Plough Sharing

A monthly newsletter of intrinsic awareness

Welcome to The Farmer's Daughter Newsletter, Plough Sharing. With relevant insight and devotion, we share with you and your family eco-value and real world sustainability for our planet's present and future health, as social conditions reflect the works of nature around us. We believe that food is the common bond within the physicality of the human experience which can open up both our senses and our conscience to our place in the world. Eating to live is truly the first step towards eco-awareness and gives rise to steps we can take without reactionary fear, but holistic and appropriate response. Therefore we are dedicated to promote co-creative and positive actionable energies for our environment, locally, nationally and planetary.

"Nature is to be found in her entirety nowhere more than in her smallest creatures."
-Pliny the Elder, Beekeeper, circa 100 B.C.

What's the Buzz word?
Colony Collapse Disorder ("CCD") is the sudden die-off of honeybee colonies that has been occurring across the U.S. for several years now. The bee disappearance is so widespread that it is blamed for losses of up to 70% of the managed bee colonies in U.S. beekeeping operations. Estimates show that 23% of commercial beekeeping operations in the U.S, suffered from Colony Collapse Disorder in the winter of 2006-2007.

The dire state of today's honeybee was predicted by Rudolf Steiner in 1923. He stated that, within 50 to 80 years, we would reap the consequences of having mechanized forces that had previously operated organically in the beehive. Presently, such practices include breeding queen bees artificially. Such artificial insemination practices have been standard for conventional beekeepers over the past 15 years.

Artificial insemination, in any practice, is unsettling without foreseen consequences, but the impetus for momentary gain. On a wider scope, it violates the natural balance of our planet. It implies that humans can come up with better solutions than nature, that humans have the right to manipulate other creatures for our own gain, and it is the use of technology to try to solve a problem brought about by technology in the first place.

Normally the queen mates once in her life with a courtship with 7-17 drones (male bees) that then die. This in-flight fertilization is a beautiful and necessary dance; a courtship if you will between the sun, earth, bees and flowers and a society within itself.

To an extent, Colony Collapse Disorder is a reflection of society, and provides a conduit of questions that reflect in the human condition as well as the bee population. Of significance, is the fact that scientists haven't got it figured out and begs the questions: Are they looking at it as clinical research, or holistically speaking, the embodiment of the cycle of nature itself? Predicting specific consequences to our tinkering before they occur or understanding something after the fact? Is this the course of unruly co-creation?

Real world possibilities in theory and application for Colony Collapse Disorder:

