bees | Providential Life

This weekend I saw the documentary Queen of the Sun. While I felt like the movie was lacking a clear story line and perhaps message (other than the fact that trying to control agriculture may leave us with none) the content of the movie, the facts and the images to prove those horrifying facts were incredible.

The one that resonated the most with me was the fact that bees are often fed High Fructose Corn Syrup. And you guys know how I feel about that (see number 9). They feed the bees HFCS to help them grow strong, to get through cold winters, etc. But what do bees normally eat in the winter, you ask? Why, honey, of course! You don’t think they just make honey for us, do you?

So here are some bees, making themselves foodstuffs for the winter, and some beekeepers take that, sell it, and feed the bees HFCS instead. Which, to me, is already deplorable. Couldn’t commercial beekeepers just leave enough honey for them to get through the winter and take the rest? But, as the movie pointed out, it’s mostly about finances. The commercial beekeepers can’t afford to do that.

And, in some cases, if the beekeepers are feeding the bees HFCS, the HFCS is getting into the honey they produce. Which means your honey ain’t just honey, honey.

There are many other atrocities that are happening with bees that should alarm you. Monoculture is one of them, which basically boils down to only one crop being produced in a large area, which doesn’t leave much for the bees to eat. Which leads back to feeding them sugar, etc.

Another is moving bees to pollinate monoculture crops, such as almonds, which leads to death in transport, more sugar feeding, and cross contamination of disease among the North American population of bees.

And why should you care? Because, in case you didn’t know, bees pollinate most of the food we eat. So no bees, no fruit. No vegetables. No nothing.

I encourage you to see Queen of the Sun. To do some research about bees. To advocate for natural beekeeping. To advocate for an end to monoculture. Because we all love fruit and veg, right? And we’d like to keep that around. Here’s some more information.

I can’t seem to keep my shoes on at work (or home for that matter) for more than ten minutes.

This often results in the following conversation:

“Incoming!” (Liz says from her seat behind my desk.)

“But I’m not wearing any shoes!” I rush to find my shoes under/around my desk. Usually I am at least wearing socks, if nothing else.

Inevitably about 80% of the time I don’t find my shoes in time, and I end up having to talk to people in my socks or bare feet. This doesn’t, however, make me wear my shoes any more often.

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This weekend I went to the Songkran Festival with Cricket. It is the Thai new year celebration. Here are some photographs.

Our delicious lunch. We also shared a bag of fried bananas.

There was live music everywhere!

Some of the girls that danced for a large audience. They were so lovely.

This is my Buddha pose. In Thailand, you pray to your Buddha pose that is the day of the week you were born on, and also give donation to that Buddha. I was born on Monday. Here are the rest.