Please Help A Local Boy Scout by Signing an On-Line Petition

[NeilV]

Hey everybody,

I am just getting into chickens (pick them up one week from today, to be exact) but I have been a beekeeper for several years.

There is a local 13 year old boyscout from Oklahoma who is trying to get boy scouts to reinstated the Beekeeping Merit Badge. As you probably know, honeybees and beekeeping are important to the food supply. There needs to be a way to expose more young people to beekeeping. Reinstating the merit badge would be good for scouts and for bees and for everybody else.

It would literally take a few seconds to help. Please go to this site and sign the Petition:

http://www.experienceproject.com/beepetition

Also, if you don't mind, please forward information about this petition to all of your contacts and friends.

Thanks


Neil

 

[horsejody]

I signed it.

 

[EweSheep]

Done!

 

[rebelcowboysnb]

Quote:
Nothing ageist what you are doing but I question that statement......

Honey bees are not native to the Americas an pollination happened just fine before we imported "white mans flys"(supposed Native American term) here. Im trying to get a few hives started myself. For the fun of it.... My garden grows just fine without them.

 

[PotterWatch]

Quote:
Nothing ageist what you are doing but I question that statement......

Honey bees are not native to the Americas an pollination happened just fine before we imported "white mans flys"(supposed Native American term) here. Im trying to get a few hives started myself. For the fun of it.... My garden grows just fine without them.

They may not be necessary for all plants, but they are an important part of our food supply as it is today.


I signed it!

 

[CoopCrazy]

I singed .. i think its awesoem that lil boy is trying to have a positive effect o the world around him.. Good for him ..

 

[NeilV]

Rebelcowboy,

You will have fun keeping bees. I get a lot out of it.

Honeybees are not native species, and there are lots of other native pollinators. However, that does not mean that honeybees are not really critical to our current agriculture system. There are three basic reasons why honeybees are so critical.

First, many of the crops and forage plants that we rely upon for food also are imported. If you look at your dinner plate or your fruit basket, most of what you are eating are non-native plants. Many of those plants are pollinated by honeybees. (Of course, a lot of food plants don't need honeybees for polination, including many grain crops and plants in the nightshade family like tomatoes plus many many more.).

However it is estimated that one in three bites of food you eat has some connection to pollination. The most obvious situation is where the food is the fruit of the plant (apples, almonds, cucumbers, squash, blueberries, cranberries, etc.). In some cases, the pollination is needed to make the seed for the plant that people eath (such as lettuce and carrots), even if the food part is not the fruit. Also, pollination is needed to make seed for some forage crops that are fed to livestock (such as alfalfa and clover). It should be noted that nearly all, if not all, of these plant species are also imported.

Second, honeybees are different than most other pollinators in that there are a BUNCH of them in a hive. There may be 60,000 individual bees in a strong hive. In modern agriculture, there are large plantings that all have to be pollinated at once. The whole situation just ain't natural at all. For example, native pollinators can't keep up with a large apple or almond orchard. By contrast, the local pollinators often can keep up with a regular garden, although having bees will increase yields on some plants even in that setting.

Third, agriculture itself often makes it impossible for there to be enough native pollinators around. The heavily sprayed apple orchard for example, is just not a good place for native pollinators to live most of the time. They have to move in a buch of hives during the bloom and then get the hives out of there.

We would not starve to death without honeybees, but our food choices would dwindle quite a bit, particularly in the fruit and vegetable departments.

Not wanting to give a lecture (really, I promise) and don't want this thread to go off topic, but just wanted to point out the real importance of beekeeping.

Have fun with your bees,

Neil

P.S. I appreciate the responses on this thread. I personally know the involved Scout, Christopher Stowell, and he is a great kid. If anybody signs the Petition, please post on here to say so. Christopher's goal is to create a grass-roots campaign, and your help is invaluable.

 

[turney31]

I signed, this is a worthy cause. Good for you to help him out.

Micah

 

[greeneggsnham]

Signed it!

 

[NeilV]

Thanks everybody. If anybody else would sign the petition, it would be appreciated.