we are fucked

[Dechristo]

which nickname?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

snaffle puke is mountain honey

[pink]

Nothing's fucked, Dude.

 

i one of my friends is the biggest conspiracy theorist/end of the world/born again christian/endtimes/gloom and doom conspirator i know,

 

Hmm, Who could that be? Prolly the same guy that picked that stupid nickname for me?

 

wayne, are you aware of how funny you are?

 

 

[pink]

at least he didn't give you an indian name. how about "dances with rocks". how about "little wayne' or "wayne warrior". jim told me the summer daze story again this year.do you know there is an anchor mid pitch now. i love those old beacon stories. wish i could have met nathan and avery. you guy's were real hardmen. you still are.

[wayne]

I used to work with and climb near Nathan, He was a right winger and a rival, so we didnt hang out too much. I never met Avery though

[wayne]

I have a great Beacon story. Bob and I were scrubbing a new rout above tree ledge in the hot sun. I had left a piece of shrimp pizza out in the sun. I thought it had gone bad, so I chucked it. After we each led the route we rapped and this angry guy came up to us with a red triangle on his shoulder.

[wayne]

Another story, Bob and I were leaving Beacon and we went by this police shooting range a mile down the road. Bob pulled over and absolutely demanded that I throw their "Police in Training" sign in the back of his truck. Reluctantly I did and we peeled back towards Beacon. Crazy Bob was going to bolt it to the rock as we were in a bolting controversy at the time. He would have done it unless the SWAT team van pulled us over in full Rambo fashion.

Oh, I got Beacon stories..

[pink]

sounds like i missed out.

[wayne]

We should start a Beacon stories thread. Heres another.

After rapping the first 2 pitches of Pacific Rim. I walked up into the cave to do a king swing. I did a tame one to start It went way the hell out!Very freaky. Tim got Psyched watching me and went all the way up into the cave for a major launch. I am sure there was no way he thought he would have collided with the tree 100 feet or more out there. It was amazing watching him try to flail a different course once he realized he was going to do some branch trimming. > he came back bloody and pissed at me for laughing so hard.

I have a few more really good ones and we realy should do this thread. It doesnt fit here

Edited December 7, 2007 by wayne1112

[Dechristo]

Au contraire, you shoe-horned those in nicely.

[billcoe]

Hey chicken little, hows it going?

 

As of this morning it's approaching crisis purport in the Coe kitchen.

 

 

 

Actually, although I forget the gentleman's name, he lost 1/2 of his hives last year.

[billcoe]

Link

 

This is getting worse. By now they should be taling about fixes to the issue. I'd read a few things last year that indicated that they thought mites were the issue. Todays news:

 

"

 

By JULIANA BARBASSA, Associated Press Writer Wed May 7, 3:22 PM ET

 

SAN FRANCISCO - A survey of bee health released Tuesday revealed a grim picture, with 36.1 percent of the nation's commercially managed hives lost since last year.

 

 

Last year's survey commissioned by the Apiary Inspectors of America found losses of about 32 percent.

 

As beekeepers travel with their hives this spring to pollinate crops around the country, it's clear the insects are buckling under the weight of new diseases, pesticide drift and old enemies like the parasitic varroa mite, said Dennis vanEngelsdorp, president of the group.

 

This is the second year the association has measured colony deaths across the country. This means there aren't enough numbers to show a trend, but clearly bees are dying at unsustainable levels and the situation is not improving, said vanEngelsdorp, also a bee expert with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.

 

"For two years in a row, we've sustained a substantial loss," he said. "That's an astonishing number. Imagine if one out of every three cows, or one out of every three chickens, were dying. That would raise a lot of alarm."

 

The survey included 327 operators who account for 19 percent of the country's approximately 2.44 million commercially managed bee hives. The data is being prepared for submission to a journal.

 

About 29 percent of the deaths were due to Colony Collapse Disorder, a mysterious disease that causes adult bees to abandon their hives. Beekeepers who saw CCD in their hives were much more likely to have major losses than those who didn't.

 

"What's frightening about CCD is that it's not predictable or understood," vanEngelsdorp said.

 

On Tuesday, Pennsylvania's Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff announced that the state would pour an additional $20,400 into research at Pennsylvania State University looking for the causes of CCD. This raises emergency funds dedicated to investigating the disease to $86,000.

 

The issue also has attracted federal grants and funding from companies that depend on honey bees, including ice-cream maker Haagen-Dazs.

 

Because the berries, fruits and nuts that give about 28 of Haagen-Daazs' varieties flavor depend on honey bees for pollination, the company is donating up to $250,000 to CCD and sustainable pollination research at Penn State and the University of California, Davis."

