Friday 24 February 2017

CHEAP TRAVEL COSTS THE EARTH

Written in 2000 - All these years later, and it's still costing the earth...

CHEAP TRAVEL COSTS THE EARTH
At this gloomy time of year the lure of a sun-soaked holiday on a remote
exotic beach seems irresistible. The cost of air travel has fallen
dramatically in recent years making holidays abroad far more accessible to a
wider section of the population. The effects of price slashing and
‘no-frills’ airlines has grown the number of passengers travelling through
UK airports from 22.5 mIllion 20 years ago to 11.6.8 million Just 2 years
ago. Industry observers predict that London airports atone wlll need to flnd
capacity for an extra 100 million passengers per year by 2015 - the same
number presently using Heathrow. Gatwick, Luton and Stanstead combined. At
least 80% of airborne travellers are holidaymakers. Unfortunately, the
increased number at people taking advantage of cheaper air travel, currently
rising at five to six per cent every year, is planet-threateningly bad.
According to meteorologists attending a world summit on climate change
earlier this year, the 16,000 aircraft circling the globe every single day
have become one of the main sources of atmospheric pollution.

Air pollution and global warming are having a much more devastating effect
on life than was originally feared. By the end of the next century
scientists are now predicting that temperatures will have risen by as much
as eight degrees Celsius — over two degrees higher than earlier
calculations.

The odd degree or two doesn’t sound much, but the one degree rise which has
already occurred has killed between 70-90% of the coral reefs in the Indian
Ocean and wiped out half the polar bear and seal populations. Further global
warming will melt the polar ice caps, which wilt in turn raise the
temperature at sea level. A one metre rise in global sea levels would put 75
per cent of the earth’s land mass under water.

The world’s airlines are dumping 7SOmillion tonnes of pollutants into the
atmosphere every year, mostly the most problematic greenhouse gas — carbon
dioxide — which equates to 3.5% of global warming.

The airline industry insists that it is committed to tackling the problem. A
British Airways spokesman said the company was at the forefront of many
initiatives addressing
the problem. "We have set a target of 30 per cent reduction in emissions
over the next 20 years" he said. "We have already managed to double our fuel
efficiency over a number of years and are looking at many initiatives to
improve further’

The Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions IDETR) is also
looking at a range of methods to tackle the problem, including tightening
the rules on emissions, better aircraft design and further taxation on fuel.

But, according to the New Scientist Magazine, engine emissions are not the
only problems caused by the aeroplanes. A report earlier this year suggested
that the fluids used to de-ice aircraft are polluting the ground water near
major airports and killing aquatic life. Researchers from Western Washington
University had identified the problem as a family of chemicals called
tolytriazoles. which are also used in car de-icers. These were found in high
concentrations in a stream draining an airport in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. On
three occasions when heavy de-icing had occurred, minnows and water fleas
placed in the stream by a researcher all died. In the summer months, when no
de-icing is necessary, 80 per cent of the creatures survived. Researcher,
Devon Cancilla, was quoted as criticising the rules for de-icers, which
regulate only the concentration of glycol — a de-icing substance that is
less toxic than tolytriazoles.
Organic farmers based under flight paths are also facing difficulties in
receiving Soil Association Accreditation due to excess fuel being dumped
into the atmosphere prior to aircraft landing and, therefore, effectively
spraying the ground beneath. The Norfolk region has a particularly acute
problem with a large number of military bases operating air exercises in the
area.

The airlines are claiming a new ‘open discussion policy’ on all aspects of
environmental concerns, including talking to non-government organisations.
One suggestion put forward at the Air Transport Association conference
earlier this year is that aircraft should fly slower and lower. The
environmental group Germanwatch believes this would reduce environmental
pollution as well as dampen the growth in demand for flying.

There is little scientific doubt that aircraft are contributing to air
pollution and global warming, but by how much is still In dispute. The
environmental groups claim the airlines simply pay lip service to global
warming concerns in favour of profit, whilst the airlines dispute the
scientists findings as being ‘over-hyped’.

