Mystery killer strikes Ontario beehives over winter

But University of Manitoba entomology professor Rob Currie said the large-scale death of honeybees could hurt the production of other foods in the long run.

“Things like vegetables, a lot of the fruit that you eat, require bees to pollinate them,” he said, adding that the value of bee pollination is estimated to be about 10 times the value of the honey they produce, or about $700 million to $800 million a year in Canada.

Currie said that while he has heard of a few isolated cases in Manitoba where bee colonies have been wiped out, he thinks so far the problem is not huge in Canada compared with the U.S.

Mysterious phenomenon has researchers baffled

What happens to them is unknown. The adults are simply gone - thousands of them. No corpses left behind, nothing out of place. They are just gone.

It may seem like the set-up for an episode of CSI, but this mystery isn’t about missing people - it’s about missing bees. Strange as it may seem, a mysterious phenomenon called Colony Collapse Disorder is threatening bees across the United States and may be making its way into Canada.

The problem has researchers baffled. All of the adult bees in a colony will suddenly disappear without a trace, leaving behind only a small number of juveniles. The hive appears unaffected, just deserted. Remaining juveniles refuse to eat the stores of honey or pollen left behind. Other bee colonies meanwhile avoid the deserted hive - even though healthy colonies normally raid abandoned hives for leftovers.

Will fruit crops ‘bee’ OK?; Bee losses have farmers concerned

“It appears this may be a one-time event related to environmental factors,” he said. “Once the hives are replenished, the issue hopefully will be resolved.”

Halsall said beekeepers first started to recognize there was something very wrong with their bees about three weeks ago, and soon realized it was worse than anything they had seen before.

“We have a problem in Ontario, we’re used to having losses but certainly not the losses we have right now,” he said.

U.K. news:

Fungus fingered in US honeybee wipeout

According to the Los Angeles Times, researchers have identified the single-celled fungus Nosema ceranae in dead bees from hives in Merced County, California. Other teams have similarly spotted the fungus in affected hives across the US, as well as two further fungi and 12 viral infections.

U.S. News:

Bees Vanish, and Scientists Race for Reasons

More than a quarter of the country’s 2.4 million bee colonies have been lost — tens of billions of bees, according to an estimate from the Apiary Inspectors of America, a national group that tracks beekeeping. So far, no one can say what is causing the bees to become disoriented and fail to return to their hives.

Missing Bees, Cell Phones and Fulfillment of Bible Prophecy

Revelation 6:6

Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures, saying, “A quart of wheat for a day’s wages, and three quarts of barley for a day’s wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine!”

Although the Bible plainly speaks of great famine in the last days, the prophetic words of Revelation 6:6 states that the olive and grape harvest will not be damaged.

In general, breeders have assumed that grapes were either completely self- fertilizing or were cross-pollinated by wind, so that in either case insects were considered of no value. The grape harvest will not be affected by the missing bee population.

Bees and other insects play a minor role in olive pollination; wind moves most of the pollen from tree to tree. Most olive varieties are self-fertile, but increased production often results from cross pollination. And neither will the olive harvest be affected by CCD.

The Honeybee Mystery: What it means to you and your investments

CATTLE - Like I said earlier, Cattle depends on Hay, Clover & Alfalfa as food sources. Take away the food source, and we have less supply in a high demand market.
COCOA - Don’t worry, your chocolate isn’t going anywhere. Cocoa, derived from the Cacao plant, pollinates from small insects.
COFFEE - In most instances where pollination of coffee was studied, the honeybee was the most important - however, Africanized ‘killer’ bees can also do the job, and in some cases do it better. There is an Arabic coffee bean that self pollinates.
CORN - Corn does not require bees for pollination, however, corn prices may inadvertently increase because of the lack of other foods available.
GOLD 100 OZ - This would be the classic panic buy if the honey bee issue does turn into a major problem.
SOYBEAN - Prepare yourself for meals of Tofu. Soybeans self-pollinate.
SUGAR - no dice, sugar doesn’t rely on the honey bee.

ORANGE JUICE - Gold mine! Or is it? As Billy Ray Valentine (Trading Places) would say: Yeah. You know, it occurs to me that the best way you hurt rich people is by turning them into poor people. Would Orange Juice be affected by the lack of honey bees? That’s a tough call. Navel oranges don’t need bees, but a lot of other orange varieties do need bees to pollinate their fruit. The problem is, OJ futures have already had a huge run-up in the last year because of the late frost that killed the greater part of crops. The run from $100 to $200 has since corrected to around $150, but the price is still high.

Where have all the bees gone?

It is a vanishing on the scale of entire cities. Late in 2006, commercial beekeepers in Florida began noticing alarming numbers of their bees had gone missing. Bustling colonies, tens of thousands strong, were emptying in a matter of days. Systematic searches for dead bees around the colonies mostly drew a blank.

Kleercut

Kimberly-Clark clearcuts ancient forests to manufacture Kleenex tissue products. Become the most informed activist you can be by finding out more

Who is Kimberly-Clark?

from the faqs:

What are the names the most common brands of tissue products that Kimberly-Clark makes, so I can avoid supporting this company.

