Viscount Ridley’s speech in the House of Lords on the Bee Population Scare, 19 June 2018
Date 20/06/18
My Lords, like others, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Bloomfield on securing this debate and join her in paying tribute to the Hymenoptera and other pollinators. I declare my interest as the owner of a farm. Actually, this is a bit of a humble brag of a declaration because I am proud of having created, at my own expense, the largest new wildflower meadow in the north-east of England — about 50 acres. Last week it was a riot of honey bees, bumble bees, solitary bees, hoverflies and butterflies, feasting on vetch, trefoil, daisies, buttercups and other flowers. It was indeed, as the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, said, a blooming field. There you go.
Our farm and others that I know have also started creating flower-rich margins around arable fields as part of high-level stewardship schemes. That is my first point: farmers are doing a lot for pollinators these days, certainly much more than they once did. That is a huge change from 10 years ago, and one on which we can surely build.
Yet we are told that bees especially are in peril and that farmers are, at least in part, the cause of that peril. Is this true? Let us start with honey bees. Globally, there have never been more hives of honey bees; there are about 90 million in the world compared with about 60 million 50 years ago. In Europe and the UK, too, we are near to a record number of hives. There are of course continuing problems with Varroa mites, as the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, said, and Nosema and other pests, but there is no evidence of a decline in honey bees. It is true that there was colony collapse disorder 12 years ago, mostly in the United States, but it was a brief episode and is now reckoned to have been something to do with diseases or pests, not farming........To Read More....
My Take - When are we going to get passed this idea honey bees are doomed? It's been a lie from the begining. CCD isn't anything new. I've outlined in Presidential Pollinator Protection: Myths, Facts and Hyperbole how many times in the past this has occured and the different names that were used to describe this cyclical occurance. We need to stop pandering to this lie and attack the liars.
Wow!
What a novel idea - defend ourselves vigorously with the truth. Does that present our industry in a good light? I would think so since light and truth have been linked over and over again. Lux et veritas (Light and Truth)is the motto of Yale University, although I'm not sure they believe that.
The real question is this: Do we believe that?
I believe that the attacks on the disappearance of the bees is an attempt to add credibility to the "global warming" mythology; anything that will aid in people giving the government more money to do with as they see fit...other than actually fighting global warming, that is! GLobalk wamring an dcooling is caused by volcanic activity in mini-ice age periods and solar cycles in full-blown ice age cycles.
ReplyDeleteDan Britt, Ph.D., was a person with a business B.S. who decided that he wanted a Masters in geology, then later went on to earn a Ph.D. in astonomy; he was the graduate assistant who cut and prepared the Greenland ice core samples during his university employemnt as a GA and oversaw the temperature readings as well; when presented by such a unexpected range of temperatures and temperature oscillations in his own readings, the core samples were twice more prepared and read by him and his superiors; with the same chaotic range of results over the ages of earth's temperature cycles!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yze1YAz_LYM
However, even with this 'truth' of us just coming out of what Dr. Britt calls a "warm part of a general cooling period (which we are still in)", the glabal warming cabal still uses any tactic it can to try to convince the world that we are all doomed!
From an apiarist, I remain Yours Truly, J. Duane Robinson
Thanks for your interest and I agree completely.
ReplyDeleteRich