Bill Truesdell said:

> To attack this showing of the movie makes no sense and only helps
> promote it- like "banned in Boston" assured the success of a bad movie.

Keith Malone said

> I agree with Bill, It's just Hollywood, nothing to get to excited about.

Beekeepers as a whole have proven that they are 100% clue-free about
public relations, image management, and related issues.  Movies have
a way of molding public "knowledge" and opinion about nearly everything.

Sadly, the general public is simply not taught to think clearly,
and (at least in the US) poorly educated about "science".  I am
participating in a long-term project of a large number of members
of the National Academy of Sciences to create a science text for
secondary schools titled "Everything You Know Is A Lie".  The title
is very appropriate, since pop culture has become the only "common
knowledge" shared in modern society.

  As an example, I challenge everyone reading this to send me a brief
  e-mail explaining why we have one moon, but two high tides per day.
  (As a hint, I should point out that EVERY science textbook currently
  published and EVERY web page that Google finds gets it very wrong,
  something I ranted about a while ago in a boring physics journal read
  only by physicists. The sad thing is that the "correct answer" has not
  changed one bit since Isaac Newton.)

  If I get an answer that refers even obliquely to the key critical factor,
  I will not only announce it here, but also send the winner a small prize -
  (I was cleaning the storeroom, and found several sets of mint-condition
  unassembled deep frames.  We don't use deeps anymore.)

"How we got here" is due solely to the complete lack of response
to a multitude of tiny insults and misleading "factoids" about bees
promulgated by the press and popular culture.

"Where we are now" includes:

1)  The restoration of funding for the USDA Bee Labs was labeled "pork"
    by more than one newspaper.  Never mind that the USDA spends much more
    on research about things like grass for golf courses and lawns, "crops"
    with only visual value.

2)  Honey price supports are also considered "pork".  Strange that price
    supports for pork are somehow not considered "pork".

3)  Most people can identify different types of hummingbirds and butterflies,
    but few can tell a bee from a wasp.  People buy hummingbird feeders in
    great numbers and plant enough butterfly gardens to create multi-million
    dollar markets for seeds and plants, but somehow, bees lack the public
    relations machine behind butterflies and hummingbirds.

4)  The number of people who think that a bee away from the hive is flying
around
    looking for someone to sting constantly amazes me.  Even the owner of a
health
    food store chain that buys honey and pollen from me asked me about this last

    week! (Time to do the old demo with a drop of honey in the palm of my hand
to
    show that foraging bees are, ummm, FORAGING...)

5)  Even most beekeepers and their organizations in the US can't be bothered
    to take an interest in protecting their livelihood from pests and diseases
    by supporting the stance of the scientists at the USDA ARS, who strongly
    objected to the imports of queens and packages into the USA without
    port-of-entry inspection.  Many beekeepers appear to think that pests and
    diseases will "get here anyway", or something else equally mythological.

In short, beekeeping is bleeding to death from millions of "paper cuts".
Yes, any one cut is not worth bothering about, but the total can be fatal.

What happens after what comes next is a growing trend toward the
recently-mentioned
"Aurora, Colorado" situation, where otherwise rational people consider "banning"
beekeeping.  I went to the trouble to send a note to one of the Aurora
councilmen,
suggesting that the council required subject-matter expertise in the form of a
degreed entomologist or agricultural extension representative to review the
claims
made by the anti-bee faction, and separate fact from fiction.

His response to me was:

        "I'm afraid that the "government knows best"
      attitude may prevail here..."

And THIS is a perfect example of why "preemptive public relations" is so
critical.
People who don't know ANYTHING about bees can and will make decisions that
affect
beekeeping in very basic ways.  Even if appeals to reason and rational thinking
are made, these appeals may be ignored by a group that "thinks they know
better".
What they "think" consists mostly of myths and half-truths gleaned from popular
culture.  The result is that myth is given equal weight with fact in Aurora
Colorado,
and in many other places.  There lies the collapse of Civilization.

When epistemology bumps into entomology, even many beekeepers "don't know what
they know or how they know it", and are operating on misinformation.  The
archives
of this list alone can easily yield many examples of "information" that is not
only
wrong, but actually harmful to bees if implemented.  (Which is why some of the
messages in the "Bee-L archives" need to be moved over to a stand-alone archive
of "UNinformed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology".
Sort of a "beekeeping blooper reel".)

And yeah, the internet has made the problem worse, rather than better.
The great thing about the internet is that the number of web pages
continues to grow exponentially.  The horrible thing about the
internet is that the number of web pages continues to grow exponentially.

While the number web pages grows exponentially,
the body of verified fact grows very slowly.


        jim (curing fuzzy thinking since "45s" were music, not guns)

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
-- Visit www.honeybeeworld.com/BEE-L for rules, FAQ and  other info ---
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::