Timeless

Posted on July 31, 2015 by Ron Miksha

I was in England last week and saw some of the usual sights: Stonehenge, the Magna Carta at Salisbury Cathedral, King’s College along the river Cam, JRR Tolkien’s grave. To me, these represent timelessness. Tolkien, sleeping in eternity. The stones of Stonehenge, eroding forever. Even our creations – Salisbury’s statement of democracy; Cambridge’s seven hundred years of learning – are perhaps no less enduring. And everywhere I went, I saw bees.

Spot the bee?

Spot the bee? (She’s flying front and center.)

Bees are nearly ubiquitous, yet so ephemeral. Their time is brief. At first blush, they don’t have the agelessness of rocks and institutions. Bees come and go. The bumblebees which I saw flittering between clovers at Stonehenge build a summer nest of a hundred workers, then, in late autumn, most of the bees abruptly die.

One (or a few) mated queens find solitary wintering sites, wait for spring, then start anew. I want to believe that at least a few queen bumblebees shelter each winter alongside a Stonehenge rock where the igneous doleritic bluestone meets the soil. A bees’ time is brief – a few months – but starting anew each spring has been repeated for millions of years. On the Salisbury Plain, bees have been drawing nectar and raising brood almost forever.

And yet, we know that nothing lasts forever. Although bees may have brooded a hundred million summers (as some scientists believe), they and their environment have changed dramatically. Worshipers  erected rocks at Stonehenge almost 5,000 years ago. Before that, ice covered much of the northern hemisphere and bees were forced south, following the receding flowers. Much further back in time, North America and Europe were attached and the Caledonian mountain range stretched from Scotland to Alabama. Eventually the continents parted (in a final Pangean breakup, about 60 million years ago) and still later, our favoured honey bees, relative late-comers,  arose in the Middle East. (This is why bumblebees are found in the Americas and Europe while honey bees, speciated after the Atlantic formed, were isolated from America. The continents had separated before honey bees arose.  The American continents didn’t have any honey bees until humans carried them as livestock in the 16th century, but earlier bee species had spread before the continents parted.)

JRRT beeLater in England, at JRR Tolkien’s cemetery, I found an entirely different hymenoptera working a yellow rose blossoming atop the great writer. Some sort of wasp, I suppose. Or perhaps one of the 23,249 species of bee which I don’t recognize. Such creatures, it seems, are everywhere.

Tolkien, whose grave is across the road from an Oxford guesthouse we slept in last week, will be dead forever. Perhaps death is the thing that endures. Yet, even in death the body is restless and changing. Tolkien signed a 50-year contract (costing $2,000) to keep his cemetery plot for half a century. Unless someone renews that contract – made between the city of Oxford, the Wolvercote Cemetery, and Professor Tolkien – his spot will be sold to someone newly dead. It is likely that the great writer’s heirs will renew the agreement and Tolkien will remain at peace for at least another 50 years. Else, like the eroding stones at Stonehenge, Tolkien himself will be moved to other soil, allowing even more roses to blossom.

It all has to do with time. For the humans who drafted the documents at the Wolvercote Cemetery, fifty years is long enough for most people to be remembered. And then forgotten – unless one is perhaps JRR Tolkien.

Posted in Books, Culture, or lack thereof, Ecology, People, Strange, Odd Stuff | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Drones Deliver Beer

Posted on July 23, 2015 by Ron Miksha

honey beer launch

Drones get no respect. If not accused of lounging around the hive, their mechanical doppelgängers get accused of corporate espionage because they spy into office windows. Finally, a people-friendly use for drones that makes sense. A Taiwanese brewery will use drones to deliver its Honey Beer brand to your next party (if it’s held on the island of Taiwan).

Using drones to delivery beer is an imaginative publicity stunt performed by Wunderman Taiwan, a promo-company that knows how to create a lot of buzz. A Wunderman VP (Jeff Wen) says it is hard to break a new product into the Taiwan market. It looks like they found a way. You can read more at this link –  Drone ‘Bees’ Deliver Honey Beer Brand to Taiwanese Office Workers – and here’s a video:

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Posted in Culture, or lack thereof, Honey, Strange, Odd Stuff | Tagged , | Leave a comment

A Bee Won’t Hurt You If . . .

