"This month my goal is to learn about the local bee community and how to my yard more welcoming for bees and other pollinating insects."
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THIS WEEK
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Sarah's actions
Action Track: Building Resilience
Earth Day Art Project
Complete an art project using found objects, waste and other materials you have at home. Share what you create on the Virtual Earth Day Art Show at AVA Gallery.
UNCOMPLETED
ONE-TIME ACTION
Wildlife
Support Pollinators
At least 30% of crops and 90% of flowering plants rely on pollinators, including monarch butterflies, to produce fruit. I will spend 30 minutes researching which plants support local native pollinators and plant some in my yard.
UNCOMPLETED
ONE-TIME ACTION
Action Track: Building Resilience
Watch a Documentary about Food Sovereignty
I will watch 2 documentary(ies) about food sovereignty: the right of local peoples to control their own food systems including markets, ecological resources, food cultures and production methods.
UNCOMPLETED
ONE-TIME ACTION
Action Track: Building Resilience
#onethingforearth Photo & Video Challenge
The purpose of the challenge is for people to record a short video or take photos of themselves doing one thing that is good for the earth, then in the video, challenge their family, friends and others to do their own video. People who accept the challenge should post the videos on any or all of their social media platforms (Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter) and use the hashtag #OneThing4Earth and tag NHDES (@NHDES for Twitter; @NHenvironmentalservices for Facebook and Instagram)
The worldwide response to the coronavirus pandemic is and should be all of our priorities. NHDES hopes that a social media-based video challenge, like the #OneThing4Earth, will provide people practicing social distancing with a way to recognize the importance of Earth Day. You do not have to be challenged to participate, but remember in your video to challenge your friends, family, coworkers and others to join in.
This challenge was created by the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services (NHDES).
This months National Geographic main article is about the declining bug rate all over the world. In the article "Where have all the Insects Gone," by Elizabeth Kolbert, she states, "If humans were to suddenly disappear, biologist Edward O. Willson.....the Earth would regenerated back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed 10,000 years ago." But"If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into Chaos." I leave this as my last post this month for you to ponder and hope you will find a way to save a bug today.
It is not just bee's that are endangered! The research, the first global review of its kind, looked at 73 historical reports on insect declines around the world and found the total mass of all insects on the planets is decreasing by 2.5% per year.
If this trend continues unabated, the Earth may not have any insects at all by 2119.
"In 10 years you will have a quarter less, in 50 years only half left and in 100 years you will have none," Francisco Sanchez-Bayo, a study coauthor and researcher at the University of Sydney, told The Guardian.
This is a great article. One fact that sicks out in my head is that one colony of bee's (25,000) can pollinate 250 MILLION flowers in one day. They are truly Busy Bee's https://www.earthday.org/fact-sheet-bees/
CCD or Colony Collapse Disorder in a phenomenon that is happening in Bee Farms all over the world. https://www.epa.gov/pollinator-protection/colony-collapse-disorder " Scientists had struggled to find the trigger for so-called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) that has wiped out an estimated 10 million beehives, worth $2 billion, over the past six years".Jul 24, 2013 HOLY SMOKES!! These statistics are staggering.
Word of the day is Apiarist. An apiarist is a professional bee keeper. Some can handle up to 500 bee hives. An Apiarist can be hired by a farm, transports their hives to its location at night when the bees are sleeping and then let nature takes is course and have the bees pollinate the crops.
New Hampshire is also home to the "Carpenter bees come in two varieties, large (15-20 mm) and small (5-9 mm). Carpenter bees received their name for their nesting habit of living in dead wood" Wild Bees of New Hampshire, Sandra Rehan
Evelyn (lyn) Swett 4/20/2020 5:32 AM
Chris Kane 4/24/2020 8:19 AM
