Bees in the News and A More Balanced Life

Bees in the News

Soaring sugar prices have helped spur a honeybee business boom, according to an Illinois bee broker. A starter package of about 12,000 bees and their queen costs about $25 there now compared with $15 a year ago. Bee rustlers are expanding too. “They drive up in trucks, plug the entrance of the hives, cart them away and mix the bees with their own bees,” says the broker. Many beekeepers are now branding their hives.


A World Food Conference report noted that the West German apple harvest is down 41 percent for lack of bees to pollinate the trees, and a Burma sunflower plantation went seedless a second year for the same reason. In some areas pesticides aimed against destructive insects have been killing the beneficial bees.

A not-so-benevolent variety of deadly African bees that escaped from a Brazilian scientific laboratory in 1957 has now reached Colombia. They are moving north about 200 miles per year, reportedly killing about 300 persons and thousands of animals annually.



A More Balanced Life

A survey conducted by the Australia Institute, an independent research organization, found that “23 per cent of Australians aged 30 to 59 have sacrificed income for the sake of a more balanced lifestyle in the past 10 years,” reports The Sydney Morning Herald. The trend, which the researchers call downshifting, is being adopted by many who hope to improve their sense of well-being and to have more time with their children. These workers are “switching to a less demanding and less well-paid job, reducing work hours or dropping out of the workforce altogether,” says the Herald. Dr. Clive Hamilton, executive director of the Australia Institute, said: “This is about putting lives in front of incomes. These are people who certainly do not view themselves as drop-outs; they’re ordinary people from the mainstream, who are rejecting over-consumption and deliberately reducing their income in search of a more balanced lifestyle.”


WATCHING THE WORLD NEWS IN BRIEF.


▪ “The deep sea is by far the largest habitat on the planet. And one of the harshest . . . Yet everywhere we look we are finding life, sometimes in extraordinary abundance.”—NEW SCIENTIST, BRITAIN.

▪ In a recent test case, a federal court judge in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., ruled that “it is unconstitutional to teach [intelligent design] as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom.”—NEW YORK TIMES, U.S.A.

▪ According to a news poll in 2005, “51 percent of Americans reject the theory of evolution.”—NEW YORK TIMES, U.S.A.

▪ At 175 years of age, Harriet, a 330-pound [150 kg] giant Galápagos tortoise that lives at a zoo in Brisbane, Australia, is the “world’s oldest known living animal.”—AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION.

▪ Swiss researchers have found how some maize varieties defend themselves against western corn rootworm. They emit odors into the ground. These attract minuscule threadworms that kill the larvae of the rootworm.—DIE WELT, GERMANY.

"In Janury 2009, eight states possessed a total of more than 23 300 nuclear weapons." - STOCKHOLM INTERNATIONAL PEACE RESEARCH INSTITUTE, SWEDEN.


By: Icek Blueyez