Beautify America -- May 19, 2015; Remember, There Are More Bee Hives This Year Than Last Year

Don sent me this link; I probably would have missed it. The AP is reporting that President Obama will rush to rescue America's bees:

The Obama administration hopes to save the bees by feeding them better.

A new federal plan aims to reverse America's declining honeybee and monarch butterfly populations by making millions of acres of federal land more bee-friendly, spending millions of dollars more on research and considering the use of fewer pesticides.

While putting different type of landscapes along highways, federal housing projects and elsewhere may not sound like much in terms of action, several bee scientists told The Associated Press that this a huge move.

They say it may help pollinators that are starving because so much of the American landscape has been converted to lawns and corn that don't provide foraging areas for bees. 

It's a Rudyard Kipling "just so" story. Elementary school teachers will love sharing this with their young naive students.

I responded to Don:

Thank you, great story. This is one of those political feel-good stories -- there are multiple causes -- all that corn used for ethanol might be one reason, but bee keepers wouldn't put their bees where corn fields are.

So, in a sense there may be fewer acres for bee-friendly food, but I've never gotten the feeling there were too many bees, too little bee-friendly food. I could be wrong.

Bee keepers lost 40% of their hives due to bee deaths/hives (colonies) completely dying off. They did not die off for lack of food (if they did, their bee keepers are culpable). An entire colony dying off is probably due to mites, minimally due to pesticides. Almond growers depending on pollinators would work closely with beekeepers to make sure they use no pesticides or minimize use of pesticides when the bees are active or use pesticides safe for bees.

But as noted in the blog earlier from a linked article, there are more hives this year than last year. Now, that I understand the story better, I'm not concerned about the bees; they will do just fine. But I find the bee story and the bees very fascinating and will continue to follow the story and post notes on the story.

By the way, President Obama is taking a page from Lady Bird Johnson's playbook to beautify America, where bluebonnets and other wild flowers along Texas highways are legendary. From PBS:

"In a nutshell, her program is, 'masses of flowers where masses pass.' Water, lights and color -- mass of flowers -- those things spell beautification to her," Lady Bird wrote in her diary after a meeting.

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Prattville, AL, Waffle House

Our younger daughter sent me this story, from the Waffle House we used to go to when we lived in Prattville, AL:

The faith of a little boy was on full display at the Waffle House at the Prattville-Millbrook exit one night a few weeks ago. It's the story of 5-year-old Josiah Duncan and his mom, Ava Faulk.

"We saw a man who was dirty holding a bag with his bike outside," Faulk recalled.
Josiah was so troubled by the man's appearance, he started peppering his mom with questions.

"He's homeless," the little boy's mother explained. "What does that mean?" he responded. "And I said, ""Well, that means he doesn't have a home,"" Mom continued.

And apparently, the unnamed man didn't have any friends to lean on, either.

Faulk wrote an email to WSFA 12 News about her son's actions, and it included many of the questions the young child had. "Where is his house? Where is his family? Where does he keep his groceries?" But mom said one thing troubled him above all. 

"He didn't have any food," little Duncan explained. Josiah felt the urge to do something.

He insisted on his mom buying the stranger a good meal. She listened, and then obliged.

"He came in and sat down, and nobody really waited on him," Faulk explained. "So Josiah jumped up and asked him if he needed a menu because you can't order without one." 

The man insisted on a cheap hamburger to start, but he was assured he could have anything he wanted. He got the works.

"Can I have bacon?" Faulk remembers him asking, "And I told him get as much bacon you want."

No, we did not go to Waffle House often.

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Getting Ready for Grilling Later This Afternoon

Bloomberg is reporting:

At the supermarket, bacon has slumped 25 percent in the past year, to $4.12 a pound this week, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data. Wholesale pork bellies, the cut of meat used to make bacon slices, touched a five-year low in April and now cost 45 percent less than a year ago.

Such discounts have brought out buyers in droves. Pre-cooked and raw bacon is flying off the slicers at Sugar Creek Packing Co., the Washington Court House, Ohio-based company that processes more than 2 billion rashers a year for grocery stores, restaurants and institutions like hospitals and schools.

No matter how hard it rains this afternoon, grilling will go on.