Take a deep breath ...

As you go about your scientific discoveries today, don't forget to ...


stop to look around,



cultivate a sense of wonder,



and enjoy the road you're on.

Photo credits: Mama Joules

Reduce comes first for a reason

reduce*reuse*recycle*reduce*reuse*recycle*reduce*reuse*recycle*reduce

Earlier this week, I was telling Itinerant Cryptographer how impressed I was with his most recent purchase.

"You bought reusable water bottles for the boys. That's great!" I enthused. "You don't normally buy stuff like that."

"It wasn't my idea," he responded. "The boys made me do it. They wanted their own water bottles. And they wanted to write their names on them."

I've been recycling water bottles for years -- lots and lots of water bottles -- generating lots and lots of material to be recycled. During those same years, I've recited "reduce, reuse, recycle" without giving much thought to the order of the words.

"Reduce" is first for a reason. Reduction of waste -- reducing our footprint upon the earth -- should be the first step. Once we reduce what we use, we don't need to reuse or recycle nearly as much. And I have an 8-year-old and a 4-year-old to thank for that realization.

reduce*reuse*recycle*reduce*reuse*recycle*reduce*reuse*recycle*reduce



reduce*reuse*recycle*reduce*reuse*recycle*reduce*reuse*recycle*reduce

Interestingly enough, as I was posting this, I found this in my in-box from my friends at Celebrate Green:

... We've been asked "What is the biggest money saving green tip you can give us when celebrating during the summer?" The answer is, tah dah ... do not buy beverages bottled in plastic. Filtered tap water anyone? Fresh, homemade lemonade?

What do you suppose people did before we had plastic? They used jugs, often of glass or glass bottles. Before you purchase anything in plastic for your picnic or barbecue, think about this: Every year Americans buy 50 billion single-serving plastic beverage containers. Most plastic bottles (approximately 77%), end up in landfills. Add to this the expense as opposed to making your beverage or filling jugs with filtered tap water and this is an eco-idea that's a no brainer ...

For more eco-friendly tips, head on over to Celebrate Green. You can enter your own "wee green tip" in their Wee Glee gum contest. You could win eight boxes of "all-natural, gluten-free chewing gum."


Image adapted from a photo taken by Kristen Holden, through a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License

Learning to keep bees: Meet a beekeeper! Part 4

Today, we close our interview with beekeeper Michele Bennett Decoteau, of Blue Hive Journals. (If you're just joining us, here are the links to part 1, part 2, and part 3 of this interview.)

Welcome back, Michele. If someone wants to start keeping bees, what's the best way to begin? Do you have any organizations that you'd recommend for a novice beekeeper?

If you are interested in becoming a beekeeper, the best thing you can do is find a mentor. Check out your local beekeeping organization and start attending classes and meetings. If you are not sure where to find one, call your local bee inspector. Every state has at least one bee inspector in the state agriculture department.

[Note from Mama Joules: Other countries have their own beekeeping organizations, too, like The National Bee Unit in the U.K. Be sure to check your local laws first. Some locations, like New York City, prohibit beekeeping -- not that it stops the New York City Beekeepers Association!]

I also suggest [that] you read a lot. There are many books for beginners on beekeeping. Look for a book written locally because every region has its own variations. I really like Backyard Beekeeping [by C. N. Smithers].

Once you've started keeping bees as a hobby, how much work does it take to care for the bees? How often do you spend working with them? Are you afraid of being stung?

I check my hives weekly from about the end of March through October. Sometimes it is a bit more frequent if I need to do something like change frames around or add medications in the fall. Each check takes anywhere from a half hour to a couple of hours. In addition to checking my bees, I go to the monthly meetings of my local beekeeper's organization so I can learn new stuff.

I love my bees and the time flies. Most of the time I have to remind myself not to go bug them too much! I'd be in the hive every day! Unfortunately, it takes about three days for the hive to settle back down each time I bug them so I try not to disturb the hives if I don't have to.

I am not afraid of getting stung. Getting stung does happen, but it is a reminder to me that I am not doing something right. You don't get in the way of bees doing their job, you move slowly, you take your time, and you don't often get stung. It can be very zen like.