[MtnHigh]

My grandparents have a blueberry farm east of Portland. For 25 years they rented honey bee hives to pollinate the field. Two years ago they stopped renting hives because they noticed that during the budding season wild mason bees (plus some bumbles) where just as abundant in the field as the rented honeybees. The result has been a better 'fruit set' or pollination of the crop than in years past.

 

Their berry operation differs from other PNW berry farms in that they have substantially reduced the use of pesticides over the past 5 years. Traditional fruit and berry operations rely heavily on pesticides. Their example is not based on scientific methods, but perhaps a correlation exits between local native bees and the use of pesticides.

 

 

[Gary_Yngve]

On Tuesday, Pennsylvania's Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff announced that the state would pour an additional $20,400 into research at Pennsylvania State University looking for the causes of CCD.

 

That's just one grad student for one year. Lame.

[G-spotter]

Maybe they went to Croatan

[billcoe]

More on the Honey - Pesticide front:

 

Link

 

 

"Don't let claims on honey labels dupe you

If it's made in America, it's likely not organic

 

By ANDREW SCHNEIDER

P-I SENIOR CORRESPONDENT

 

When it comes to sizing up the purity of the honey you buy, you're pretty much on your own.

 

 

 

HONEY LAUNDERING: A special report

 

· Country of origin no guarantee on cheap imports

· Antibiotic use could taint honey's reputation as a miracle drug

· U.S. honey producers don't have it easy, and some say industry board isn't helping

· Experts call for better U.S. standards for honey

· Honey isn't all sweetness, experts warn

 

You may be paying more for honey labeled "certified organic" or feel reassured by the "USDA Grade A" seal, but the truth is, there are few federal standards for honey, no government certification and no consequences for making false claims.

 

For American-made honey, the "organic" boast, experts say, is highly suspect. Beekeepers may be doing their part, but honeybees have a foraging range of several miles, exposing them to pesticides, fertilizers and pollutants on their way back to the hive.

 

And while they're required to put the country of origin on the label -- a fact that could help guide wary consumers -- some honey producers don't bother.

 

The head of one major honey company advises caution and warns that in the United States, there's confusion over label terminology and inconsistent enforcement of labeling laws.

 

"There is honey out there that is illegally and purposely mislabeled, an adulterated product that is very difficult to stop," said Dwight Stoller, chief executive of Kansas-based Golden Heritage Foods. "There's probably not a lot, but it's still a real issue, and consumers must be aware of that."

 

Unless shoppers buy honey from a farmers market, where they can talk with the person who raised the bees and bottled the honey, they're relying on what's printed on the label.

 

Major supermarkets offer dozens of different brands, sizes, types and flavors of honey for sale. Consumers might walk away with the finest-tasting, highest-quality honey there is. Or they could end up with an unlabeled blend, adulterated with impossible-to-detect cheap sweeteners or illegal antibiotics.

 

Part of this is because of the government's failure to define what true honey is, but the blame also goes to a handful of sleazy honey packers who buy and sell cut-rate foreign honey, which usually has little problem slipping past overstretched customs inspectors.

 

The Seattle P-I surveyed 60 honey products commonly sold in the Pacific Northwest and found glowing praises of healthfulness, sincere promises of quality and an endless selection of advertising adjectives touting honey as the true elixir.

 

"100% Pure." "U.S. Grade A Pure." "U.S. Grade 1." "America's Best Honey." "U.S. Choice." "Natural and Pure."

 

The list goes on and on, but it's mostly hype, experts say.

 

"If somebody puts 'U.S. Grade A' on there, who's going to say it isn't?" said Harriet Behar, outreach coordinator with the Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service. "There's no enforcement, so people can say whatever they want."

 

The government takes a minor role in the grading of honey. It's left entirely up to the industry.

 

Stoller was the only one willing to discuss it openly. His company, with beekeeping roots going back 90 years, is one of the nation's largest suppliers of honey to retail outlets, the food-processing industry and food service and restaurant-supply companies.

 

The government, he said, doesn't have the resources to set and enforce needed standards. And that leads to inaccurate or misleading labeling.

 

"Some packers just slap on whatever they feel like," he said. "Whatever they believe will attract the shopper to their product."

'Meaningless' claims

 

Where things really get sticky is the selling of "organic" honey -- sold in some form by every major chain.

 

Government, academic and industry experts insist that U.S. organic honey is a myth. With rare exceptions, this country is too developed and uses too many agricultural and industrial chemicals to allow for the production of organic honey.

 

"Like other foods from free-roaming, wild creatures, it is difficult -- and in some places impossible -- to assure that honey bees have not come in contact with prohibited substances, like pesticides," said Chuck Benbrook, chief scientist for the Organic Center, a national advocacy group for the research and promotion of organic food.

