What a Way to Go: NetworkThe Vanishing of the Bees
I was perusing Reality Sandwich just now and I came across a mention of this new documentary-in-progress, called The Vanishing of the Bees. The trailer is very much worth watching.
Check it out if you want yet another thing to keep you up at night.
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Bees
Yep, that's a good sleep-loser, Paul!
I've been reading about this for a few years and it's scary stuff.
It was partly reading about the bees that started me on wildlife gardening - since we've lived here I've been working to make sure that this garden produces pollen and nectar all year round and it's now at the point that the shrubs and perennials have matured enough so that we do have a lot of flowers for 12 months of the year, even when there is snow on the ground. For sure, something is pollinating the flowers because the shrubs that flower in mid-winter produce masses of berries.
Each summer I spend time outside checking the number of honey bees about and looking at which plants they spend a lot of time on. One of the favourites is oregano, followed by lavender. This last year, there were more honey bees about than I've seen for five years, but I don't know if a new colony of wild bees has set up home nearby or if there are just more honey bees about in this small area.
Modern agriculture is killing the bees, but we can still make sure that we provide food and shelter in our own gardens. Then, there are groups like the Guerilla Gardeners (http://guerrillagardening.org/) who use neglected urban spaces and plant them up. There is so much ugly, wasted/unused space in our cities - it could be a mass of flowers, providing for the healthy wild bees that are still about.