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Vanishing of the Bees

Vanishing of the Bees

Vanishing of the Bees is a film made in 2007 about bees and colony collapse disorder. Here are a couple of links:
www.vanishingbees.com and www.vanishingbees.co.uk.

I've just added my first widget to my blog! It's from the UK website address above.


Why Bees?

My rather cursory interest in bees dates back to my primary school days. I must have been nine or ten years of age and was supposed to be working on a project of my choice. A deadline was looming and everyone else seemed to be working away on their projects. I couldn't think of anything and had been told off for my previous project work! Exasperated, my teacher told me to do my project on bees. I remember reading just the one book - and probably copying it. In spite of myself, I became interested in what I was reading. I must have run out of time because I remember getting to the section about bees' dances as a means of communication but not including the information in my project. One of the facts that stuck in my mind was that bees don't sting unless provoked and that they disembowel themselves in they sting.

As there are so many other people either writing about the fall in the number of bees and the implications for human foods or organising campaigns to protect bees, there's no point in my re-iterating what they have to say. I think I'll stick to looking for interesting snippets and references to bees in the arts. The website of the British Beekeepers' Association may be of interest - www.britishbee.org.uk/, as may this article in the Telegraph (13th March 2010) -
Honey bees precisely control the temperature inside their hives to determine which job their young will perform in the colony when mature, new research has revealed. www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/7435950/Honey-bees-secret-world-of-heat-revealed.html.


County Dublin Beekeepers' Association

I have now subscribed to the e-newsletter of the County Dublin Beekeepers' Association (www.dublinbees.org). I wonder where this will bring me?

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