 

Recent U.S. Department of Agriculture research, he said, shows that the average hive contains traces of five or more pesticide residues.

 

Arthur Harvey of the International Association of Organic Inspectors, who doubles as a Maine beekeeper, said two factors must be considered when attempting to produce organic honey: what the beekeeper puts into the hive, such as chemicals or medication of any kind; and the location of the hive.

 

Can the bee fly to a place that can be a source of potential contamination?

 

Harvey shares the concerns of many that there are no real USDA standards for organic honey.

 

"What USDA has said is that you can certify any product as organic as long as you comply with existing regulation, but there are no regulations for honey," he said. "That means the green USDA organic sticker on honey is meaningless."

 

Across the globe, there are 30 different, wide-ranging certification standards for organic honey, but there's no way for inspectors to detect fraud, according to Harvey. The USDA, he said, has never levied a fine for a violation of organic rules -- for honey or any other product.

 

The Naturally Preferred honey brand, widely distributed by the Kroger supermarket chain, has a USDA seal on the front label. On the back, it boasts, "Certified Organic by the Washington State Department of Agriculture."

 

Not so, say state officials.

 

The Washington State Department of Agriculture doesn't certify honey "because we have no standards for organic honey," said agency spokesman Mike Louisell.

 

"It shouldn't have WSDA on its label," he said, "because we don't do it."

 

Jerry Hayes, chief of the apiary section for the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, said there are no organic standards for honey in the United States because honeybees forage in a 2 to 2 1/2-mile radius of their colonies.

 

"They're flying dust mops and will pick up unbelievable amounts of environmental contaminants," Hayes said.

 

Unlike most states, Florida has 15 full-time inspectors, a lab and other resources dedicated to ensuring honey quality, and the state is poised to do what the federal government hasn't -- pass a law defining what honey is.

 

Consumers stand to benefit, said Dr. Marion Aller, who heads Florida's food safety division.

 

"This will make enforcement of food safety easier," he said.

 

Aller said the honey industry supports the move because it's increasingly concerned that products touted as "pure" actually may be cut with other sugars or syrups.

 

Washington has no apiculture inspectors, largely because there isn't the budget for it.

 

Claudia Coles, food safety manager for the Agriculture Department, said her staff inspects Washington's honey producers for sanitary practices only, as it does with 1,700 other licensed food processors statewide.

 

"But the quality analysis of honey -- determining what's really in the bottle -- isn't something we have funding for," she said. "We struggle first with issues of E. coli, pathogens that make people sick with acute illnesses."

 

Some U.S. producers say they're confident offering certain foreign organic honeys to the public.

 

Mike Ingalls, president of Pure Foods Inc. in Sultan, recently stood beside a stack of brown steel drums in his warehouse. It's all marked "Organic Honey" and "Product of Argentina" -- and each drum carries a sticker with a tracking number.

 

"I can use that number to track the honey back to the supplier in Argentina and the specific beehives in latitude and longitude and degrees, minutes and seconds," he said, "so I can plot precisely where those hives were, and that they were at least six miles away from any cultivated crop."

 

While Canada also produces some authentic organic honey, Ingalls said that product is currently in short supply so he's had to turn to South American imports.

 

As for the domestic variety, he added: "We don't produce any organic honey in the United States."

Ultra-filtered honey

 

The industry hopes Florida's proposed honey standard is adopted by other states and the USDA.

 

If so, it may provide law enforcement the tools it needs to stop the flood of adulterated honey products.

 

Honey brokers and scientists say that not only is Chinese honey being laundered in other countries to avoid stiff U.S. tariffs and inspections, but also it's being sold as "malt sweetener," "blended syrup" and "rice syrup."

 

Florida's inspectors say some honey exported from China and India is put through an ultra-filtration process that is meant to remove contaminants. Honey is heavily diluted with water, then repeatedly boiled and filtered until it returns to a more natural consistency. Those who have tested and tasted the filtered brew said the process can completely remove all traces of contaminants, "including the color."

 

But there's a downside.

 

"In the process of taking out the chemicals, they also take out all the good qualities of the honey. What the consumer is left with is a very low-quality, sweet product -- but certainly not honey," said Mark Brady, president of the American Honey Producers Association.

 

"If it is cheap and packers can use it to blend into other dark, cheap honey to make it lighter in color and taste a tad better, the ignorant general consumer is none the wiser. Caveat emptor," he warned.

 

A warning consumers should be getting, but often don't, is a disclosure of where their honey came from.

 

Federal law requires that the country of origin be printed on food labels, but many companies offer no clue.

