Free Republic

Fear often trumps facts in media coverage. The past several years of worries about dying colonies of bees was certainly no exception, but The Washington Post recently supplied some much-needed sting to the honeybee situation. News media scare stories about bee deaths and the label that came to describe the occurrence -- Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) -- saturated the news. Magazines, broadcast networks and left-wing websites blamed bee deaths on a host of factors, including cell phones, pesticides, mites and fungi. Oh, and global warming, of course. Hype was rampant. Time magazine warned of “Beepocalypse” in 2013, claiming the “economic...

FRESNO, Calif. -- A California proposal to tax beekeepers to pay for research on bees' health has stirred up a swarm, even though all agree more study is needed amid a widespread die-off. The proposal to set up a California Apiary Research Commission with the power to tax comes as bees nationwide are perishing in great numbers from colony collapse disorder and other health problems. California is the nation's main producer of fruits and vegetables, and bees are essential pollinators of about a third of the United States' food supply. Beekeepers already feel California is not friendly to the industry,...

TARMIYAH – A blossoming new program organized by embedded Provincial Reconstruction Team-North is teaching widowed and divorced Iraqi women the ins and outs of beekeeping in order to help them put food on the table while they help put honey on the tables of others.Twenty-five Iraqi women graduated from the beekeeper training program, March 27. "These women are the heads of the household, many [because of] the sectarian conflict," said Mary-Denise Tabar, the public diplomacy and women's affairs advisor for ePRT-North. "The program aims to train local rural women on the theoretical and practical applications of basic beekeeping." EPRT-North embeds...