July 2009 Archives

I've followed the honey bee crisis known as "colony collapse disorder" because of their close connection with our food supply, with nature, and because bees are one of the few "domesticated" insects in our economy.

Science is finally making headway on what is causing the die off of complete hives of bees.

Penn State researchers worked with the National Science Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Agricultural Marketing Service that already tests commodities such as milk and fruits and vegetables.

Honey has not regularly been analyzed, and bee pollen was not a commodity and so was not analyzed at all. The researchers decided to use types of screening the lab uses for milk and apples, which looks at over 170 pesticides. What they found is quite astounding to me... because of what it says about our agricultural practices.

All of the bees tested showed at least 1 pesticide and pollen averaged 6 pesticides with as many as 31 in a sample.

Honeycomb may contain pesticides applied years ago.

Scientists do not know that these chemicals have anything to do with colony collapse disorder, but scientists have concluded that these pesticides are definitely stressors. Penn State's Dr. Maryann Frazier say, "Pesticides alone have not shown they are the cause of CCD. We believe that it is a combination of a variety of factors, possibly including mites, viruses and pesticides."

While beekeepers will have a difficult time controlling pesticide exposure outside the hive, the Penn State researchers tested a method using gamma radiation for reducing the chemical load in beeswax and they found that irradiation broke down about 50% of the acaricides, pesticides that kill mites.

Read all the details at the Environment News Service.

The survey's preliminary findings suggest agritourism can indeed be a profitable supplement to a farm or ranch business. Agricultural tourism allows travelers a chance to visit working farms and ranches and can include experiences such as picking their own fruit, visiting a petting zoo, touring a vineyard, buying fresh produce or riding horses. Small farms made up more than two-thirds of the farms that reported offering agritourism.

"We are excited to find that agritourism really seems to work for a lot of small farms," said Penny Leff, statewide agritourism coordinator for the UC Small Farm Program. "Our results also show that agritourism is primarily local. More than 85 percent of reported visitors were from California."

Most agritourism operators who responded to the survey reported their agritourism businesses generated some profit. A majority said they are planning to expand or diversify their agritourism offerings over the next five years. In addition, 22 percent of agritourism operators reported more than $100,000 in agritourism receipts for 2008.

The survey was conducted by a group of researchers from University of California Cooperative Extension and the UC Small Farm Program, with funding from the California Communities Program. Researchers first mailed questionnaires in January to nearly 2,000 potential agritourism operators in every California county.