http://leftexposed.org/2015/10/the-xerces-society/
The Xerces Society
Xerces 2013 Assets: $1,733,875 including $6,061 in publicly traded securities
Xerces 2013 Income: $2,491,596; 2012 income $2,000,869
Xerces spent $538,701 lobbying during 2013; all years lobbying total, $2,389,351
Xerces spent $236,681 on fundraising
Xerces spent $1,301,282 on salaries
Xerces received during the group’s history in Oregon 129 grants from 40 foundation totaling $2,379,900.
The assumed name Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation is used on the group’s website, in fundraising and grant requests, but only Xerces Society, Inc. appears on its IRS Form 990 annual reports....
I cannot deal with almonds, they make my stomach hurt. I like pecans and I use rice milk.
“Bees are exposed to all kinds of diseases in California,” says Arp.
...
Just like people.
Bee shortage is a hoax from lying environmentalists.
I don’t eat almonds because of their impact on bees.
Beekeepers have known this for years.
Driving on I5 south of Sacramento...all the way to Bakersfield...in March - April you have to sweep bees off your windshield with a broom.
Almonds are an environmentally demanding crop. Lot’s of bees, lots of water and lots of nutrients.
The SMART farmers are making a shift to olives.
Still a lucrative crop, but far less inputs.
Do they make cheese from almond milk?
At least they are admitting mites are causing the bee problems, not “chemicals.”
It’s pretty freakish to see all these almond trees in full bloom in early February out here. It’s still cold and the bees can’t always get their little engines running. Just a numbers game though. It always gets done. Heavy rain or a frost could do some damage to the delicate blossoms but the bees do their job.
I can’t eat almonds. They make me horribly sick.
Yes, the Guardian
...
They just have to mention the climate change scam, but then place all the blame on pesticides and parasites.
I love almond milk. If I get up late and don’t have enough to to make eggs i will just have a tall glass of Califia before heading to the gym.
I usually try to avoid Cartelfornia products, just like I try to avoid China products.
Almonds also: it takes approximately 15 gallons of water to produce just 16 almonds, making almonds one of the most water-intensive crops
Bees have a lot of challenges, and humans have piled on, but there are sensible ways to deal with these things.
You would think CA of all places would pass laws about importing bees from all over...Money talks, who knew! The almond business with its monoculture is indeed risking unnecessary damage to bees.
CA is home to more than a thousand species of bees, not saying most are in any way useful like honey bees, but it’s a varied environment with plenty of natural “laboratories” where we might cultivate local honey bee breeds in a relatively short period of time. Local bees could specialize in almonds in their season, while still free to nourish themselves with other crops.
Focusing the bees on a single crop is like restricting you or me to a single-food diet. Not a smart idea; particularly when a creature has a very short life expectancy and the nutrition (or lack of) impacts the next generation.
As to mites, we can help our little buddies fight them, with selective breeding for hygienic behavior. There are beekeepers who take measures to keep bees healthy, and then there are those who don’t try to understand ‘em, just ride ‘em in, head ‘em up, move ‘em on.
What’s wrong with milk from cows?
I don’t care ... it’s nut juice, not ‘milk’, dammit!!
How things change. A number of years ago i read about how almond honey tastes bad to humans, so the bees get to keep that honey. It was stated like this was the payoff for the bees who lose all the honey they create with other flowers to human consumption. Now almond pollinating is bad for the bees.
No bees were interviewed for either story.
I had almond milk today.
Well, actually I made cream of chicken soup from a Campbell’s condensed soup can. And the choice was between almond milk and water since I didn’t have regular milk. So I went half almond milk and half water.
And since it was unsweetened almond milk, I added a squirt of liquid stevia. It was bizarrely sweet but still edible.
I had no idea I was causing unprotected sex among bees.
I really don’t want to be responsible for the bee slutpocalypse. But weren’t bees dying out. Don’t we want them to reproduce with abandon?
Maybe I caused the bee slutbabyboom. My consumption of almond milk may have been the equivanlent of the 1965 New York power outage.
Yeah, that’s the ticket.
They work when it is colder so I keep them around to make sure my trees get pollinated even if the honey bees are not inclined to get up and at 'em. The nesting place is just a box with little tubes, soda straws work fine and you just pick them up when full and put them inside the shed to wait for spring.
No honey but at that point the trees are what matter.
There is plenty of time in the summer for the honey bees to do their job.
You can't move masons around from what I understand but they require so little care that keeping your own batch would probably be cheaper then hiring honey bees.