It still hurts to get stung. When you get stung, the first thing you need to do is scrape out the stinger. I find that chewing up English Plantain, a common weed, and putting that on the sting, takes the bite out. Many people say that getting stung from time to time helps their joints stay supple. I have not found that to be the case for me - I tend to swell up where I get stung!

What are the benefits of beekeeping?

Honestly, I just love being with my bees. Working the bees forces you to calm down - it can be quite meditative.

I feel like I am more in tune with my local environment. For example, when the bees were coming into the hive with white pollen all along their backs in March, it took some detective work to figure out that the skunk cabbage was blooming. I tend to be more aware of what is in bloom and for how long.

Of course, honey is a nice bonus along with beeswax. I made beeswax hand cream last year that was great for winter-chapped hands. My goal this year is to try to make lip balm too. Our honey tends to be very light, which is my taste preference.

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts and experiences of beekeeping with us, Michele! If you'd like to learn more about backyard beekeeping, please visit Michele and her bees online at Blue Hive Journals.


* * *

If you liked this post, you might also like:

Meet a beekeeper!

Meet a beekeeper! Part 2: The intelligence of bees

Meet a beekeeper! Part 3: Colony Collapse Disorder

National Pollinator Week 2009


Photo credits: Jon Mitchell (top) and Nigel Wedge (bottom), through a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Colony Collapse Disorder: Meet a beekeeper! Part 3

Continuing our interview with Michele Bennett Decoteau, of Blue Hive Journals, today's topic is Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD, a serious condition that is severely impacting native honeybees in the United States. (If you're just joining us, here's part 1 and part 2 of the interview.)

I read recently that nearly one-third of the honeybee population died last year due to CCD. What is Colony Collapse Disorder and how can we help save the honeybees?

CCD is a scary new thing beekeepers are facing. What happens is that beekeeper will open a hive and find healthy larvae and honey but essentially no adult bees. Under typical disease circumstances [only a few adult bees leave and don't return and] there is a decline in bees that is reflected in the larvae and honey. Most diseases show their influence in the larvae [not the adult bees]. The question is where the [adult] bees are and why are they not returning to their hive.

I don’t think a single cause will be found. Some suspects are pesticides, pollution, transporting bees, and disease.

Some pesticides disrupt a bee’s ability to navigate home. One potential culprit is Imidacloprid. When bees get a good dose of this pesticide they act drunk – they cannot fly well, they don’t orient to home, and they get lost easily. This pesticide is banned in other countries but can be purchased [commercially] here in the US. (Mama Joules' sidenote: "Imidacloprid and nicotine have similar activity in the nervous system," according to a 2001 "Insecticide Factsheet" in the Journal of Pesticide Reform.)

Bees are also transported around the country to pollinate large crops. First bees pollinate almonds in California, then they go to Texas to pollinate squash, then maybe over to Georgia for peaches and head up to Maine for blueberries. Bees are eating one single crop at a time and are fed sugar water in transit. This doesn’t sound like a good life for a bee to me. For one thing, the queen and larvae get chilled during transport. I think that all this moving around and single crop feeding is a challenge to the bee’s immune system.

Pollution may affect bees in an unexpected way. Bees use pheromones to communicate within the hive and even to some extent between hives. Pollution can disrupt a bee’s ability to smell and [the bee] may get lost [due to] high levels of pollution.

Disease and bugs that bite bees are an ever increasing issue. Many of these pests come from other countries and were introduced into US bee populations from unmonitored imports of bees. Today, beekeepers use a number of pesticides to deal with these bee-pests.

I am a hobbyist beekeeper and generally we are not affected by CCD. Since we don't know what the cause of CCD is, it is unclear why hobby beekeepers don't see it often. Perhaps it is because we don't transport our hives and feed them a single nectar source or stress them other ways. Stress decreases every being's immune system and a weakened immune system might allow some disease to attack bees. Until we know more about what CCD is, we won't know for sure.

Nonetheless, even hobbyists do keep a close watch on diseases and pests in the hive. Essentially we are just big worker bees taking care of the colony!

Michele's top five things we can do to help the honeybees:

1. Become a beekeeper
2. Buy local honey – Check out farmer’s markets and beekeeper’s organizations
3. Plant native plants for pollinators – Check with your local nursery for ideas
4. Grow organically – Stop using chemical pesticides in your flower and veggie garden
5. Buy organic – The fewer pesticides in use in the environment, the better for bees!