Posted on July 16, 2015 by Ron Miksha

edmontonThe city of Edmonton, Alberta, is telling its citizens that bees are good. People sometimes forget. Not long ago, Obama was trying to calm screaming kids on the White House lawn when one child spotted a bee and dozens panicked. That was D.C.  Edmonton (though it has a million people) has rural routes. It’s the capital of the biggest honey regime in Canada. The chief apiary guy (Medhat Nasr) lives and works in Edmonton. Lots of Edmontonians have uncles and aunts and grandparents still out on the farm. The agricultue minister (Oneil Carlier) lives on the edge of the city. Yet, the city would like people to chill out about pollinators.

A story in the Edmonton Journal (City releases new videos to clear up buzz about bad bees) tells us that since urban beekeeping is legal and popular in the city, a series of 5 short videos are being produced and released to the public. The first, comparing bees to wasps, is just 33-seconds long, but may help people realize that bees aren’t the nasty, ugly, aggressive war-machines that wasps are. Bees are gentle and sweet. And will usually leave you alone if you don’t bother them. Here is the bee-promo, produced by contractors working for the City of Edmonton:

By the way, the film project hired Edmonton-based Amplomedia (for $5,000) to make the 5 pro-bee videos. The company specializes in getting messages across in a minute or less. A good idea since attention spans need to be be measured in milliseconds these days.

ungerUrban Beekeeping was legalized in March by Edmonton’s city council. As part of the education package, city dwellers are being reminded that bees are natural, bees are pollinators, and bees may displace meaner and less manageable stinging insects. That last point, made by  Hani Quan, a planner with the Edmonton Food Council, is dubious and double-edged. Quan, according to the Edmonton Journal, said, “The more bees we have, the less wasps we have.” It is highly debatable that honeybees displace wasps, resulting in fewer of the meaner hymenoptera. The two groups occupy quite different ecological niches and eat entirely different groceries. Further, honeybees have been named as culprits in chasing out lesser bees – native bees such as various bumble bee species which are disappearing.

Nevertheless, keeping honeybees assures pollination of a range of flowers in Edmonton. Beekeepers serve a role in maintaining the city’s diverse avocations. Beekeepers are usually among the most sensitive promoters of a clean, healthy environment. The activity is licensed and regulated in Edmonton and the new education program also helps urban beekeepers know their responsibilities. To help with that, the city has issued this Urban Beekeeping Guidelines flyer which beekeepers everywhere may find useful..

Posted in Beekeeping, Ecology, Outreach, Stings | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Plight of the Bumblebees

Posted on July 10, 2015 by Ron Miksha
Bumblebee nest, Ocala Forest, Florida, 1974

Bumblebee nest, near Ocala National Forest, Florida, 1974   (Photo: Ron Miksha)

Forty years ago, near Florida’s Ocala National Forest, I took the photos seen in today’s blog. This is a bumblebee nest, accidentally uncovered and exposed on the forest floor, in the winter of 1974 in central Florida. You can see a few bees and about 90 cups, or pots, built by them. The pots hold pollen, nectar, and future generations of bees. If today’s news about bumblebee habitat is true, you might not find these particular insects in that particular woods anymore.

A study published in the journal Science (and reported by the New York Times, Time magazine, CTV, and Globe & Mail among many others) warns that the warming climate is making life miserable for bumblebees. The paper, with Jeremy Kerr and Alana Pindar of the University of Ottawa as principle authors, relates that some species of northern hemisphere bumblebees have lost 300 kilometres of southerly range. The researchers believe this is most likely due to climate change. As the climate warms up, certain plants disappear or are crowded out by invaders. It is also possible that warmer days hinder the bees’ mating or foraging abilities. One would expect that the bees would simply spread further north to take advantage of new locations that become warmer and habitable. But that doesn’t seem to be happening.

A highly immobile bumblebee nest.

A highly immobile bumblebee nest.

Unfortunately, most bumblebee species do not reproduce nor spread fast enough to head northward into new habitat. Instead, the bees are being trapped, or “squeezed in a vice” (as Dr Kerr describes it) – unable to populate areas to the north, unable to continue to live in areas to the south.

