Green Options » bee

Beehaus and Eglu Promote Urban Agriculture in Europe - Very Local Food!

Dave Harcourt — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 11:00:21 +0000

The scratching chickens that are found in and around many rural households provides cheap food at practically no cost - now its also happening in city and town houses in Europe and more recently the USA.

Bringing production to the household has no economy of scale but inputs including labour and part of the feed are essentially free. The reduction in transport and packaging cost have financial and environmental benefits.

Eggs from the Eglu

The Eglu is based on a plastic, waterproof box, where the hens shelter and lay their eggs. The box is attached to an enclosed run which can be placed on a lawn allowing the chickens to scratch for insects and grass. The run has a door to allow the hens a free range in the garden when its safe.

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DARPA Recruits Bees to Find Land Mines

Tina Casey — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 11:47:50 +0000

Abandoned land mines have been called “the worst form of pollution on earth.” They kill up to 20,000 people every year, and according to one recent study it will take 450 years to find and clear all of them. That estimate might be too optimistic, because new mines can be laid as fast as the old ones are cleared. Ridding the world of land mines sounds like a Sisyphean task of epic proportions. Or is it? Enter DARPA (the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency) and the humble bee.

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Mean Joe Green #44: Caption Contest 2

Joe Mohr — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 13:13:36 +0000

[Editor's note: Following the success of our first caption contest in October, RG&B resident cartoonist Joe Mohr put together another chance for you to try your hand at writing political cartoons. -TH]

Welcome to the second official “Caption Contest” for Mean Joe Green and Red, Green, and Blue!

Rules for Participation:
1. Look at the cartoon below.
2. Think of a caption to accompany the cartoon.
3. Post your caption in the comments section.

The winning caption will be published in Red Green and Blue next Thursday (or shortly thereafter).

Enjoy!
-MJG

UK Professor Hopes Modified Bee Genes Can Prevent Colony Collapse Disorder

Jerry James Stone — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 20:35:17 +0000

A UK Professor Hopes His Genetically Modified Worker Bees Can Help Stop The Colony Collapse Disorder That Is Grossly Effecting the UK Economy

Last week 140,000 protesters from the British Beekeepers Association (BBKA) marched on Whitehall demanding $8-million in emergency funding from the Department for Environment to tackle alarming rates of bee decline. The decline has cost the UK economy about $54-million in the past year alone.

But British scientist Francis Ratnieks — and the UK’s only professor of apiculture – is pioneering research that he hopes will assuage the hardship beekeepers have been experiencing with colony collapse disorder.

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UK Beekeepers Protest Over Massive Death of Bees

Meg Hamill — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 00:34:12 +0000

Britain’s government has been warned that the country will enter into an “agricultural disaster” unless more money is put towards discovering what is killing the country’s bees.

Protesters from the British Beekeepers Association (BBKA), dressed in traditional, white beekeeper suits, delivered a petition signed by more than 140,000 people to Downing Street today, calling for £8 million funding research into causes of the bee decline.

Over the past 12 months, one in three of Britain’s honey bee colonies – amounting to nearly two billion bees, have been lost. These losses are the greatest yet for the UK. The causes of the massive die-off are unclear, and the apiarists fear there is nothing to prevent a similar devastation in the year to come. The beekeepers claim that the Government is doing nothing to prevent it from happening.

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