The Bear Guarding the Beehive

By Stephanie C. Fox

The bees are in terrible trouble.

They need a good lawyer – one who is on their side.

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful country called Oblivion. It had everything growing in it to make its people happy and healthy: raspberries, almonds, peaches, apricots, blueberries, cranberries, lavender, thyme, irises, roses, tulips, daffodils…the list seemed endless.

But it did end, because some of the Thieves of Oblivion wanted to sell all of these wonderful things, and to force Nature to produce more and more and more of them. These Thieves, running a corporation called BearGenics, had a conflict of interest with Nature. They tampered with the genetics of crop plants.

They never gave a thought to the fact that without honey bees, none of these plants would grow. The Thieves poisoned the plants, and in so doing, poisoned the honey bees. That's what happens when you leave the bear guarding the beehive.

This story is a companion to The Book of Thieves, which describes the Banksters of Oblivion, and how they destroyed the financial security of that country.

• Language: English
• Publisher: QueenBeeBooks
• Release date: Feb 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393396604

Book preview

The Bear Guarding the Beehive

Stephanie C. Fox, J.D.

Bloomfield, Connecticut, U.S.A.

Copyright © 2014 by Stephanie Carole Fox

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by QueenBeeBooks, Connecticut.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Name: Fox, Stephanie C., author.

Title: The Bear Guarding the Beehive / Stephanie C. Fox.

Description: Connecticut: QueenBeeEdit Books, [2014]. Includes bibliographical references.

Subjects: 1. Environmental—Law. 2. Ecosystems & Habitats – General—Nature. 2. / Public Policy – Agriculture & Food Policy—POLITICAL SCIENCE (see also SOCIAL SCIENCE / Agriculture & Food).

www.queenbeeedit.com

Cover design by Stephanie C. Fox

Cover art by Lauren Jane Leipold

Also by Stephanie C. Fox

––––––––

The Book of Thieves

Nae-Née

Birth Control: Infallible, with

Nanites and Convenience for All

Vaccine: The Cull

Nae-Née Wasn’t Enough

New World Order Underwater

The Nae-Née Inventors Strike Back

What the Small Gray Visitor Said

Elephant’s Kitchen

– An Aspergirl’s Study in Difference

Almost a Meal –

A True Tale of Horror

Scheherazade Cat:

The Story of a War Hero

An American Woman in Kuwait

Hawaiʻi – Stolen Paradise:

A Travelogue

Hawaiʻi – Stolen Paradise:

A Brief History

This story is dedicated to honey bees,

beekeepers, and independent scientists.

"That which is not good for the bee-hive

cannot be good for the bees."

-  Marcus Aurelius

––––––––

"Swallows have disappeared,

bees are dying out

because of pesticides that

should have been banned

long ago – it’s a scandal."

-  Brigitte Bardot

Table of Contents

A Conflict of Interest

Beauty and the Bees

Healthy Honey Bees – An Illustration in Words

Communing with the Honey Bees

In Memoriam to the Bees

Pestituted

BearGenics and Natural Manipulators

The Founding Mother

Nature is Not the Enemy

Stress and Constant Travel

Systemic Insecticides

Lost in Transit

Nosema – Gut Mold

Mites and Other Parasites

Drought

Colony Collapse Disorder

Beekeepers’ Empty Hives

The Fairy Tale Princess’s Fruit

Differing Burdens and Standards

Toxic Until Proven Innocent

The Wisdom of the Land of the Fleur-de-Lis

Preemptive Pressure Pointing

The Sectionate List-Makers

Engineered Static

You Can’t Eat Money

We’re in So Much Trouble

The End – Suicide by Insecticides

The End – The Bees are Saved

Appendices of Antidotes

Appendix – Beekeeping in Cities

Appendix – Home Gardens for Honey Bees

Appendix – Small, Diversified Crops

Appendix – Voting with Forks

Glossary of Terms

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Graphic Designer

A Conflict of Interest

Entrusting our environment and its safety and integrity to chemicals, and stressing the elements that keep us healthy to the brink of extinction, is like leaving the bear guarding the beehive.

Soon you will know why – and in detail – our planet cannot grow enough food to sustain human life, or other life as it we know and love it.

The basic cause is a conflict of interest.

Imagine a bear guarding a beehive.

Bears love honey, but if they can take it all, they will. If a beehive loses all of its honey, it must start over. It will need a new queen bee, new honeycomb, new stores of beeswax to hold new honey – everything must be redone from scratch.

