honey bees are one of the most threatened populations–enslaved pollinators chained to their instincts and the dollars that drive their keepers and chemical companies. While the EPA as well as the world looks away.

Bees are responsible for a third of all we ingest.

Agribusiness practices include bee transportation across countries where they are released to pollinate crops: a month feeding on blueberries then another month on almonds and another month on some other fruit or vegetable plants, season to season, place to place. Keepers earn their keep.

The artificial dietary conditions and non-stop travel schedule stress these insects that vibrate to one another and radar their stress all along the colony, a highly systematized bee industrial complex inside the hive. They want out.

The smart bees have left the building–abandoned their hives, collapsed their colony. They punched their final time card in the clock.

Stress and pesticides are forcing the bees out. Their disappearance is a message to those who can decode it. I will miss the bees.

Photo: Bobby Doherty

September 15, 2015

One for the Bees

Victory, most probably pyrrhic, for the bees last week in a San Francisco Court that ruled against the EPA’s approval of neonicotinoid pesticides, specifically sulfoxaflor, a Dow chemical product that confuses bees flight patterns, according to the New Scientist. Apparently succumbing to “public pressure” (Dow’s money and agricultural lobby?), the EPA approved the use of the chemical without enough viable support, tactfully stated as “flawed data.” This despite the known harm to not only bees but all pollinators, other insects and even birds.

The upshot: Fuck the bees. There’s money to be made.

But can we live without the bees?

They are critical pollinators: they pollinate 70 of the around 100 crop species that feed 90% of the world. Honey bees are responsible for $30 billion a year in crops.

The battle for the bee is not won, however. Though one of these nenicotinoids have been banned in the U.S., they have not been banned in Europe or elsewhere. Bees do not stay in one place. And other harmful pesticides are still in use–just not sulfoxaflor.

And while pesticides are only one of the causes for the dwindling bee population, they are a big contributor, one that can be controlled by human intervention. So hooray for the court’s decision last week, but so much more needs to be done.

Who will speak for the bees?

Workhorses of a seething-bustling,

strange,

misunderstood

and alien world that we barely see

its glory and gore

acidic stew of swallow

and cilia claws

burrowed below

but for the infrequent frightful protrusion,

intrusion,

extrusion,

threatening a sting,

a bite

or a siphon

sipping the living juices of us,

savagery in the encounter.

And yet they sustain those who would crush them,

self-defense or not,

fill the undergirding of our world with germinating life,

exchange and commerce in wildflowers of the fields,

manicured gardens of urban rooftops

and edges of the sand dunes.

They nourish us with sweet meats

of the trees

and gifts of the earth’s panoply of gallant beauties

pageantry of roses, peonies and daffodils,

and green godly goodness of cabbage cool,

beans of the vine

and broccoli floret

walnuts

almonds

Brazils

the browns of nutty seas.

You, pinpoint friend, swap the day away,

flitting from one sweet hollow to the next

wearing,

ingesting,

carrying

and dusting yourself with your wares,

plying your trade

and all we breathe better for it

and eat

and expire

respire by your daily toil,

though your armies are micro

populated,

though thinning,

smallest of the small,

and most benign.

Some will warn

look away

not to watch,

not to near

or interfere

or swat

our swelling flesh worse for the encounter.

Carpenters of the Carribbean,

homed amid the yuccas

and woods

while others gnaw at our backyard decks right here.

Crow swims in sunflowers and black-eyed Susans,

carpeting himself the golden sun,

while sumptuous sand specialists

hang in the hills of North Carolina

or the Eastern Shore dunes,

skimming the edges for life.

Affable-bliss,

drunkard,

drinks from his nose of a tongue,

buzzing about the Badlands,

sucking up sweets from the wells of bells,

trumpet trollops of honey delight,

a piña colada of rum and pineapple pollen bits.

But big old bombus and Metallica and modest-us,

modest in size,

half a rice grain wide,

who carries her goods inside,

a vomitous gift

her babies survive

or they die

too sick

sparse

poisoned

murdered

by un-notice

unseen

unheard

unfelt

turnaway.

Health of heart,

health of earth,

home to hordes

4000 kinds strong

all native North American

only 40 left home

to honeycomb here

home to homo-cides

ignorants

polluters

stung-greedy

core-less

suicides

who

deny

if they are we are.

March 23, 2015

Speaking for the Bees

credit: http://www.usrepresented.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/bees-2.jpg

“It’s not about what it is, it’s about what it can become.”
― Dr. Seuss, The Lorax