By examining nearly half a million scientific observations of 67 species of bumblebees from the past 109 years, the authors of Climate change impacts on bumblebees converge across continents have presented an overwhelming indictment of our likely future. Their study may be the most in-depth analysis conducted so far on the impact of climate change on an entire complex group of important native species. This is a “big data” study and nothing like it has been done before.

This was indeed a comprehensive analysis. Only observations that definitively identified species and placed them in documented locations at specific years comprised the 423,000 geotagged data points. The 67 species of bumblebees were mapped and their changing territories were noted over the years. For each of the sightings, the species, year and location was noted. For most species, range of habitat is significantly shrinking.

The 14 scientists involved in the study were determined to discover the cause of the diminishing bumblebee range. With such a huge data set, it was possible to learn that pesticides and urbanization (paving over forage and nesting sites) were not significant causes of the plight of the bumblebees. For example, the study found that the use of neonicotinoids, which can be harmful to bees, does not account for the widespread loss of bumblebee range. Instead, climate change was correlated as the most consistent cause of the bees’ shrinking territory. Within the bumblebee habitat, the average temperature increased 2.5 degrees Celsius during the century investigated. That’s bad news for bees.

Unfortunately, the bumblebees are not migrating north quickly enough to maintain the size of their former range. Although new potential homelands are heating up, bumblebees don’t move fast enough to keep up with the changing climate. The bees become our polar bears, adrift chunks of ice, clinging to what they know, unable to move to safer places. To migrate 300 kilometres in 100 years, the bees would need to colonize new territory at a rate of 3 kilometres (2 miles) each year. But bumblebees do not migrate in hefty swarms the way their honey-making cousins do. Honey bees may send colonizing swarms a dozen kilometres. We know this from observations of honey bee swarms crossing lakes, and also from the intrepid settlements established by Africanized honey bees which traversed 9,000 kilometres in 30 years during the last century. Bumblebee biology is vastly different. At the end of each season, all the workers die. Then a few mated queens establish new colonies, typically within a few hundred metres of the preceding year’s nest. Bumblebees are not known to conquer vast stretches of new habitat.

Instead of spreading rapidly northward, bumblebees are mostly stuck in their ancestral settlements. The only real exception to that is an upward migration – in the study some species of bumblebees were discovered migrating to higher elevations (hills and mountains) where that option was available. The Kerr, Pindar, et. al., paper showed that after a 300-metre elevation gain, some species began to occupy better terrain. Apparently, an elevation rise of 300 metres may equal a climate change found by traveling 300 metres north. But it is much easier for bumblebees to relocate 300 metres higher up in a hundred years than to fly 300 kilometres north.

Assisting a bumblebee migration.

Assisting bumblebee migration.

Short of reversing climate change, other methods of saving the imperiled bumblebees are being considered. One possibility is assisted migration.

Assisted migration would involve relocating enough bumblebees to a new habitat so that the reproductive viability of the insects is ensured. The relocations would be further north in ecological niches that are similar to the bees’ former, but disappearing, habitats. In this scheme, the bumblebees would be scooped up, loaded into vans, seat-belted if necessary, and then released in better pastures.

Unfortunately, artificial assisted migration is a more likely fix for the plighted bumblebees than a return to a cooler climate.

Posted in Bee Biology, Climate, Ecology, Save the Bees | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Russian plane attacked by bees

Posted on July 8, 2015 by Ron Miksha

beesonrussianplaneThe newspaper call it an attack. But we know better. The story being carried around the world yesterday is that a group of honey bees decided to attack a passenger plane (an Airbus-319, no less… that’s just a small step down from the Airbus-320) as it was preparing to embark for St Petersburg. I guess people were frightened by the bees. But the bees were not engaged in an attack. It was a harmless swarm, rather common at this time of year. It is doubtful they planned to entomb the plane in wax and honey or turn it into a hive.

I find it more frightening that two ambulances were called. This, said the airport, was in case the bees managed to get into the cabin. You know, through rusty holes in the fuselage, rips in the metal where seams are coming undone, or maybe broken passenger windows. I have a friend who has travelled aboard regional carriers in Russia. Some are a bit relaxed about inspection and safety standards – in my friend’s case, his seat belt didn’t work, there was no preflight safety announcement, and his plane limped badly down the runway until the pilot finally brought it back for a tire change. (Yesterday’s incident involved a different carrier, one with a much better reputation. They probably have a sturdy plane.)

