> Erin's uncle has been sugaring for over 40 years an hour and change away
> from us in the hills of southeastern Vermont west of Brattleboro.  I
> figured that with global climate change, he would have seen a movement to
> earlier and earlier spring flows.  So, yesterday I called him up and
> asked.  Surprisingly, he told me no, that it still occurs all over the map
> from early February to late March.  He added that a while back he had asked
> the same question of an 'old-timer', whose experience pre-dated his by
> another 40 years or so, and was told that it still varied about the same,
> and the 'old-timer' remembered sugaring as early as January.


Same here but applied to bees. I asked the same question of a fellow
beekeeper who has been keeping bees much loner than my 25 years. I am going
to be on an Ag Panel to discuss what we are doing different  with the
change in climate. Obviously I am the beekeeping rep.

My friend said that nothing is new and the shifts in the start of spring
from two weeks on either side of average have been recorded by him.
Occasionally we also get longer warm spell in fall. He did acknowledge that
this year was unusually long.

It is not a matter of belief that the Earth is warming and has been since
about 1850, the bottom of the "Little Ice Age". That is data. It is also
true that we have a long way to go before we reach the warmth of either the
Medieval or Roman warm periods. The problem is, each of the warm periods
has had lower maxes than the previous one so my expectation is that this
one will be the same. They roll around about every thousand years.

Truth is, I welcome the warming because all I have to do is manage stores,
and I do that anyway. And if we have continued warming I might have to
manage my hives as they do in Massachusets.

I am old enough to remember when we were all going to die in the coming Ice
Age. That started up in the 1950s through the early 70s. All very good
science. I was also told in the 50s we would be out of food and oil by the
1970s. When Global Warming has to change its name to Climate Change it lost
the battle since Climate Change means absolutely nothing scientifically.
The Climate is always changing. The issue is why and good luck with that.
Too many poorly understood variables.

Bill Truesdell
Bath, Maine

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