 

Nondisclosing companies range from small producers, such as Haggen Honey, distributed from Bellingham, and Anna's Honey, distributed by Seattle Gourmet Foods, to national distributors such as Target and Wal-Mart.

 

A Target spokeswoman wouldn't disclose where the discount retailer's honey came from. But she said the Market Pantry Grade A honey "meets all USDA and FDA inspection standards."

 

Linda Brown Blakley, a Wal-Mart senior spokeswoman, said it's her "understanding" that "if the honey is produced domestically, country of origin need not be included on the label."

 

However, USDA says honey is considered a "perishable agricultural commodity" and country of origin is required.

 

The label on Heins Organic Trail Honey, packaged by Pure Foods, errs on the side of overdisclosure, listing five countries of origin: U.S., Canada, China, Argentina and Australia. Ingalls, however, said that, too, isn't exactly right: He no longer imports from China and is just using up old labels.

'Tread carefully'

 

Besides its certified organic claims, Kroger's Naturally Preferred honey also carries the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.

 

That puzzles honey experts such as Behar.

 

"I don't know how Good Housekeeping can do this. They don't know anything about honey standards," she said.

 

Good Housekeeping -- a magazine owned by The Hearst Corp., the P-I's parent company -- confirmed that, in 2005, Naturally Preferred honey qualified for the seal, a status that expired last month.

 

A magazine spokesperson said food products considered for the seal of approval are evaluated for nutritional value based on "federal, standard guidelines."

 

The USDA, however, said it doesn't have such standards for honey.

 

Consumer advocates warn shoppers not to put too much stock in seals of approval -- or even claims that the supermarket product with "honey" in the name actually contains any.

 

Pringles' Honey Buttered Wheat Stix, for example, doesn't list honey among its 30-plus ingredients.

 

A company representative said the snack is made in Thailand and contains artificial honey flavoring, not real honey. "We call it 'honey butter' because that's what it tastes like," she said.

 

Honey Graham Crackers do contain honey -- it's on the ingredient list after sugar and high-fructose corn syrup.

 

Ditto for Nabisco's Honey Maid Grahams and 16 other brands of "honey" crackers, snacks and cereals the P-I inspected.

 

Paul van Westendorp, the provincial apiculturist for British Columbia's Ministry of Agriculture, said that in Canada, there are renewed calls to tighten up the regulations of honey labeling.

 

"The erosion of the label 'honey' has been going on for decades and beekeepers have often been frustrated by the big food processors such as General Mills, Kellogg's and many others for using honey in their product-line advertising while the product contains little or no honey," he said.

 

"Is the consumer getting cheated? That depends entirely on what the label says. The difference, of course, is that this type of product is typically sold to the ... uninformed consumer."

 

That practice is commonplace, said Diane Dunaway, who has studied honey marketing and is editor of Bee-scene magazine, produced for Canadian beekeepers in British Columbia and elsewhere.

 

"It's come down to consumers taking the time to read the ingredients list on the product label versus the marketing text," she said.

 

"The folks who make Pringles aren't the first to exploit the health-inspiring word 'honey' for profit. Companies like these and other food processors are relying on the dumbing down of consumer awareness," Dunaway said.

 

As warm and cuddly as the honeybee is to Madison Avenue, she warned food processors to tread carefully.

 

"Hell hath no fury like a soccer mom scorned!" "

[tvashtarkatena]

Weird. My batavian broadleaf endive survived the past two weeks uncovered. You could grow that shit on Mars.

 

Anyone been able to attract mason bees to their place? I've had two nests made of doug fir protected under the eaves for a year now, but so far no tenants. There's plenty for them to pollinate nearby.

 

As an aside, there is no real nutritional difference , pound for pound, between eating high fructose corn syrup, sugar, or honey. Honey production is easier on the environment than the other two, of course.

 

 

Edited January 2, 2009 by tvashtarkatena

[prole]

Just another sad example of the failure of the big government paradigm.

[pc313]

Buy local pure honey,it may cost more but if your so worried about it being pure organic its the way to go. My friend in Vancouver Wa. has 5 acres of fruit trees,small vegetable garden all organic,and 20 beehives and sells to small stores and pre-orders from local families for top dollar. His Wife and him both work full time and have two kids,so it just a hobby but brings in a few bucks each year that is going in to a College fund,plus cuts his food bill. I've seen his Honey with his Name on it at small stores though out Clark Co. before i met him in 96, and was invited over for a beer and seen the Beehives and asked whats up with the Bees,and he said he wanted good food for his kids and sold the extra for top dollar and also raised his owen Beef,hogs,goats,and chickens at his dads place with his brother and had grown up on a farm!