Canada: Kleenex
United States: Kleenex, Scott, Viva, Cottonelle
Global: Kleenex, Cottonelle, Cottonelle Puppy, Andrex, Scottbrand, Hakle, Scottex

Filling Up With Less

With her supersize appetite, O’Nan’s weight spiraled to 360 pounds. She tried dieting, but nothing worked. O’Nan did some research and stumbled across a little-known book called “Volumetrics” (harpercollins.com), which promised that she could manage her weight by choosing foods that the program calls “low in energy density,” foods that make you feel satiated, or full, but that are also low in calories. She swapped her serving of fast-food fries for an even larger portion of boiled redskin potatoes in a garlic-dill sauce.

What Rolls found is that feeling full is intrinsically linked to certain foods. The nutritional principle behind those foods is called energy density, or ED. It may sound counterintuitive, but foods low in energy density make you feel fuller. Think fruits, soups and vegetables, all of which have high water content, “the secret ingredient” to satiety, says Rolls. (But drinking water alone won’t help you feel full; it will only quench your thirst.) Rolls’s research shows that a person eats about the same volume, or weight, of food every day. The trick is to fill your plate with low-calorie foods that leave you satisfied.

Another self-entitled yoyo screws things up.

Forbidden swim kills endangered Banff snails

An illicit swim in an ecologically sensitive hot spring at a national historic site in Banff has killed at least five endangered snails.

A vandal broke into the Cave and Basin historic site last week and swam in an outdoor hot spring that is home to Banff Springs snails, an endangered species under Canada’s Species at Risk Act.

Losing even five snails is a big deal because the species is an important part of the Banff ecosystem, site supervisor Steve Malins said Thursday.

Quotations Book

There is a lot of misunderstanding in the world. There’s a lot in quotations that helps you grow, learn and feel happy. We’ve made the best place in the world to read and share quotations. We hope that as your browse, you can relate them to your affairs, your trials and tribulations. Have a look at our services like quotes of the day.

Pope Approves Report On Teaching Limbo

Pope Benedict XVI has reversed centuries of traditional Roman Catholic teaching on limbo, approving a Vatican report released Friday that says there were “serious” grounds to hope that children who die without being baptized can go to heaven.

Theologians said the move was highly significant _ both for what it says about Benedict’s willingness to buck a long-standing tenet of Catholic belief and for what it means theologically about the Church’s views on heaven, hell and original sin _ the sin that the faithful believe all children are born with.

More Reading:

Vatican commission: Limbo reflects ‘restrictive view of salvation’

But there is greater theological awareness today that God is merciful and “wants all human beings to be saved,” it said. Grace has priority over sin, and the exclusion of innocent babies from heaven does not seem to reflect Christ’s special love for “the little ones,” it said.

“Our conclusion is that the many factors that we have considered … give serious theological and liturgical grounds for hope that unbaptized infants who die will be saved and enjoy the beatific vision,” the document said.

“We emphasize that these are reasons for prayerful hope, rather than grounds for sure knowledge,” it added.

Important to Note:

Limbo has never been defined as church dogma and is not mentioned in the current Catechism of the Catholic Church, which states simply that unbaptized infants are entrusted to God’s mercy.

See also Prepare for Limbo fallout

RCMP gather school blueprints, photos to prepare for shootings

The RCMP is gathering aerial photographs and blueprints of thousands of schools across Canada as part of its plan for responding to school shootings, which it unveiled Thursday.

[snip]

“After it has been deployed nationally, SAFE will provide an integrated, standard approach to emergency response in schools policed by RCMP and other police agencies who have adopted the SAFE … response or other initiative programs,” said Insp. Rick Shaw, as he introduced the program.

The goal is to ensure that, in the event of a shooting, the first officers on the scene don’t have to waste time learning where things are.

On Friday March 30, 2007 at around 3:00pm, Mr. Kuldip Singh Nag, a Sikh American who was awarded the Bronze Star for his service in the U.S. Navy during the first Gulf War, was at his home in Joliet, IL when a local police officer noticed that a van parked on Mr. Nag’s private property had expired registration tags. Upon being confronted with this, Mr. Nag’s wife, Vera Kaur Nag, informed the officer that the van is parked on their driveway and was inoperable.

[snip]

At this moment, the officer pulled out his pepper spray and attacked Mr. Nag. As Mr. Nag screamed in agony, the officer removed his baton and violently struck Mr. Nag numerous times until he fell to the ground. While the assault ensued, the officer was reported by both Mr. and Mrs. Nag as saying, “You f****** Arab! You f***** immigrant, go back to you f****** country before I kill you!”

Source: Sikh American Veteran Assaulted by Police Officer in Illinois

What is a Vision Board?

A vision board (also called a Treasure Map or a Visual Explorer or Creativity Collage) is typically a poster board on which you paste or collage images that you’ve torn out from various magazines. It’s simple.

The idea behind this is that when you surround yourself with images of who you want to become, what you want to have, where you want to live, or where you want to vacation, your life changes to match those images and those desires.

How to Make a Vision Board

Firewall, virus protection, parental controls: Shaw Secure Technical Support