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From: lstritch@fs.fed.us<BR>To: lda@pollinator.org<BR>Sent: 12/1/2010 4:18:52
A.M. Pacific Standard Time<BR>Subj: Fw: Those bees!<BR></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000 size=2><BR><FONT face=sans-serif size=2>Lawrence R. Stritch,
Ph.D.<BR>National Botanist<BR>USDA Forest Service - WO<BR>Range Staff,
3S<BR>201 14th Street, SW<BR>Washington DC 20250<BR>Phone
202-205-1279<BR><BR></FONT><BR><FONT face=sans-serif color=#800080 size=1>----- Forwarded by Larry Stritch/WO/USDAFS on 12/01/2010 07:03 AM
-----</FONT> <BR>
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<TD width="40%"><FONT face=sans-serif size=1><B>"Patti Pride"
<ppride@starpower.net></B> </FONT>
<P><FONT face=sans-serif size=1>11/30/2010 08:45 AM</FONT> </P>
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<DIV align=right><FONT face=sans-serif size=1>To</FONT></DIV>
<TD><FONT face=sans-serif size=1>"'Kristy Liercke'"
<LIERCKKX@pwcs.edu>, "'Dennis Krusac'"
<dkrusac@fs.fed.us>, <Dpivorunas@fs.fed.us>, "'Jenny C
Taylor'" <jctaylor@fs.fed.us>, "'Larry Stritch-NRE-FS'"
<lstritch@fs.fed.us>, "'Sandy Frost'"
<sfrost@fs.fed.us>, <ssamman@fs.fed.us>, "'Tamberly K
Conway'" <tkconway@fs.fed.us>, <lew_gorman@fws.gov>,
<Randy_Robinson@fws.gov>, "'Richard Shahan'"
<SHAHANRA@pwcs.edu>, "'Ben Swecker'"
<SWECKEBD@pwcs.edu>, "'Thelma Redick'"
<thelma.redick@verizon.net>, <Doug.Holy@wdc.usda.gov>,
<brodriguez@wildflower.org>,
<ltrevino@wildflower.org>, <oxley@wildflower.org>,
<tamberly_30@yahoo.com></FONT>
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<DIV align=right><FONT face=sans-serif size=1>cc</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV align=right><FONT face=sans-serif size=1>Subject</FONT></DIV>
<TD><FONT face=sans-serif size=1>Those
bees!</FONT></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><BR>
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<TD></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><BR></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><BR><BR><BR><IMG SRC="cid:X.MA1.1291218735@aol.com" DATASIZE="7023" ID="MA1.1291218735" > <BR><FONT face=Arial color=#a11f12 size=1>November 29, 2010</FONT> <BR><FONT face=Georgia size=6><B>The Mystery
of the Red Bees of Red Hook</B></FONT> <BR><FONT face=Arial color=#808080 size=2><B>By </B></FONT><A title=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/d/susan_dominus/index.html?inline=nyt-per href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/d/susan_dominus/index.html?inline=nyt-per"><FONT face=Arial color=#000061 size=2><B><U>SUSAN DOMINUS</U></B></FONT></A>
<BR><FONT face=Georgia size=3>Cerise Mayo expected better of her </FONT><A title=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/bees/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/bees/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier"><FONT face=Georgia color=#000061 size=3><U>bees</U></FONT></A><FONT face=Georgia size=3>. She had raised them right, given them all the best opportunities —
acres of urban farmland strewn with fruits and vegetables, a bounty of natural
nectar and pollen. Blinded by devotion, she assumed they shared her values: a
fidelity to the land, to food sources free of high-fructose corn syrup and
artificial food coloring.</FONT> <BR><FONT face=Georgia size=3>And then this.
Her bees, the ones she had been raising in Red Hook, Brooklyn, and on
Governors Island since May, started coming home to their hives looking
suspicious. Of course, it was the foragers — the adventurers, the wild
</FONT><A title=http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1994276/ href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1994276/"><FONT face=Georgia color=#000061 size=3><U>waggle dancers</U></FONT></A><FONT face=Georgia size=3>, the social networkers incessantly buzzing about their business — who
were showing up with mysterious stripes of color. Where there should have been
a touch of gentle amber showing through the membrane of their honey stomachs
was instead a garish bright red. The honeycombs, too, were an alarming shade
of Robitussin.</FONT> <BR><FONT face=Georgia size=3>“I thought maybe it was
coming from some kind of weird tree, maybe a sumac,” said </FONT><A title=http://www.etsy.com/storque/how-to/eatsy-beekeepers-honey-cornbread-8618/ href="http://www.etsy.com/storque/how-to/eatsy-beekeepers-honey-cornbread-8618/"><FONT face=Georgia color=#000061 size=3><U>Ms. Mayo</U></FONT></A><FONT face=Georgia size=3>, who tends seven hives for </FONT><A title=http://www.added-value.org/ href="http://www.added-value.org/"><FONT face=Georgia color=#000061 size=3><U>Added Value</U></FONT></A><FONT face=Georgia size=3>, an education
nonprofit in Red Hook. “We were at a loss.”</FONT> <BR><FONT face=Georgia size=3>An acquaintance, only joking, suggested the unthinkable: Maybe the bees
were hitting the juice — maraschino cherry juice, that sweet, sticky stuff
sloshing around vats at </FONT><A title=http://www.dellscherry.com/cherry/company.html href="http://www.dellscherry.com/cherry/company.html"><FONT face=Georgia color=#000061 size=3><U>Dell’s Maraschino Cherries Company</U></FONT></A><FONT face=Georgia size=3> over on Dikeman Street in Red Hook.</FONT> <BR><FONT face=Georgia size=3>“I didn’t want to believe it,” said Ms. Mayo, a
soft-spoken young woman who has long been active in the slow-food movement.