Ironically, if the scientists are right, with more and more people being
Jetted off to exotic locations, the aviation industry may end up helping to
sink the very paradise islands it now encourages us to visit. U


~. Organic Iiving March 2000

I

Tuesday 9 September 2014

Pickard Brain Talk

Highlights from Prof Robert Pickard's fascinating talk about the Honeybee and human brain. For full transcript and recording click here

We take our lives for granted and we spend all our time worrying about money and income tax, and where the next crumb is coming from, yet here we are with a state of consciousness, sitting in a body that took 2500m years to evolve. An incredible machine. Most of us are able to walk, see, breathe, sense our environment, think about the universe, right the way up to 80 without losing more than 5% of our intellectual capability.
You start to lose your ability to recall memory from about 35 onwards. The important thing there is to rehearse the memories that you want to retain.



  

Wednesday 29 January 2014

Tuesday 28 January 2014

The Trouble with Beeks

As I've been rather unkind about beekeepers in this blog, here is a list of beekeepers who have very kind and helpful, and have had a big influence -

Monday 27 January 2014

Flood Blog

Flood Shepperton Towpath Feb 2014
Come gather 'round people 
Wherever you roam 
And admit that the waters 
Around you have grown 
And accept it that soon 
You'll be drenched to the bone 
If your time to you 
Is worth savin' 
Then you better start swimmin' 
Or you'll sink like a stone 
For the times they are a-changin'. 

Wednesday 22 January 2014

Swarming Bees are Healthy Bees


Swarming Bees are Healthy Bees
Article by John Haverson - see  http://hampshire.naturalbees.net 
Until I read John's article (in BBKA News, May 2012), I felt guilty about my bees swarming. It's more of a problem in built up areas, but having a swamp and tolerant neighbours helps...



