Every third bite...

The Earthly Gardener by Bobbi A. Chukran
March 22, 2007

Mornin' earthly gardeners!

Just ran across this quote about the disappearing bees in the My Dog’s Nose blog. Experts have a name for the disappearing bee thing now….Colony Collapse Disorder. The blog author has an opinion that the bees don’t like the genetically modified plants out there. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if that’s not a correct assumption.

“Every third bite we consume in our diet is dependent on a honeybee to pollinate that food,” said Zac Browning, vice president of the American Beekeeping Federation. Every three bites….think about that for a minute.

Many people have written to me, saying that they’d keep bees if they weren’t allergic to them. This can be a problem for many folks. As far as I know, I’m not allergic to bee stings (although I am allergic to everything else in the world), and I will truthfully say that I work amongst them everyday in the garden and have never been stung. Honeybees are usually docile creatures, unless you happen to disturb their nest. One thing to remember, never swat at a bee!

This story is “burnin’ up the wires” so to speak, and it should. It’s an important issue for all of us.

We’re getting lots of nice, soft spring rains. We need it badly, although it’s too wet in the garden to plant much. I get around that by digging a hole, filling it with slightly moist potting soil, then smoothing that over. That way, the roots aren’t over-saturated. That’s one advantage of growing in raised beds; they drain fairly fast and are a bit drier than the surrounding soil.

dig it!

bobbi c.
Copyright ©2007 by Bobbi A. Chukran. All rights reserved.