Thanks so much for the insight and advice, Michele! Join us next time as we conclude our interview by learning how to start beekeeping. Be sure to check out Michele's blog, Blue Hive Journals for more ideas and tips about keeping bees.

Michele says, "Take time to try different honey. It’s OK to have more than one jar of honey! Every honey tastes different. I love lavender honey made from lavender nectar."

If you liked this post, you might like:

Meet a beekeeper!

Meet a beekeeper! Part 2: The intelligence of bees

National Pollinator Week 2009




Photo credits: Michele Bennett Decoteau (top photo); Ryan Wick (bottom photo, through a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license)

Take the lead out of gardening

Did you hear that lead was detected in soil from the White House vegetable garden? I wasn't surprised. Although lead is not widely in use today, prior to 1978, it was a common additive in paint and gasoline. Lead was widely deposited in urban soils through car exhaust and flaking paint from building exteriors. In rural and formerly rural areas, lead may be present in soil from the historic use of lead-containing pesticides like lead arsenate. (If your neighborhood has streets with names like "orchard" or "farm", you probably live on former farmland.)

Since lead is a metal, it is persistent in soil. Unlike a volatile compound (think gasoline fumes), lead tends to stay put. Some of this lead may be bioavailable, meaning it can enter your plants and, ultimately, you and your family.

But don’t let your concerns about lead exposure dampen your enthusiasm for gardening with your kids! There are easy steps that you can take to limit this problem:

• Locate your garden away from roads and buildings. This 1995 study showed that soils in some inner-city front yards in Washington, DC were contaminated with lead; the source was traced to paint.

• Consider importing fresh topsoil for your garden. You can work this soil into your planting beds or use containers and elevated planters.

• Make sure that you and your children wash your hands after gardening and remove your shoes before coming into the house. Wipe the feet of pets that have been in the garden with you.

• Wash all fruits and vegetables thoroughly before eating them. Ingesting contaminated soil poses a greater human health risk than eating foods grown in contaminated soil.

• Studies have shown that leafy greens (like lettuce) and roots (such as carrots and onions) are the most likely to uptake metals. If you are concerned about the soil in your garden, you may want to grow fruits, like tomatoes, which are less likely to become contaminated.

At 93 parts per million, the lead levels found in the White House garden are actually quite low for urban soils; values over 400 ppm lead might raise an eyebrow. To learn more about the possible risks of lead exposure from gardening, check out:

"Leaden Gardens" from ScienceNews

"Lead in the Home Garden and Urban Soil Environment" from the University of Minnesota Extension Office

And to learn more about lead and lead poisoning, visit:

"Blood-Lead Level Basics: What You Really Need to Know" from Washington Parent

Public Health Statement for Lead from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.


A portion of this article appeared previously in Natural Family Online.

Photo credit: Leon Brooks, BurningWell.org

The intelligence of bees: Meet a beekeeper! Part 2

Michele working the bees
Today, we continue our interview with Michele Bennett Decoteau, beekeeper and author of Blue Hive Journals. (You can read part 1 of the interview here). Our topic today is bee intelligence.

Welcome back, Michele! I've heard that honeybees are intelligent creatures. Earlier this year, Allie Wilkinson at Oh, For the Love Of Science linked to this article, "Honey bees can count to four", describing research from the head of visual neuroscience at University of Queensland. What do you think? Are bees smart?

Bees are really good at being honeybees. Each bee does her job in response to her environment. When a bee [is born and] emerges from her cell, she will begin cleaning out dirty cells within few hours. She will have lots of jobs inside the hive like caring for the young, grooming the queen, and guarding the hive. When she’s reached a certain age, she becomes a forager. This is a really hard job. She needs to find flowers, gather nectar and pollen, and fly home. Then she has to tell her sisters how many flowers [she has located] and how to find them. Sounds simple, but bees are only about an inch long and can find flowers as far away as two miles! That is a tremendously long way to go for such a tiny bug.

Bees use both visual clues (using their eyes) and olfactory cues (smells) to find both flowers and then find home. I have three hives right next to each other and bees don’t go in the wrong one. They know that their home has its own smell that they can follow.