What motivated the swarm to attack yesterday’s passenger jet? According to a Russian news source, that question was posed to a local agriculture scientist and bee expert. Timiryazev Anatoly Kochetov explained, “Bees are very fond of silence, and I assume that they attacked the plane as a source of noise.”  That sounds unlikely. The scientists more plausibly added that the bees were swarming from some suburban apiary and were migrating through the airport.

The migrants didn’t fare well. Airport staff “removed them” from the plane. The bees would not have survived clinging to the wing for the entire 800-kilometre trip from Moscow to St Pete. They would have flitted off, one by one, icy cold. It’s also doubtful that the bees survived the removal at the airport if they were hosed off with water as I suspect they were.

Posted in Strange, Odd Stuff, Swarms | Tagged , , , , | 7 Comments

Burt’s Bee Buzz

Posted on July 6, 2015 by Ron Miksha

Arguably, the most famous beekeeper in all history was an unlikely hippie living off the land in Maine’s remote woodlands. Burt Shavitz died this weekend. He was living the good life, a reclusive member of the back-to-nature, granola-chewing crowd. In his case, Burt Shavitz had left New York City for a self-imposed exile in the northeast corner of America. He was seeking solitude and the chance to live a life of hard independent work. It was a primitive, subsistence life. In the 1980s, while in his 40s, he was living in a turkey coop. To earn a small bit of cash, he kept bees.

There is a movie about this peculiar man. Burt’s Buzz, a 2014 documentary film about Burt Shavitz, reminds me a bit of Forrest Gump. Like Forrest, Burt seems to have appeared at the right place and time with neither scheming forethought nor greedy desire. Also like Gump, Burt seems oblivious to the world around him, yet he rocks it like an ocean liner rocks lesser boats on the sea. It’s an interesting, but odd film. The highlight of the documentary, for me, was when Burt, on  a promo trip to Taiwan, skypes his dog back in Maine and the two begin howling in harmony. Not that other parts of the film weren’t charming. We learn that at age 78, Burt is comfortable in a house without hot water. Running water is, in fact, a step up from the way he spent most of his earlier life.

In the end, he led a strangely divided existence. He clearly loved his frugal life on his Maine farm. But he also relished the attention he received as Mr Burt’s Bees – a walking, talking corporate mascot. When he wasn’t lighting his wood stove or feeding wild birds, he roamed the world while managers pampered him. Burt Shavitz was paid to promote the corporation’s products, nearly all of which still sport his bearded face on the packaging.  But he was more than a human mascot or an unwitting parody of the Burt on the lip balm sticks.

Burt wasn’t always Maine’s most famous bee man. He was a staff photographer for a New York Jewish weekly, then Time Life gave him credentials to freelance for them. He sold pictures of John Kennedy and Malcolm X, among many others. At 35, he tired of New York City, borrowed an ex-girlfriend’s van, loaded some books and a mattress, and headed to upstate New York, then Maine. He worked odd jobs until a swarm of bees appeared. He housed the bees in equipment given to him by a friend. One hive grew into 26. ““It’s a way to make a living if you’ve got a strong back and a strong mind and good eyes,” said Shavitz.  About beekeeping and neighbourliness, Burt told a Times reporter that he was lucky, “. . . that there was a man who was patient, knowledgeable and even-tempered to teach me beekeeping. He told me to stand back and watch what he did.”

Soon after, Burt met Roxanne Quimby. She was hitchhiking. He stopped his flatbed truck to give her a lift. Roxanne was a single mom with 6-year-old twins when they came together in 1984. It seems Burt was infatuated with the young woman. “She could do anything. Chop wood, grow beans…she was strong.”

Roxanne could also make candles from Burt’s beeswax. And she knew how to sell them. She had the business brains in their union. She experimented with face creams, lip balm, treatments for cold sores. Though the products sold well because the ingredients were purportedly natural, it was probably the packaging and the logo that really created the billion dollar company. Success came when Roxanne started marketing a lifestyle – Burt’s lifestyle. His image became the company’s icon and the wholesome self-reliant vegetarian zen of a man was part of the package. In a dozen years, the company’s annual sales grew from $22,000 to $23 million.