So what? A hive can start over...but at what cost?

But what if there are bears everywhere, unchecked, doing this to most of the hives rather than just a few? Bears preventing the bees from doing what they need to do undisturbed, bears grabbing all that they can get their paws on, bears preventing others from having access?

When you have a bear guarding the beehive, there will never be enough honey or enough healthy bees to pollinate the plants that other life forms need to survive. Without healthy, undisturbed bees to pollinate and collect nectar from those plants – flowers and flowering food plants such as fruits and nuts – the natural world that is our environment will collapse.

We don’t want that to happen.

Habitat loss, diseases introduced from too much travel, exhaustion from that same overextension of bees’ immune systems, a diet of empty calories, poisons being released where bees forage, and general use and abuse had induced stressors that comprised a perfect storm, whipped up against the bees.

I will tell you about the conflict of interest that drove it all, one between money and Nature.

This is the story of what happened with bees in the nation of Oblivion.

It all happened while the people of Oblivion were going about their business, determined to grow more and more fruits and nuts to support their ever-growing human population. This population assumed that it could grow and grow endlessly; that the natural world could be manipulated to support human needs...and wants.

It couldn’t, and it still can’t.

That is not something that the Oblivious wanted to face, however.

The people of Oblivion were absolutely determined to ignore this reality, and to coax – and force – more and more and more from their land. They thought that this could go on indefinitely, and monster corporations were allowed to form with this end in mind.

Of course, huge sums of money were involved.

One of them specialized in killing off the insects that eat fruits, vegetables, and other plants that humans grow for food. The owners of this monster corporation thought they were very clever, but they were not. I will tell you why.

When you aim to kill off some insects, you cannot pick and choose which ones.

A poison, once released into the environment, kills whatever insect it comes into contact with, regardless of whether or not that insect interferes or assists with food production or other plant growth. Once released, a chemical stays in the soil permanently. It adheres to whatever plant it comes in contact with, affecting the plant’s molecular structure as it grows.

This affects any other insect that touches it, like the honey bee. It also affects any human who eats the food of that plant, harming the health of that individual. Sometimes the wiser course is to leave Nature alone, but the Oblivious were not wise people.

I will tell you why toxic chemicals were being released into the environment and killing the honey bees. I will tell you what else was killing the honey bees, because it was not only toxins. It won’t be pleasant.

Beauty and the Bees

We have a lot to thank the honey bees for.

If only the people of Oblivion had thought of that sooner!

But...we humans are a foolish and short-sighted species.

We have wonderful gifts that we don’t appreciate or protect: a beautiful planet with blue skies, breathable air, sunshine, plants that feed us and have lovely scents and appearances, crucial insects that we call honey bees (and other bees, such as bumblebees), talent, ingenuity, and the physical ability to take care of it all and enjoy it.

Yet most of us don’t do that. Too few of us do that to really make a difference.

Why?!

Not enough of us read and take the initiative to learn the consequences of using poisons on our natural environment and to identify safe, viable alternatives. As a result, not enough of us protest the rampant application of poison to our habitat, which is insane when you recall that this planet is the only one that we’ve got. We can’t just move to another one, because there isn’t one.

As life evolved on our planet, it adapted to poisons by developing where those poisons – such as arsenic, radioactive elements, and other mutagens – did not exist. Yet now we unleash these toxins upon Nature, all the while expecting the aspects of it that we like and that have benefitted us for eons to remain unchanged. This is insane. It simply does not work.

The world that honey bees makes possible is the most beautiful, wonderful, amazing array of sights, scents, and tastes that we could hope for. (It should be noted that other insects and some birds play a significant role in pollination, but our focus is on the bees. All are threatened by human shortsightedness, greed and stupidity, but this is not an entomology treatise. This is a plea to protect the honey bees, and so I shall concentrate on them.)

This planet grows raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, oranges, apples, apricots, peaches, almonds – yes, nuts! – to eat, all due to the industry of honey bees, whose honey takes on a different color and flavor depending upon which fruit the bees have pollinated.

And that’s not all. The world has gorgeous flowers of all kinds: every iris, peony, rose, lavender, daffodil, Rose of Sharon, hibiscus, foxgloves, and many others...this list could go on and on and on. Huge numbers of them are pollinated by bees.

Some are pollinated by birds. Hummingbirds pollinate bee balm, ironically enough! They also do that for bird-of-paradise. Still others, such as plumeria, are pollinated by moths and butterflies.

Pollen-bearing flowers: pastel pink peony at left, tall bearded