It doesn’t surprise me that bees can count. They use all sorts of clues to find home and to find food. They use the orientation of the sun, they can tell elapsed time (how long they’ve been gone), and they can even use the Earth’s magnetic fields to navigate. Pretty amazing for a creature smaller than my thumb!

Humans have been using bees for a long time. We love their honey and their wax has special properties as well as a great smell!

I just read an article where bees are being employed in a new way: finding landmines! Just as in the University of Queensland study, scientists have trained bees to associate food (in both cases, sugar water) with other cues. In the Queensland study, they used landmarks. In the military case, they used chemical smells found in land mines. So bees can fly over a field and will hover over areas where a land mine is located.

Michele, that is just fascinating! Honeybees are truly amazing.


Join us next week as we continue our celebration of National Pollinator Week with a discussion with Michele about honeybees and colony collapse disorder.


Photo credits: Michele Bennett Decoteau (top two photographs); bottom photograph: cygnus921, through a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Sorry for the delay ...

We lost access to the internet for nearly 24 hours yesterday. I hope to be back up & posting soon!


Photo credit: BurningWell.org

Meet a beekeeper!

In honor of National Pollinator Week, let's meet a beekeeper!

Welcome to Mama Joules! Tell us a bit about yourself.

My name is Michele Bennett Decoteau and I am a beekeeper. I’m still a "newbee", having only had bees for about 14 months. I love beekeeping because I can learn new things all the time about bees, plants, science, history, carpentry, and business. I also love the smell of beeswax and honey.


The bee with the green dot is the queen.Michele says, "I name my queen bees and the bee with the green spot is Hope. Beekeepers use a standard color marking on queens - those born in years ending with 7 are yellow, years ending in 8 are red, years ending with 9 are green. Hope was born this year so her spot is green."

I love how much insects can tell us about our environment. As a citizen scientist, I’ve helped catalog the different species of butterflies and dragonflies in Massachusetts and Connecticut as well as participated in Firefly Watch. I am going to participate in a pollinator project next year to see which types of bees come to sunflowers across the United States.

I love bugs so much I used to work at a company called Bugman Educational Entoprises. I got to show kids and adults all sorts of cool bugs from millipedes to scorpions to preying mantids.

What's the difference between a honeybee and a bumblebee? What kind(s) of bees do you keep?

Honeybees and bumblebees are two of many bees found in the U.S. There are many native bees that range from tiny, metallic sweat bees to large, furry carpenter bees. Most bees are female. Male bees generally have one job – to mate with a female bee then die.

I keep honeybees. More specifically, I keep European or Italian Honeybees. Honeybees store honey to give them food to make it through the winter or other times without flowers. Bumblebees also make honey but they only store small amounts. They only need small amounts because only a few bumbles live through the winter – usually one or two fertilized females. Honeybees on the other hand, will have hundreds of bees that over winter with a single egg-laying queen.

Both are pollinators. Honeybees pollinate about 1 bite out of every 3 bites of food you eat. Bumblebees pollinate about 1 bite out of 9 bites of food.

Thanks so much for joining us, Michele! To learn more about Michele and her experiences as a beekeeper, please visit her blog, Blue Hive Journals. We'll continue our interview next time as we explore bee intelligence.

***

If you liked this post, check out:

Meet a beekeeper! Part 2: The intelligence of bees

National Pollinator Week 2009


Photo credits: Michele Bennett Decoteau

National Pollinator Week 2009

When I learned that June 22-28, 2009 was National Pollinator Week, I immediately thought of the plight of the honeybees (see clip below) and the beauty of butterflies. But hummingbirds, bumblebees, bats, ants, beetles, and even lemurs and skinks can also pollinate flowers. When they go from flower to flower, these critters transfer pollen. This fertilizes the plants and allows them to reproduce successfully.

The U.S. Forest Service Botany Program reports that every third bite of food you eat is possible because of a pollinator. "Pollinators play a key role in the production of more than 150 food crops in the U.S., such as apples, alfalfa, almonds, blueberries, cranberries, kiwis, melons, pears, plums, and squash," according to material provided by The Pollinator Partnership.

So, the next time you see a bumblebee visiting your vegetable garden, or a honeybee buzzing in your flowers, don't be afraid. Just admire them from a distance and let them continue to do their important job.

