#Pnw

[m0ssym0rgue]

[silly420princess]

This is home for me, and I miss it so teribbly. Everyday I ache for the trees

Pacific Northwest mood

elliothawkey

[orofeaiel]

Creek - Kitsap County, WA

[seabeck]

Misty morning lake

[pnw-forest-side]

Got driftwood?

Where the forest meets the sea - Ruby Beach, Olympic National Park

[northernpintail]

Eeeeh

[elegantpersoncreation]

Mount Baker at sunset, Washington state.. 🔥

[maureen2musings]

Into the mist of Mt. Rainier

elliothawkey

[seabeck]

Angry seas

[peloblancophoto]

Pond on the Pacific Crest Trail

[growingwildgardens]

This is horrifying news that I hope we figure out the cause of, AND this is not a call for doom and hopelessness!!

-Over the past decade honeybees have had 40%-50% loss per season. This is a sudden jump, to nearly twice that number at 70-80%, and that is NOT sustainable BUT luckily

-We know the cause of at least a large percentage of the regular losses!!! Pesticides!!! Overused by neighbors who don't understand their potency and hate anything that isn't grass, and by farmers who don't have the means or interest in investing in Integrated Pest Management and diversifying their crops, meaning

-At least one answer to get that number back down is CLEAR and something the worst monopolies of the ag industry will now have weighing heavily on their decisions - to choose between a pollinating force that triples harvests or an outdated pesticide that we have a dozen alternative methods for.

-While this is very bad news for almond harvests, of which the transportation of bees to and from is another big part of the problem via spreading drug-resistant varoa mites, not all food needs massive levels of cross pollination (or even pollinators besides wind) and MUCH of our food crops (peppers beans tomatoes potatoes squashes) are native to North America, meaning

-THIS IS THE TIME IF THERE EVER WAS ONE TO INVEST IN AND SAVE NATIVE BEES AND THEIR HABITATS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There are THOUSANDS of native bee species in North America, and thousands more other pollinators that get overlooked - hummingbirds and bats, types of flies and wasps, even mosquitoes. Some native bees have extremely specific diets, but some are much more generalist!! They can, and already do, carry the load of some of our crop pollination, ESPECIALLY in places where they're given habitat to feed, reproduce, and overwinter.

-You can start this process as easily as leaving your dead stems and leaves in place until temperatures are consistently above 50 degrees in the spring, planting native flowers, and/or leaving strips of lawn unmown in early spring for early food sources.

-You can also talk! To! Your! Neighbors!!! Explain why lawns suck, explain how far pesticide travels and effects everything around it, explain why planting native and leaving sticks and leaves helps! I'll be talking about all of that more later - some may not listen, but even one or two people make a big difference

This is scary news!!! But it's a worsening of an existing issue people have been working on (and others have continued to exacerbate knowingly) for a decade now.

You have power here, you CAN save the bees. They just may not All be the European honeybees we've over-relied on for centuries. Food production is not going to fall apart overnight, this is just another sign if you've been needing one to start a local garden (no matter how small) and plant native.

Tldr: Bees need help, but you can change things by campaigning against pesticide usage, planting native, and learning how to leave habitat for our pollinators. See OSU's resources on pollinators for ideas and where to get started locally.

https://extension.oregonstate.edu/gardening/pollinators

CBS Saturday Morning

Millions of bees have died this year. It's "the worst bee loss in recorded history," one beekeeper says.

The U.S. beekeeping industry is in crisis over the shocking and unexplained deaths of hundreds of millions of bees over the last eight months. 

It's an unfolding disaster for the industry. Blake Shook, one of the nation's top beekeepers, has found tens of thousands of dead insects at his businesses. He said that he's never seen losses like this. 

"The data is showing us this is the worst bee loss in recorded history," Shook told "CBS Saturday Morning." 

Researchers are struggling to understand what's causing the deaths. 

Juliana Rangel, an entomologist at Texas A&M University, has been studying bee hives in her lab. There are a few potential explanations, she said, including changing habitats and weather patterns. But there's no certain answer, she said. 

Bees play a critical role in U.S. food production. In addition to making honey, they pollinate 75% of the fruits, nuts and vegetables grown in the U.S. That's $15 billion worth of crops. Shook said the current losses are unsustainable. 

"If this is a multi-year thing, it'll change the way we consume food in the United States," Shook said. "If we lose 80% of our bees every year, the industry cannot survive, which means we cannot pollinate at the scale that we need to produce food in the United States." 

One example is almonds. With honeybees pollinating them, almond trees produce two to three thousand pounds of almonds per acre, Shook said. Without that pollination, almond trees produce only 200 pounds of nuts per acre. 

"There is no almond crop without honeybees," Shook said. 

One of Shook's businesses focuses on rebuilding dead hives. He's receiving an alarming number of those hives, he said, from commercial operations across the country. Beekeeping groups say 25% of those commercial operations may be put out of business by year's end because of the losses. 

"I got a call from a friend who had 20,000 beehives at the start of the winter, and he's at less than 1,000. He said 'This is it, I'm done.' I've had far too many of those calls in the last few weeks," Shook said. "It's not just a beekeeper issue. This is a national food security issue." 

[oddestishottest]

04/04/25

[monstermonger]

I stumbled across a photo (by Lindy Pollard) that fantastically mirrors a little dragon I drew a few years ago.... I can't get over this...

[thefinalcrownofthorns]

abandoned grain elevator, highway 195 through the palouse in wa. // dec. 2024

[orofeaiel]

Magical Spot on the River