Bees swarm to reproduce and spread their genes. Healthy offspring
are best produced in optimum conditions of temperature and
nutrition and with a vigorous parent colony. However, like other
organisms, bees will be instinctively driven to reproduce more
when they are subjected to stress, danger and threatened survival.
Beekeepers are constantly being directed to control swarming
at all costs, whether to improve honey harvests or reduce nuisance
to neighbours. I have been wondering if a century of increasing
control over honey bees’ basic natural function has had an adverse
impact on the health of our bees. In this article I have considered
the bee’s reproductive process in a natural environment to see how
it benefits a colony, as well as the impact of swarm control
husbandry.
Swarm preparation phase
During springtime, a colony will build up rapidly, increasing its
stores, brood and adult bees. The colony maintains its brood nest
temperature at 35–36ºC, the optimum for rearing healthy brood.
By late April or early May a healthy colony will reach a state of
affluence, which will enable it to swarm.
Many beekeepers start swarm prevention
inspection in March at temperatures as low as
11ºC. This regular hive opening breaks open
propolis and wax seals; releases heat and
volatile compounds from the nest and disrupts
thousands of worker tasks. The result is a
stressed colony, forced to do unnecessary work
and with a brood temperature below the
optimum. This brood cooling can contribute to
European Foul Brood (EFB).1 The reduced nest
temperature also favours Varroa, which has an
optimum brood temperature of 33ºC; enabling
the colony to maintain a nest temperature of
35ºC works against Varroa.2
Varroa and other pathogens will thrive in
fatigued and weakened colonies. To keep
colonies alive beekeepers are using chemical
varroacides and medications. These substances,
even the organic acids and thymol, are toxic and harmful to bees.3,4
A colony will raise as many drones as it considers necessary.
Often beekeepers cull drones as unproductive honey consumers.
They also use drone brood as expendable varroa traps. This
reduction of the drone population has an adverse effect on the
quality of queen mating. It also consumes significant resources as
the colony strives to replace essential males in time for mating.
The swarm of bees has to find a new home, build comb, stock
it with stores and feed new brood. This requires bees of different
ages and gland development and will not include many old foragers.
An artificial swarm, which merely separates the queen and flying
bees from the house-bees and brood, risks having old spent bees
by the time new brood hatches out and requires feeding.
The colony raises a number of queen cells in specially
constructed round cells. Queen cells are given special treatment;
they are visited 10 times more often than worker bee cells during
the 3–5 day larval stage to ensure the optimum development of
new queens, which become almost double the weight of worker
bees. Queens raised artificially from 2-day-old larvae will receive
less nourishment and care.
In an unstressed colony the queen brood survival rate can be
as low as 53% from egg to adult; 33% in a stressed colony.5 The
colony appears to be weeding out substandard queens during
development. During artificial swarm manipulation, when we
destroy unwanted queen-cells, how do we know we have selected
the best two larvae? What are the chances they will fail or produce
substandard queens, resulting in a queen-less or a poorly
performing colony?
The swarm cluster
On leaving the nest, the swarm pours out of the hive or nest cavity
and mills around before settling in a cluster on a nearby bush, tree
or structure. Hundreds of forager bees become scouts and seek
cavities suitable for a new home. Instinctively they know what
constitutes a good cavity. After assessing a site, each scout returns
to the cluster and conveys its information to the cluster-bees in a
waggle dance. After considering different waggle
dances and checking the sites, the bees
eventually reach agreement about a site and the
scouts lead the swarm-bees to the new cavity.
This reconnaissance, communication and
consensus-reaching is an important part of the
bee’s metabolism, decision-making and
intelligence development. The new site is most
probably 300–500 metres from the home nest.6,7
This has the benefits of reducing
competition for forage as well as reducing the
risks of transfer of pathogens by drifting or
robbing. Fries and Camazine suggest8 that intercolony
transmission of pathogens by swarming
will result in a benign host-parasite relationship,
but the horizontal transfer of pathogens from
one colony to another by drifting, robbing and
comb exchange will result in more virulence.
The high colony density in large apiaries and the
‘splitting’ of colonies to achieve increase will
favour pathogen virulence.
Building the new nest
At the new site, bees make the cavity draught-proof with propolis
and start making wax. Bees construct honeycomb and forage for
stores; both are needed before brood rearing can commence. A
coating of antibacterial, antifungal propolis is applied to the cavity.
Temperatures of up to 40ºC are required to make comb9 and the
nest temperature will have to be maintained at 35ºC for brood
rearing. The swarm will be broodless during the nest building
period. Varroa will have no uncapped brood cells in which to hide,
and develop. They will be exposed to grooming by bees and fall to
the bottom of the cavity, far from the comb.
While the new nest is being constructed, stores collected
and brood started, the swarm is vulnerable to conditions of poor
weather, poor forage and predators. Seeley6 considers that about
three quarters of new swarms fail. Beekeepers reduce this
vulnerability by providing suitable nest sites and emergency
feeding to prevent starvation, often using sugar. Sugar is a poor
Swarming Bees are Healthy Bees
Swarm arrival. Photo by Bernhart Ruso.
