Emily Dickinson quipped, “To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, One clover, and a bee, And revery. The revery alone will do, If bees are few.” As Spring is in bloom, Kitchen Table Talks will “bee” giving our tireless farming partners, the honeybee, their due, and providing a timely update on the devastating malady mysteriously affecting hives worldwide—known as “Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD)”.
When and where you ask?
Tuesday, April 27th
Viracocha, 998 Valencia Street @ 21st Street
6:30 pm, food and drinks plus a short film: Pollen Nation
7:00 pm, Discussion
The fascinating world of today’s honeybee is magnificently operatic in scope. Reflecting the times, their saga includes familiar human issues of:
– Class: Queen/ worker bee/ drone
– Sexism: it’s good to be the Queen
– Race: Africanized “killer” bee, importation from abroad
– Intrigue: “Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD)”
– Immigration: European Honeybee brought over in 1600s
– Fear: “They pollinate up to 1/3 of American diet, and they are dying en masse?”
– Environmental degradation: insecticides, pesticides, monocultures
– Dramatic Exits: sting then die, sex then die
– Exploitation: “excess” honey, transporting colonies over long distances
– Hyperbole: “wiped out in 10 years!”
– Diet: surely a marker for our time– even the ubiquitous corn syrup makes an appearance…
Honeybees have existed for at least 8o million years. Across many ancient civilizations, bees have long been revered and considered sacred: for their pollination skills, nectar, health and medicinal value, wax and more.
About one-third of the human diet is derived from insect-pollinated plants, and Honeybees, the most effective pollinator, are responsible for about 80 percent of that. Some crops, including blueberries and cherries, are 90 percent dependent on HoneyBee pollination; one crop, almonds, depends entirely on the honeybee.
California has the largest beekeeping industry of any state in the U.S.: nearly three-fourths of the country’s commercial honeybee crop pollination is conducted here. About two million colonies across the country are rented by growers each year to service over 90 different crops. Whether you are a massive factory farm, or the smallest home gardener, all of us should recognize the tremendous outsized contribution these bees have made to our lives.
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