Burt and Burt’s Bees parted shortly after the company was moved from Maine to North Carolina, in 1994. He tried to work in the south for the big outfit which he had inadvertently helped create, but Burt left amid a situation of a personal nature. He never really felt at home at the huge corporation – so distant psychically and physically from his woods in Maine. Within those years of unbridled growth, Roxanne and Burt grew apart. In a dispute that seemed to leave both Burt and Roxanne feeling betrayed, Burt was allegedly paid $130,000 and given 37 acres of land for his share of the company. Roxanne later gave Burt four million dollars more. By then the company was sold for $935 million. The new owners hired Burt to represent the company at store openings and promotional events around the world. All he had to do was dress like Burt, act like Burt, and say very little. It was corporate publicity and it worked well for everyone involved.

(Roxanne, by the way, has been generally maligned in the press as an aggressive business woman. But she created the company and ran it with progressive ecologically and socially enlightened guidelines. After receiving hundreds of millions of dollars for the Burt’s Bees company, she purchased 120,000 acres of Maine forest which she is preserving and trying to give to the state as a sanctuary and park. She is also very active in a number of Portland charities. Seems she never really needed money, either.)

I began this piece by mentioning that Burt Shavitz may have been the most famous of all beekeepers. After watching the documentary of his life, I suspect he didn’t mind the fame, even though he loved his solitude. (“A good day is when no one shows up and I don’t have to go anywhere.”)

For Burt, it was never about money.  His settlement gave him some cash, plus a home in Maine. He lived another twenty years, undoubtedly more content as a chopper of wood and a friend of animals than as a manager of men in the business world. Although the corporation was sold for a billion dollars a few years after Burt left, he wasn’t disappointed that he had missed out on a fortune. As he once said, he never aspired to a life as a yuppie, with a trophy wife, a trophy car, and a trophy house. His life was very much what he wanted it to be – an old retired hippie on a farm in Maine.

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Some Mountain Beekeeping

Posted on July 2, 2015 by Ron Miksha

Catching Ron in his natural element.

A month ago, friends invited me to see some bees at a ranch up in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies. Beekeeper Stephen, a fellow geophysicist, guided us as we meandered the secondary roads west of Calgary. We gradually gained a bit of elevation (from 1,100 metres at my home to nearly 1,500 metres at the ranch). I was curious to see how bees might survive in that largely forested locale – remote from large fields of alfalfa and canola, and in an area where grizzly bears roam and frost and snow are possible intruders even during the summer months. The bees I saw were not merely surviving, they were thriving.

The resident beekeeper, Mike, had installed 20 packages. The first round of brood was hatching and the bees looked great. They were smartly provided a perch beside the workshop, overlooking a broad valley spotted with hay pastures. Dandelions were blooming and nectar and pollen were arriving by airborne express. I wondered about the grizzlies, the potentially windy exposure, and the fact that the best forage was down in the valley, about a hundred metres below us. But Mike had been keeping bees at this spot for a few years. They did well, in both quantity and quality of honey. This bee yard had produced honey that won Best of Show at three different competitions last year. I reminded myself that not every location is perfect and you work with what you have. Here are a few pictures from last month’s expedition.

Who has seen the queen?

Stephen, Mike, and Ron

Ron and Mike

Quite a view, eh? But as usual, beekeepers can only see bees whenever bees are around.

Quite a dramatic location, isn’t it? In the pictures above, you see an easily moveable plywood windbreak that Mike made. This doesn’t stay in the bee yard. It is just in place for a few moments to help calm the bees and to keep smoke from whiffing away in a sudden gust. The blocks that you see hold the lids down when it gets windy. Their orientation is a reminder to the beekeeper if something is amiss. If this sounds a bit odd, it actually stops the beekeeper from roaring through the hives, lifting lids and forgetting that one hive or another had supersedure queen cells or any other issue that should bring caution to the hivetool. It was a great day, and a wonderful feast was provided by Brenda Peatch. Brenda also took all of the photos you see in today’s posting. Many, many thanks to everyone!

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How Fast is your Honey?

