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Tue, 25 Sep 2007 09:47:27 -0400 |
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Greetings Folks:
Peter astutely quotes, "However, his warning is that the man whose sole
aim is the accumulation of wealth would better let bees alone; but all bee
keepers agree that health, pleasure and a comfortable living are found in
intelligently raising honeybees."
In a similar vein, Rachel Carson, too, warns against the human obsession
to BEND the nature, ultimately, to our own demise:
"Under prmitive agricultural conditions the farmer had few insect [or
mite] problems. These arose with the intensification of agriculture—-the
devotion of immense acreages to a single crop [such as almonds]. Such a
system set the stage for explosive increases in specific insect [or mite]
populations. Single-crop farming does not take advantage of the
principles by which nature works; it is agriculture as an engineer might
conceive it to be. Nature has introduced great variety into the
landscape, but man has displayed a passion for simplifying it. Thus he
undoes the built-in checks and balances by which nature holds the species
within bounds. One important natural check is a limit on the amount of
suitable habitat for each species. Obviously then, an insect [or a mite]
that lives on wheat [honey bees] can build up its population to much
higher levels on a farm devoted to wheat [monocrop pollination] than on
one in which wheat is intermingled with other crops to which the insect is
not adapted"(Silent Spring 10; emphases are mine).
Just a thought, as the bee-season grinds down gradually to a halt.
Yoon
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