• Lack of diversity: This point, above all others, is a critical cause of natural imbalance. Diversity is stability. Mono-crop farming creates vulnerability. In fact, the dependence of our agricultural systems on just one species of bee for pollination is a perfect example of this vulnerability in action. In complete contrast to the natural order, where diversity is the rule, we plant gigantic fields of just one crop, leaving minimal borders, or 'bio-corridors' (woodlands, shrubs, wildflowers, hedges, etc.), for beneficial insects to take up residence, or none at all. Integrated bio-diversity is the future of farming.
• Pesticides & Herbicides: Crops (and even hedges, verges, and woodlands, where they remain), are often sprayed with pesticides or herbicides. These chemicals are the practical extension of an exasperating belief that nature is our enemy. Pouring poison on our food is a very simplistic way of dealing with our problems, and ignores the root causes. New genetically modified crops, designed to be immune to certain pesticides and herbicides, have resulted in the increased usage of these chemicals. Pesticides, particularly Bayer's imidacloprid, a nicotine-based product marketed under the names Admire, Provado, Merit, Marathon and Gaucho, have been concretely implicated in the destruction of bee populations before. That other bees and insects are not raiding deserted hives to feed on the honey, as they normally would, lends some credence to the theory of toxic overload. Nature itself has been donned a "thief in the night" that strikes without warning and without discrimination. The planet has been reduced to a battlefield and man to a warrior who must build defenses and destroy enemies, including all non-yield producing life-forms, and/or detrimental life forces to man in the form of fungi, insects and the like. This adversarial reductionism not only erodes man's sense of harmony and relatedness to the natural world, but it is belittling to the human spirit.
• GM Crops: GM Crops are widespread in the U.S., in particular, as is unintended contamination through horizontal gene transfer. Creating plants with built-in pesticides will kill insects. Bees, by the way, are insects. Additionally, it is known that inserted genes can combine in host DNA molecules to create unexpected proteins that can be toxic or allergenic. It is impossible to know all the implications of how pollen from such plants will interact with the organisms they are in contact with.
• Diet of Bees: Many bees are fed sugar water as a supplement from honey due to the amounts taken from the hives. It is only natural that sugar would weaken the bee's immune system leaving them wide open for disease and dysfunction. Just as it weakens the human being, sugar is acid reacting, while honey is alkaline reacting, sugar supports bacterial growth, honey kills bacteria. Sugar is addictive and has a drug like effect, empty calories –leeches vitamins and minerals. Honey contains vitamins, enzymes, minerals that humans and bees require. Honey, in essence is a medicinal food that bees thrive on for life itself.
• Direct Stress: Transportation, lack of natural food, and natural food diversity, pesticides sprayed directly into hives, antibiotics and GMOs in feed. Bees today are 'factory farmed' much in the way hens are, which, like hens, stifle their instinctive habits - like swarming. These things, and other environmental factors, can cause a general weakening of pollinators' immune systems (again sugary water included). The few dead bees that have been located are often found to contain multiple pathogens and diseases - indicative of an AIDS-like syndrome.
• Varroa mites: Although some like to pin the blame on these mites, it is easier to blame nature itself, rather than manipulation of man's hand. "Many bee experts assumed varroa mites were a major cause of the severe die-off in the winter of 2005. Yet when researchers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Bee Research Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland, traveled to Oakdale, California, where Anderson and a number of his fellow beekeepers spend winter and spring, they could find no correlation between the level of varroa mite infestation and the health of bee colonies.
• Lack of Scent of Flowers: Three University of Virginia researchers have shown that air pollution is interfering with bees' pollination efforts by impeding their ability to find flowers. Due to smog, power plant and auto emissions, they literally can't smell the flowers. Scents that traveled as much as 4,000 feet 200 years ago now travel only 650 feet in areas of high pollution levels. High ozone levels during the summer exacerbate the problem as just the time when bees should be in a pollinating frenzy. Such an instinctual and primal function as the sense of smell is robbed, thus causing less pollinating, leading to less food for the bees. From a lay person's point of view, the lack of scent in flowers correlates in right timing with GM crops, as many farm factory farm flowers are produced with a true lack of fragrance. How many times have you purchased flowers for a loved one, only to sniff a whisper of fragrance, rather when yesteryear's bouquet filled a room with profuse and inviting aroma.
• Artificial Insemination: "Rudolf Steiner gave lectures to the workers at the Goetheanum in 1923 in Dornach, Switzerland. Among the workers was a professional beekeeper, Mr Müller, who contributed to these lectures in the form of insights and questions. However, Mr. Müller rebelled vehemently and showed no understanding when Steiner explained the intricacies of the queen bee, mentioning that the modern method of breeding queens (using the larvae of worker bees, a practice that had already been in use for about fifteen years) would have long-term detrimental effects, so grave that: "A century later all breeding of bees will cease if only artificially produced bees are used (November 10). . . . It is quite correct that we can't determine this today; it will have to be delayed until a later time. Let's talk to each other again in one hundred years, Mr. Müller, and then we'll see what kind of opinion you'll have at that point". (See Rudolf Steiner's Bees, Lecture One, Page 21). Seventy-five years have passed and the kind of queen breeding Steiner spoke of has not only continued, but has become the standard, and is now supplemented with instrumental insemination." It is nature's instinctual design to mate with the alpha breeders for optimal offspring. Could artificial insemination affect this delicate balance of natural selection thus causing the down-breeding of generation after generation of the bee population? In further consideration, does artificial insemination create loss of genetic memory?
• Weather: The hotter, dryer summers and wetter winters brought about by global warming.
• Mechanistic Mindsets: Lastly, the problem of our mechanistic mindset - reducing an infinitely complicated world of interactions to an overly simplistic viewpoint. This is the root cause of several of the issues outlined above. The term bio-engineering itself is a contradiction in terms - they are entirely juxtaposed. 'Bio' equates to 'life'. 'Engineering' refers to design and manufacture, a blueprint of exactness. Biological forms (i.e. life-forms) can never be 'engineered' - i.e. predictably controlled or manipulated. Unlike a sheet of metal that can be machined with consistent results, organisms in natural systems are ever changing and adjusting. This makes 'bio-engineering', in the best-case scenario, a futile exercise and an enormous misallocation of human and environmental resources, and, in the worse case scenario, an ecological catastrophe with no chance for a product recall.

Researchers are desperately seeking the 'cause' of colony collapse disorder. Many share the mindset to pull a single root cause out from amongst those above, but, I would propose that the possibilities listed above, in combination, and as in nature have a cause and effect. No event is ever isolated to one thing - rather co-dependency is an energetic process of life and death.

And, again, when considering the plight of the bee - let's look around a little more. How are other creatures and flora (some of them also pollinators, like butterflies and birds) being affected by pesticides, and mechanization? We focus on the honeybee because of its direct and immediate threat to our livelihoods, and indeed our food supply - but, there's a whole other world out there that's suffering under human (mis)management...

Of import is realization that the micro-life and macro-life forces reflect each other. The plight of the bees mirror social and physical conditions plaguing human society. Generally speaking, humans, like bees, are over-worked, stressed, and are increasingly susceptible to disease. Apiculture also notes "The Vanishing" whereas bees just disappear, leaving their hives and never to return...without reason. This modern epidemic of disorientation experienced by the bee seems to be a reflective wave in human conditions such as Pervasive Developmental Disorder (neurological disorders) and Alzheimer's. One answer may be found in the toxicity level of immunization ingredients such as thimerosal, a synthetic form of organic mercury used as a preservative and antimicrobial agent in vaccines. Ingredients such as mercury have been used since the 1930s and are now in hindsight a possible detriment to our children. Thimerosal is in the foreground as a direct correlation with neurological disorders.