Posted on June 22, 2015 by Ron Miksha
Honey has velocity. But you knew that, didn't you?

Honey has velocity. But you knew that, didn’t you?

We don’t usually think of honey in terms of speed. One of the coolest things about beekeeping is that the craft encourages the crafty to learn about everything. Honey, pollination, wax, social behaviour of insects, ecology, and much more is there for the amateur to discover and experiment upon. I’ll tell you how fast honey moves in a moment. But first, a hint – it’s not slower than molasses in January.

I just returned from the Science Writer’s Conference in Saskatoon. The author of The Velocity of Honey, Jay Ingram, was everywhere at the meeting. He is a hard-working guy. You may remember Jay from Discovery Channel’s Daily Planet (a science-news TV program). He was the host for 15 years, until 2011. If you are old as I am, you may also remember that Jay Ingram first burst upon the national scene with the CBC’s weekly science radio broadcast, Quirks and Quarks, in 1979. These days, you may have a chance to catch Jay giving a lecture – don’t pass up such an opportunity.

Although Jay Ingram is a whiz at explaining every type of science – from physics and chemistry to the latest medical breakthroughs – he was in Saskatoon at the writer’s conference to help attendees become better science communicators. He also introduced his new book, The End of Memory: A Natural History of Aging and Alzheimer’s. The Alzheimer’s lecture had great imagery of plaques and tangles and fascinating stories such as the case of nuns led by Sister Mary (It’s all in his book.) The next day Jay spoke of the art of science story-telling and he held a workshop. Among other details, we were reminded to write at a conversational level when writing for a general audience. (Am I doing OK with that?) Jay Ingram stayed the length of the conference, spending a lot of his time with science students. Even on Sunday morning when most of us were boarding planes and automobiles, he was in a session with those young men and women, instilling valuable writing tips and fostering skills that sharpen science reporting.

jayingram2

Jay Ingram and the art of
science communication.

So, what is the velocity of honey? Usually pretty slow. But it will catch up with falling stars if dropped from a high enough altitude. For a more detailed answer, I’ll refer you to Jay Ingram’s book, The Velocity of Honey And More Science of Everyday Life, a collection of science essays covering topics from spinning coins and skipping stones to math-literate animals and dripping honey.

Until you have a chance to read it, here is something to experiment with, and it comes from Jay’s book. Honey is more viscous than water, so it flows more slowly. You could place a piece of toast on a plate and slowly pour a stream of water on the toast. Great, you’ve ruined your toast. But in the meanwhile, you might have noticed that the water didn’t pile up on the toast. Instead, it raced off in all directions and sort of randomly flooded the plate and floor. Now get a new piece of toast. Drip some liquid honey on the toast. If your honey spoon is close to the toast, you may have a slow moving stream that bulges upwards toward the spoon. Slowly elevate the spoon and the stream narrows as the velocity of honey increases. Pay attention to the type of bulge you are now creating on your toast. Depending on the dispenser, you may find a ribbon that wobbles back and forth or perhaps a circle that loops around and around. Experiment with height, which increases the velocity of the honey as you make it fall from a higher position. There are some pretty cool things going on but you would never see them if you used water instead of viscous honey. You get more interesting effects with honey. And much better toast.

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Science Writers Writing Science

Posted on June 20, 2015 by Ron Miksha

My ultimate destination on the weekend was the place you see above, Marquis Hall at the University of Saskatchewan. In three days, I spent twenty hours in this room, absorbing much-needed writing skills. And eating, for it is in this room that an endless supply of some of the best muffins and worst coffee I’ve ever encountered were served. Overall, it was a comfortable venue with well-managed acoustics and well-spoken participants.

