Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Honeybee Hum, Update: 17 May 2016



Sitting under the huge old apricot trees, fragrant as bridal wreath, and full of the sound of bees among the blossoms...

Snow melted at last, the sky shone cerulean blue and the soft pollination hum felt like gossamer, an om thrumming.

I remembered visiting the beehives of my grandfather in my childhood, their buzzing and the scent of wildflowers and honeycomb. I've loved the honey-scent of beeswax candles ever after.

Fruit trees are blooming in the Rocky Mountains, which lie far from the GMO'd US heartland. One crop to rule them all, one crop to find them... that heartland of glyphosate-spray-monsters and death.

Government agencies behave as though beholden to the chemical-corporate giants. Companies which peddle sprays known to kill bees are still enriched and go unpunished.
http://www.naturalblaze.com/2016/05/nearly-half-the-nations-bee-colonies-wiped-out-in-just-one-year.html

I say the mountains are "far" removed, but the world we steward is small. Winds blow; ocean currents bring distant distress below the jet stream.

Will the grandchildren of my kin know wild bee hum and diverse wild honey?

They just may!

There's a feeling of celebration, of Independence Day, just on the edge of knowing, as towns, states, countries refuse to be made corporation wasteland.

More and more refuse in the midst of threats: Abusive  government witholds aid for non-compliance!

Such a deal for independence, and it may come hard.

We began as settlements of farmers, not so long ago and now blighted city lots are coming to life as community gardens. With beehives on roof tops and street-wise kids enchanted!

We may yet turn this around. And if not...?

While meeting a local beekeeper friend, I learned that our mountain forests and pastures are unusually bee-blest.

There are many organic farmers here; they do not poison their small family farms. Abundant life can prosper.

An Asian behemoth, the beekeeper warns, which exports faux-honey, is not so blest. Choking pollution has killed off their pollinators, that and clear-cutting bee-habitat for commercial mono-crop.

Fruit trees, somehow still blooming in the midst of industrial clanging and belching, now have to be pollinated by hand. Workers climb trees and ladders with small brushes to distribute the pollen.

Would workers do that elsewhere, if we utterly destroy our pollinators? Low pay certainly, or no-pay if prisoners are used.

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