BBKA News incorporating THE BRITISH BEE JOURNAL May 2012 17
substitute for nutritious honey10; brood
reared on poor nutrition will not
achieve optimum development and
immunocompetence will be reduced.
The home nest
The original nest is reduced by a queen,
about half of its adult bees and some of
the honey stores. It still has virgin queen
cells, developing brood, an extant nest
structure and good stocks of stores. It
is quite wealthy but will not be so if
beekeeper manipulation denudes it of
nurse bees and honey stores.
The first virgin queen could emerge eight days after the swarm
departure. Other brood will have hatched. The queen will take
time to mature and mate. Her egg laying may not commence for
three or four weeks after the swarm departs, depending on
weather conditions. Again a broodless period will work against
varroa. The collection of pollen and increased foraging will indicate
when brood rearing commences. Constant hive opening to check
for eggs is highly disruptive to a new and developing nest.
The first virgin queen may be allowed to kill her siblings, but if
the mother colony is strong and conditions are favourable, the
workers may protect some virgin queens so the colony can
produce secondary swarms, to spread its genes.
On the mating flights, colonies escort valuable virgin queens
providing a ‘herring shoal’ protection effect against bird predators.
Large escorts ensure successful returns whereas smaller escorts
from mini-colonies, favoured in artificial breeding, suffer queen
losses of some 33%.9 On the mating flight a vigorous queen will
require a good drone to catch her. Poor queens will be caught by
good males but can also be caught by poor drones increasing the
chances of low grade offspring.
Local bees will be genetically conditioned to the local
environment. In UK this can be cool, wet weather during the
swarming season. Local bees will be able to cope with inclement
weather and achieve successful mating when exotic bees from
warmer climates may not. The natural mating with up to 20 drones
will ensure genetic diversity, essential to species survival. Nature
will select for characteristics to enable survival in its environment
and against pathogens. These will not necessarily be the docility,
productivity and non-swarming sought by beekeepers.
Afterword
The entire swarming process brings
into play a huge array of diverse
behaviours affected by natural
selection. The colonies that survive the
dangerous adventure of swarming will,
on the whole, be the fittest. If we
short-circuit this fundamental
behavioural feature of the honey bee,
we reduce the opportunity for nature
to hone the fitness of the bee
population.
There is growing anecdotal and
scientific evidence11,12 that wild bees
are surviving and coping with varroa. It is clear to me, that the
ability to swarm naturally is a significant factor in their survival. I
believe we should be considering how we might better manage
swarming to make use of its colony health benefits; perhaps using
bait hives and informed, non-intrusive ‘reading’ of colony activity.13
This might reduce honey harvests, but there would be more bees.
Man can live without honey, but not without bees.
John Haverson, Hampshire BKA
References
1. Somerville D. European foulbrood and its control. Primefact
1000, 2010; p1–4. Available at http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/
__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/333388/European-foulbrood-andits-
control.pdf.
2. Kraus B, Velthius HHW. The impact of temperature gradients in
the brood nest of honeybees on the reproduction of Varroa jacobsoni,
Utrecht University archives, Netherlands, 2001.
3. Johnson RM, Ellis MD, Mullin CA, Frazier M. Pesticides and
honey bee toxicity — USA. Apidology, [online] 2010. Available
at http://entomology.unl.edu/faculty/ellispubs/Pesticides.pdf.
4. Mullin CA, Frazier M, Frazier JL et al. High levels of miticides
and agrochemicals in north American apiaries: Implication for
honeybee health. PLoS ONE [online] 2010. Available at
http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0009754.
5. Winston ML. The biology of the honeybee, Harvard University
Press. Cambridge, 1987.
6. Seeley TD, Morse RA. Nest site selection by the honey bee,
Apis mellifera. Insectes Soc 1978; 25:323–37 .
7. Davis CF. The Honey bee inside and out, 2004. Available at
Beedata.com.
8. Fries I, Camazine S. Implications of horizontal and vertical
pathogen transmission for honey bee epidemiology. Apidologie
2001; 32: 199–214.
9. Tautz J. The buzz about bees; biology of a superorganism, Springer,
Heidelberg & Berlin, 2008.
10. Nicolson S, Thornburg RW. Nectar chemistry, In: Nectary and
nectar: A modern treatise. Pacini E, Nepi M, Nicolson S (eds), pp
215–263, Springer, 2007.
11. Seeley TD. Honey bees of the Arnot Forest: a population of
feral colonies persisting with Varroa destructor in the
northeastern United States. Apidologie, 2007; 38(1): 19–29.
12. Le Conte Y, de Vaublanc G, Crauser D et al. Honey bee colonies
that have survived Varroa destructor. Apidologie 2007; 38: 566–72.
13. Storch H. At the hive entrance. Observation handbook. How to
know what happens inside the hive by observation on the outside.
European Apicultural Editions, 1985. English translation available
at http://www.scribd.com/doc/54926139/At-the-Hive-Entrance-
Swarm hanging in a tree. Photo by scf courtesy of Vita-europe. H-Storch

Swarm moving up into brood box. Photo by John Haverson.

Monday 20 January 2014

Propolis


 Marla Spivak's talk on propolis...
This is from the Propolis news in Japan, where propolis is valued highly:

I make propolis tincture like this (£5.00 per 10ml dropper bottle)  and with its anti-fungal, antibiotic, antiseptic properties it has been effective for skin problems, chest and throat infections and cuts (- it seals the wound and is a pain killer).


Here is an interesting article about propolis from BeeCraft (with thanks to Claire Waring):