Another consideration may be that mercury was used in pesticides until 1969. However, an element just does not go away, it has been manipulated and released, thus a part of our environment in bioaccumulation aquatic life, landfills, water-waste, and can enter into the atmosphere by various means because it evaporates easily. It then travels through the atmosphere in a vaporized state.

While the bees pollinate genetically engineered crops, they in turn intoxicate themselves with herbicides from manufacturers such as Monsanto, a leading manufacturer of Agent Orange, aspartame, (NutraSweet), bovine somatotropin, (bovine growth hormone "BST") and PCBs. By the way, Monsanto is also the world's leading producer of the herbicide glyhosate marketed as "Roundup" and the first to genetically engineer seeds, thus holding 70%–100% market share for various crops. Such levels of toxicity may correlate with symptoms similar to such Pervasive Developmental Disorders and/or relevant disorders, disease and socially delayed interaction that the bees are now experiencing in Colony Collapse Disorder.

Beyond agriculture, pollinators are crucial to maintaining the quality of life. They serve as keystone species in most terrestrial ecosystems in that the services they provide allow most plants to reproduce and maintain genetic diversity. These plants in turn provide food and shelter for animals; fruits and seeds produced by insect pollination are a major part of the diet of approximately 25 percent of birds and of mammals ranging from voles to grizzly bears. In some areas, pollinator-supported plant communities prevent erosion by binding the soil—thereby conserving an important resource and keeping creeks clean for aquatic life.

From appearances, at the moment, the livelihoods of beekeepers, farmers and agricultural industries are the immediate concern (estimates of 15 billion dollars worth of agricultural produce is at risk in the U.S. alone), but even this will become inconsequential if the problem progresses into a biological meltdown. Insects, plants and animals, are all interdependent, and we rely on them, despite the belief that it is necessary to kill the enemy in nature (i.e., insects, fungi's, etc.). If pollinators are indicators of the health of our environment then Albert Einstein's words may be applicable...

"Should the bee population become extinct, human life as we know it, would follow in four years."

Lifeway Changes
Awareness brings change in varying degrees for each of us. As stated above, Plough Sharing is about appropriate and sustainable response, rather than moments of reactionary impulse. That said, a few simplicities can make a sustainable difference. Take notice of the life around you, and act "care-fully" with your back yard, or for that matter potted plants or garden pots on a balcony apartment. Know that every cycle of life affects one and all.

1. Sow organic seeds in pots or a small garden, which is a haven for independent pollinators. Burt's Bees, a Durham, North Carolina based company, gives insights on what you can do to make a difference. Visit their site at: www.burtsbees.com or go to: http://www.pollinator.org or www.ncbeekeepers.org (this site also offers links for kids and honeybees)
2. Stay away from chemicals used on your lawns, shrubs and the like. Remember, life is all around us, and thrives naturally without chemicals. Cyclical change is the nature of the planet we live on - what may appear as death to one, processes into life form for another.
3. Honeybee Harvest offers a clean-green tip - Add a birdbath to your landscape. Maintain fresh water and place a decorative rock or stick across the bath. Not only will birds enjoy, but the honeybees will have a place to land and drink the water without risk of drowning. Water is essential as a food source and cooling the hive during hot summer temperatures. Honeybees place water droplets around the hive, fanning their wings, producing "air conditioning".
4. Support your local organic and biodynamic apiaries/farmers (logically enough, very few organic and biodynamic apiaries/farmers have reported Colony Collapse Disorder).
5. Buy local honey (An ancient secret brought into contemporary light - local honey from local honeybees work with indigenous pollen - thus, a sweet remedy to your environmental allergies).
   Please know that The Farmer's Daughter uses only local honey for our menu from such apiary farmers as:
   www.peacefulvalleyhoney.com Peaceful Valley Honey is owned by Master Beekeeper Greg Fariss and his lovely wife Susan located in Mocksville, North Carolina. They believe in allowing their bees to live their lives as closely as possible to the way they would have lived on their own. For this reason, they use wooden frames and beeswax foundation instead of the plastic frames and plastic foundation that many beekeepers use today. Their hives are wooden and sized to accommodate the recognized "bee space" that bees utilize in the hives they once built in hollow trees. You can find The Fariss Family at the Winston-Salem Farmer's Market Downtown on Tuesday and Thursday, or call Peace Valley Honey at 336-998-2975. They will be happy to tell you where their honey products are ready for purchase. www.honeybeeharvest.com Honey Bee Harvest is close to home in Julian, North Carolina. Honest Bee Harvest offers multiple varieties of local honey, gourmet honey wine vinegar, bee pollen, handmade honey soaps, pure beeswax candles and more. Kurt and Natalie Bower are NC State certified beekeepers with 10 years of product experience. Their hives are maintained using only naturally occurring plant sources with no chemicals. They isolate their honey by nectar resources to provide specialty varieties. Honey Bee Harvest is available year round at Southern Roots Market in High Point, Beautiful Living in Greensboro and through the above website. Don't hesitate to call Natalie as she is a wealth of honeybee knowledge: 336-697-2811.
   Until next time...

Support Your Local Universe,

Kim Coffey
The Farmer's Daughter