The intelligence of animals

Yesterday, reporter Jacques Kelly ran a story in The Baltimore Sun with this opener: "It took just 10 minutes for a dozen prairie dogs to outwit the creators of the Maryland Zoo's new $500,000 habitat." What can I say? I found myself rooting for the prairie dogs.

Zoos and other controlled habitats provide an interesting opportunity to watch human and animal intelligence pitted against each other. Animal escapes aren't rare, as shown by articles like "The Great Animal Escapes of 2009" in The Huffington Post. Unfortunately, wise animals seldom fare well in these situations.

Years ago, I heard a story from a reliable source about American bison at a state park. Apparently, when these animals were introduced, there was one wily fellow who taught the others how to step over the cow grate and escape. After several escapes, this particular bison was put to sleep. Later, upon visiting the park, we were offered buffalo meat. I always wondered if it came from this particular bison.

Conserving habitat is a tricky science. Nature has a way of adapting to situations that are outside of our plans. How we adapt to those changes is just as important as our intended goals.

Photo credit: Claire Dobert, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Professor Stephen Hawking and his friend George

Recently, Kerm and I went to the library and checked out George’s Secret Key to the Universe, written by Lucy & Stephen Hawking (with Christophe Galfard). Stephen Hawking, the famous theoretical physicist, is known for expanding our knowledge of astronomy despite suffering from ALS (a neurologic disease).

Hawking is one of my favorite scientists. I am in awe of the fact that his mind soars among the heavens despite having extremely severe physical limitations. Hawking writes on his website that at one point, he communicated by "spell[ing] out words letter by letter, by raising [his] eyebrows when someone pointed to the right letter on a spelling card." Fortunately, personal computing came to his rescue and we are all richer for the experience.

Hawking has written several books for adults, including A Brief History of Time, which, according to the BBC, sold more than nine million copies. Lucy Hawking is Stephen's daughter so I was curious about the book. Since Kerm likes astronomy, I thought he would like it.

A few days later, after seeing George’s Secret Key to the Universe open on Kerm's bed, I asked him what the book was about.

“It’s about the universe and the world’s most amazing computer called Cosmos,” said Kerm. “Cosmos can make ‘portal doorways’ so his owner Eric can go through these doorways and go anywhere in outer space.” Portal doorways aren’t real, Kerm told me. “They aren’t the same as black holes. [Portal doorways] actually bring you from your house into outer space.”

What is a black hole? As defined by Lucy and Stephen Hawking in their book, “To make a black hole you need to squash a very large amount of matter into a very small space.” The resulting gravitational pull is so strong that nothing can escape, not even light. And the more matter and light that enter a black hole, the larger it gets.

Here’s what Kerm learned about black holes. “A black hole is a giant place in space where everything gets sucked inside. It [occurs when] an exploding star ... got too big and exploded into a big area in space [while the center of the star got pushed in]. Anything can be sucked [into a black hole], even light. And light [travels at] the fastest speed in the universe that we know.” Kerm also learned that scientists now believe “that it’s possible to get out of a black hole.”

It’s hard for me to imagine this, but the Hawkings wrote that, “Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, has at its center a black hole several million times the mass of our Sun.” Can you imagine that? It’s like there's an invisible gigantic vacuum cleaner slurping stuff up at the center of our universe.

Kids that are interested in science and science fiction would like this book, according to Kerm. “It is a very cool book ... My favorite character was George because he was the main character and he was a hero."

You can visit George's website to take a quiz about astronomy, check out these facts and photos about outer space, and enter this competition to win a hardback copy of the sequel, George's Cosmic Treasure Hunt!

Image Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/CfA/R.Kraft et al.;
Submillimeter: MPIfR/ESO/APEX/A.Weiss et al.; Optical: ESO/WFI

World Oceans Day (Part 2)

Today marks the first official World Oceans Day, as designated by the United Nations. According to the UN website, the Empire State Building will be lit in blue today to celebrate! (How cool is that? The Empire State Building even has its own lighting schedule!) This annual event was started as a result of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992; many countries have been celebrating ever since.

According to the UN, this year's theme is "Our Oceans, Our Responsibility."

Check out World Oceans Day (Part 1) to learn more!


Photo credits: Mike DelGaudio (top) and David Sifry (bottom), through a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license.