Greetikngs Folks:

First of all, the interesting article has been penned by an imaginative 
(full of fillers), investigative journalist, not even a green hand in “bee-
having,” for this type of article is often given to a freelancer 
(typically a “Reporter at Large” in The New Yorker) as a writing 
assignment, a dabbler that pokes at a controversial issue for mass-
consumption and money.  Otherwise it should have appeared as a 
*scientific* article in, say, Nature, with Work Cited pages and 
Bibliography.  None of that but anecdotes and interviews here.  (Elvis’ 
fans, when *interviewed*, will swear the King is still alive and kicking!)

Thus, one should not jump to a conclusion simply because the author is an 
excellent observer; rather, the writer, as she notes, is not an expert 
with years of *practical* beekeeping experience.  The situation might be 
different with a scientist, say a microbiologist, who examines a pathogen, 
for examining a pathogen(s) has been the focus of his/her life.  The same 
journalist, in fact, can write another compelling article on the Demise of 
Bumble Bees in America, War in Iraq, or Intelligent Falling Theory for 
that matter, but the List members should be mindful that “How likely is it 
that an unknown journalist can single-handedly identify the font et origo 
of CCD pathogen when ‘researchers’ and ‘scientists’ so far cannot?”

The article typifies another media sensation: CCD is sensational, thus a 
good seller.

Couched in Latinate nomenclature and technical jargons, the article proves 
that the writer had done her homework for the assignment; for example, she 
fastidiously and meticulously, in Prufrockian fashion, remembers to record 
Latinate scientific names for many bees and technical jargons, such 
as “metagenomic analysis” to establish what College Freshmen Composition I 
class calls, “the Writer’s Authority,” a vital component in rhetoric that 
helps the reader to trust the author.   And she does a good job, proving 
that she did her homework, indeed.  Any arm-chair philosopher, however, 
could have given this type of “padding” with fillers.  In practical 
matters, however, she fails to convince me that she has any practical 
experience of beekeeping, which highlights the entertainment value of the 
article, and never scientific.  Here are two examples, among others:

“On my return home, I relayed what I’d learned to my husband. I told him I 
was opposed to the nail approach, and he said he was opposed to an 
electric fence. Ultimately, we settled on a third option, not recommended 
by anyone. We ran a wire cable between two trees, about twenty feet off 
the ground, and attached a pulley to it. Then we mounted the hive on a 
platform that could be raised and lowered by rope.”

Hardly an American Inventor.  A hanging hive, IMHO, is not ingenuity but 
the exact blooming opposite; surely, one can expect something like this 
from Harry Potter, an excellent childrens’ book I will never bother.  No 
green-hand in beekeeping would entertain such impracticality, however, let 
alone the danger its fall might cause, not to humans, mind you, but to the 
bees and the queen, in particular.  (The more moving parts, the more 
problems)

Another example attesting that this is just a journalistic report appears 
in the following:

“As for my honeybees, they seem to be doing fine. After their unfortunate 
fall, I was worried that the queen might have been crushed or perhaps 
suffocated by her nervous attendants, an accident known as ‘balling’.”

I have never seen “attendants” (from the same hive) BALL a queen in the 
way the author describes here, regardless of the circumstance, which 
convinces me that she does not seem to understand the term she uses so 
broadly.  On the contrary, the queen pheromon has a calming effect on 
attendants and workers as it forces them into a cohesive unit; in an 
earlier episode, she did describe how, after the bear attack, the 
remaining bees clustered, presumably with a queen.  The said fall, in this 
incident, would not change the smell of queen pheromon although the 
workers might fire off alarm bells, which is not likely to trigger a 
regicide, a tremendous leap of logic.

Her credit, I must confess, is that once again she brought the issues of 
CCD to the national forefront, regardless, stiring up the mud a bit 
thicker, reducing the clarity.

YSK
YSK HONEY FARM
OK

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