I knew no one here, except the fellow who helped me and my wheelchair get around the campus. Gerhard Maier is a good friend, and both the city of Saskatoon and this meeting were of some interest to him. Gerhard is a science writer, having published African Dinosaurs Unearthed. His book is an in-depth chronicle of the century-old discovery of the biggest dino dig in Africa. Without Gerhard’s help and the excellent work of the organizers at the Canadian Science Writer’s Association I probably would not be here. The organization had brewed up an irresistible roster of speakers and topics. We would hear Jay Ingram, a tireless science communicator who once hosted CBC’s Quirks and Quarks and Discovery Channel’s Daily Planet. Also, from Brooklyn via Skype, we learned how to latch on to news trends by one of the proprietors of Mashable. There were various panels – food security, critical thinking, clear writing – which included about 50 scientists and panelists. There were tours on the South Saskatchewan River, and in the University of Saskatchewan’s dairy research centre, vaccine centre, and the Canadian Light Source synchrotron, Canada’s brightest light, which is used to decipher RNA code among many other things. There was much more, of course. Lunch speakers, more tours, and some obscure thing called “networking” which I couldn’t figure out very well.

I had joined the science writer’s organization less than a year ago. I have spent the past couple of years trying to learn how to communicate science, but it has been a haphazard education. I picked up a few good writing books (Steven Pinker’s Sense of Style, for example) and I read articles and blogs about writing whenever I could. I had heard that incessant writing builds skill, so I try to publish a blog piece every week at this site and at my geophysics blog, The Mountain Mystery. The idea that becoming a writer requires a lot of practice was confirmed by some grizzled reporters at the conference. I also gleaned some clever tools to help me write more clearly. Science writing for a general audience, for example, should be similar to story-telling in a conversational tone. Try to avoid high-falutin words like apiarist when beekeeper says the same thing in a simpler way. Emotional appeal, humour, and personal perspectives are encouraged when conveying science messages. Analogs are useful tools but caution should be exercised to be certain they are accurate enough. (One example is the now discredited and over-used analogy of the atom drawn and explained as if it were a miniature solar system. It isn’t.)

It was a great conference, but don’t expect this blog to suddenly blossom into a phenomenal work of art with well-written witty tales about beekeeping. I will try, but I don’t anticipate miracles will happen. Not for a few days, anyway.

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Saskatchewan’s University

Posted on June 19, 2015 by Ron Miksha
The doors that led to my geophysics career.

The doors that led to my geophysics career.

Today, I am at the University of Saskatchewan. I am here to attend the 44th annual conference of the Canadian Science Writer’s Association.  I hope to learn to be a better writer (maybe this Bad Beekeeping Blog will become less of an invidious palaver). But I am also here – at the U of S – to visit my alma mater, the campus where I earned my geophysics badge 25 years ago. I had not seen the campus in 20 years. The last time I was here, I was interviewing science graduates and trying to entice them with promises of fun, games, and money at a company I worked for in Calgary. That was 20 years ago. The intervening years were busy: I was diagnosed with motor neuron disorder, I married, had two more children (they are now 8 and 13), and I built a honey farm near Calgary, then sold it. I also traveled at least once to Chile, Vietnam, Peru, Croatia, Hungary, England, Ireland, and nine other countries. But I had not come back to the university. Until today.

I met two of my favourite profs. Jim Merriam, my geophysics mentor, and Chary Rangacharyulu, my main physics professor. Both became heads of their respective departments while I was away. Surprisingly, they both recognized me, though I’m afraid that I changed much more than either of them. My 25 years out of school were rough, and it shows. But these gentlemen – and other professors I met today – looked like they had just finished a lecture they taught me and my mates in 1991. We chatted about the school, their lives and families. It was a great visit. I met others who remembered me at the school, too, though many of my associates had retired. We are aging.

usask2nobelsThe University of Saskatchewan is a beautiful campus. There are gorgeous trees, expansive green stretches, and most of the buildings here are constructed from sandstone blocks – many of them chiseled a hundred years ago from local rock. The school may seem obscure to you because it sits in a small city in the middle of a big province in a big country. You would be surprised to discover that two Nobel Laureates did their research here. The school has North America’s finest veterinarian college and has produced oodles of ag-scientists and geologists.

Someone who works on the Arts and Sciences Scholarship Committee at the University of Saskatchewan told me that they had received a nice grant a few years ago. (I was not told the source of the money.) It was to be used for a scholarship open to any student, in any area of study, unless the recipient was a bad beekeeper. The university committee realized at once that the bad beekeeper was me. They likely thought it was quite funny, as do I. I knew that a few people from among the Saskatchewan bee community were wary of my success. I never thought they would immortalize me in such a charming way. I’ll have to learn more about this so I can contribute to that fund myself.

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