Category Archives: Ecology

Who is the Saint?

Posted on October 20, 2014 by Ron Miksha

On this day in 1970, Norman Borlaug accepted his Nobel Peace Prize. You probably never heard of him. A few days ago, I read an interesting piece in an old New York Times column, written by author/philosopher Steven Pinker. He … Continue reading →

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Happy Dusty Anniversary

Posted on August 3, 2014 by Ron Miksha

You know what they say about new technology – someone always finds a way to put it to nasty use. Combine airplanes and chemicals, and what could possibly go wrong? Let’s fly back to 1921 and visit a grove of … Continue reading →

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Our Bees, Ourselves

Posted on July 27, 2014 by Ron Miksha

Interesting Op-Ed column in the New York Times. Mark Winston, a senior prof at British Columbia’s Simon Fraser, wrote about the widespread collapse of honey bees. Winston is one of those super-brains who studied bees and entomology for years and … Continue reading →

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Wild bees again

Posted on June 24, 2014 by Ron Miksha

A few days ago, I wrote a snarky blog entry about one researcher’s efforts to alert us to a hazard of urban beekeeping. It is Dr Cartar’s contention that keeping bees in an urban environment robs wild native bees of … Continue reading →

Posted in Bee Biology, Beekeeping, Ecology, Science | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

Going native

Posted on June 12, 2014 by Ron Miksha

A Calgary University professor has this to say about urban beekeepers: “It is not as rosy as they think. Every jewel* of honey that they get on their plate or in their jars is a jewel that has been robbed … Continue reading →

Posted in Bee Biology, Beekeeping, Culture, or lack thereof, Ecology | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Did I goof up, or what?

Posted on June 4, 2014 by Ron Miksha

Last week’s blog post drew a few interesting responses. Not from Monsanto, whom I expected would be outraged because I wrote that it is perhaps justifiable to vilify “the huge multinational for all manner of environmental ills.” Instead, incredibly, the … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, or lack thereof, Ecology, Pesticides, Save the Bees | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Dead and Dying

Posted on April 14, 2014 by Ron Miksha

California almond pollination season is finished. And so are many of the bees which made the trip to the west coast to participate in the largest honey bee mosh pit ever in the history of beekeeping. (For those of you … Continue reading →

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Bees Delivering Pesticides

Posted on November 2, 2013 by Ron Miksha

This sounds so bizarre. At first. Canadian researchers have found an odd way to potentially deliver benevolent viruses, fungi, and bacteria to greenhouse vegetables. Before some lucky bees are allowed to fly inside glasshouses to pollinate peppers and cukes, they … Continue reading →

Posted in Ecology, Pesticides, Pollination, Science, Strange, Odd Stuff | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Invasive bee hives

Posted on September 11, 2013 by Ron Miksha

Dutch bee hives in Manhattan? Of course. Four hundred years and counting. New York was known as New Amsterdam by its first settlers, the Dutch from Holland who arrived on lower Manhattan Island in 1614. That’s even before the Pilgrims … Continue reading →

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Wild Bees

Posted on April 16, 2013 by Ron Miksha

This sounds like an interesting job. You may have heard that there are about 40,000 species of bees in the world. Most are solitary, some live loosely with familiar neighbours, and a very small number, like the honey bee, are … Continue reading →

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