To Bee-L people:
 
   Steve Buchmann wrote (in part --- in response to a potential "brushfire"):
 
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"I was simply trying to explain to [the Arizona Daily Star reporter] (they
don't like long answers) that southern Arizona has more native bees (about
1,200 species) than anywhere else on the planet and that those bees visit
and pollinate a lot of crops and wildland plants. Also explained that honey
bees are generalists and do a lot of flower-visiting and pollinating. Of
course, even though honey bees are "Jills" of all trades, they don't visit
certain nectarless flowers (e.g. tomato blossoms) for which, we thankfully
have bumblebees. The reporter asked me bluntly whether pollination would be
eliminated if all the honey bees were somehow (obviously this is impossible
and ill-advised) removed from the Tucson city limits. I told him no, you
wouldn't stop all the pollination, because of the rich bee biodiversity in
this area. He took it from there and made some wrong-headed statements."
 
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   Let me echo that statement by Dr. Buchmann.  Most often I dread an
upcoming interview with a reporter.  All too often (with an extremely
limited expertise and biases) reporters come into an interview with a
particular slant already locked into the pending story.  Furthermore, their
deadline always seems to be "yesterday," which means that they don't want
(or have time) to do extensive revisions of the thrust they already had in
mind.
 
   With that in mind, beekeepers, please take what you read in newspapers
and magazines with a good dose of salt.  In this day of electronic mail, a
brushfire can quickly become a firestorm before the person interviewed can
have a chance to correct the inaccuracies already in print.
 
   (I know, because I have been in the spot a good many times this past few
decades --- both before and after the advent of electronic mail.)
 
                                                                Adrian
 
Adrian M. Wenner                    (805) 963-8508 (home phone)
967 Garcia Road                     (805) 893-8062  (UCSB FAX)
Santa Barbara, CA  93106
 
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*
*     "The [scientist] within the [thought] collective is never, or hardly
ever,     *
*      conscious of the prevailing thought style, which almost always
exerts an      *
*      absolutely compulsive force upon his thinking and with which it is
not        *
*      possible to be at variance."
*
*                                                      Ludwik Fleck (1935;
1979)     *
*
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