She found it particularly hard to believe that the bees would travel all the
way from Governors Island to gorge themselves on junk food. “Why would they go
to the cherry factory,” she said, “when there’s a lot for them to forage right
there on the farm?”</FONT> <BR><FONT face=Georgia size=3>It seems natural, by
now, for humans to prefer the unnatural, as if we ourselves had been
genetically modified to choose artificially flavored strawberry candy over
strawberries, or crunchy orange “cheese” puffs over a piece of actual cheese.
But when bees make the same choice, it feels like a betrayal to our sense of
how nature should work. Shouldn’t they know better? Or, perhaps, not know
enough to know better?</FONT> <BR><FONT face=Georgia size=3>A fellow beekeeper
sent samples of the red substance that the bees were producing to an
apiculturalist who works for New York State, and that expert, acting as a kind
of </FONT><A title=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/f/forensic_science/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/f/forensic_science/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier"><FONT face=Georgia color=#000061 size=3><U>forensic</U></FONT></A><FONT face=Georgia size=3> foodie, found the samples riddled with Red Dye No. 40, the same dye
used in the maraschino cherry juice.</FONT> <BR><FONT face=Georgia size=3>No
one knows for sure where the bees might have consumed the dye, but neighbors
of the Dell’s factory, Ms. Mayo said, reported that bees in unusually high
numbers were gathering nearby.</FONT> <BR><FONT face=Georgia size=3>And she
learned that Arthur Mondella, the owner of the factory, had hired Andrew Coté,
the leader of the </FONT><A title=http://www.nyc-bees.org/ href="http://www.nyc-bees.org/"><FONT face=Georgia color=#000061 size=3><U>New
York City Beekeepers Association</U></FONT></A><FONT face=Georgia size=3>, to
help find a solution.</FONT> <BR><FONT face=Georgia size=3>Mr. Mondella did
not return phone calls seeking comment, but in an interview, Mr. Coté said
that the bees were as great a nuisance to the factory as Red Dye No. 40 was to
the beekeepers. (No, Ms. Mayo was not alone: David Selig, another Red Hook
beekeeper, also had bees showing red.)</FONT> <BR><FONT face=Georgia size=3>“Bees will forage from any sweet liquid in their flight path for up to
three miles,” Mr. Coté said. While he has not yet visited the factory, he said
that the bees might be drinking from its runoff, and that solving the problem
“could be as easy as putting up some screens, or providing a closer source of
sweet nectar.”</FONT> <BR><FONT face=Georgia size=3>Could the tastiest nectar,
even close by the hives, compete with the charms of a liquid so abundant, so
vibrant and so cloyingly sweet? Perhaps the conundrum raises another
disturbing question: If the bees cannot resist those three qualities, what
hope do the rest of us have?</FONT> <BR><FONT face=Georgia size=3>A story of
the perils of </FONT><A title=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/a/agriculture/urban_agriculture/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/a/agriculture/urban_agriculture/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier"><FONT face=Georgia color=#000061 size=3><U>urban farming</U></FONT></A><FONT face=Georgia size=3>, this is also a story of the careful two-step of
gentrification. Red Hook embodies so much of Brooklyn culture — an infatuation
with the borough’s old ways, just so long as those do not actually impinge on
the modish design and values.</FONT> <BR><FONT face=Georgia size=3>The
maraschino cherries that emerge from the Dell’s factory have probably graced
thousands of retro-chic cocktails and sundaes in Red Hook itself, or at least
in Williamsburg. Finding some solution to the maraschino juice bee crisis — to
all urban clashes of culture — is part of the project of New York, a wildly
creative endeavor in and of itself.</FONT> <BR><FONT face=Georgia size=3>All
summer long, friends of Ms. Mayo were forever pointing out the funny
coincidence that her first name means “cherry” in French; as a slow-food
advocate with the last name Mayo, she was already accustomed to such
observations.</FONT> <BR><FONT face=Georgia size=3>Mr. Selig, who owns the
restaurant chain Rice and raises the bees as a hobby, was disappointed that an
entire season that should have been devoted to honey yielded instead a red
concoction that tasted metallic and then overly sweet.</FONT> <BR><FONT face=Georgia size=3>He and Ms. Mayo also fear that the bees’ feasting on the
stuff could have unforeseeable health effects on the hives.</FONT> <BR><FONT face=Georgia size=3>But Mr. Selig said there was something extraordinary, too,
about those corn-syrup-happy bees that came flying back this summer.</FONT>
<BR><FONT face=Georgia size=3>“When the sun is a bit down, they glow red in
the evenings,” he said. “They were slightly fluorescent. And it was
beautiful.”</FONT> <BR><FONT face=Georgia size=2><I>E-mail:
susan.dominus@nytimes.com</I></FONT> <BR><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3> </FONT> <BR><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Patti</FONT></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>