AS IT IS 2015-09-22 Saving the Honeybees, One Hive at a Time

AS IT IS 2015-09-22 Saving the Honeybees, One Hive at a Time

American Billy Davis has been keeping bees since the 1960s. He has followed the sharp drop in the number of honeybees across the country. Two years ago, he set up a non-profit group called the Sustainable Honeybee Program. It is developing stronger bees and teaching beekeepers how to strengthen their bee colonies.

Brenda Kiessling volunteers with Sustainable Honeybee Program.

"All the trees that you see came from a seed. That seed was produced by a flower that was pollinated by a bee. If we didn't have the bees, we wouldn't have the trees, we wouldn't have the flowers, we wouldn't have all the fruits and vegetables, or one-third of the food that humans need."

Brenda Kiessling is a retired¹ doctor. As a girl, she was raised on a farm. That is when she started watching bees.

"They work as a family. They are very interesting. It's always different. Even if you have one colony of bees, when you come out to look at it, you have to 'read it' that day. It's not going to be the same, doing the exactly same thing as yesterday."

Experts say more than one-third of the honeybees are disappearing. Their disappearance² could have resulted from a combination of things like climate change, parasites³ and chemicals used in agriculture.

Virginia beekeeper Billy Davis is working to help honeybees survive.  

"We are our salvation⁴, not chemical companies or the professors. They do a lot of research that's important, but when the rubber hits the road, it's going to be the beekeepers."

Americans are trying different ways to fight the loss of bees. They include using less chemicals and pesticides⁵. More people are planting bushes and flowers that bees prefer.

The Sustainable Honeybee Program works with bees. The program operates a farm with more than 50 bee colonies. Alex McLellan is the group's chief operations officer.

"The ultimate goal here is to generate bees that are able to take care of themselves better. And we proved by not using chemicals here for the last seven or eight years, that it is possible to keep bees and to have them survive without the use of chemical intervention⁶. And that's important."

One tactic⁷ to help bee populations stay healthy is “hygienic behavior,” or the ability to identify and remove diseased bees from the colony. Brenda Kiessling says the beekeepers test for this by using liquid nitrogen.

"We freeze 100 cells. We come back in 24 hours and we test what percentage of the cells the workers have removed and gotten rid of. Queens which have a hygienic percentage of 95 or 100 percentage are excellent."

Alex McLellan says the group has breeding programs for producing queen bees and sharing them with local beekeepers. He says these 'hygienic honeybees' will be able to recognize threats to the colony, and take corrective action.               

"We keep records on every single hive, and that compendium⁸ of records goes back quite a long time. From that we can look at the genetics and the survivability of all our hives. Prior to this year, I think we had a survivability of something over 90 percent, that's far higher than the average nationally."

Richard Whitlow is one of the more than 20 volunteers who work at the farm.                                                         

"Today we are inspecting the hives to make sure there is enough room for the queens to lay eggs and that they are starting to work on their storage for the winter. Egg laying is very important so that they can build the hive up, to have a thriving hive going into the winter."

Training volunteers is only the first step. The next steps are up to them, when they go home, to use what they learned and share with their neighbors.

Words in This Story

salvation – n. something that saves someone from danger or a difficult situation

rubber hits the road – idiom expression the moment of truth of something

ultimate – adj. happening or coming at the end of a process

compendium - n. a collection of things that have been gathered together and presented as a group

1 retired   

adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的

参考例句：

• The old man retired to the country for rest.这位老人下乡休息去了。
• Many retired people take up gardening as a hobby.许多退休的人都以从事园艺为嗜好。

2 disappearance   

n.消失，消散，失踪

参考例句：

• He was hard put to it to explain her disappearance.他难以说明她为什么不见了。
• Her disappearance gave rise to the wildest rumours.她失踪一事引起了各种流言蜚语。

3 parasites   

寄生物( parasite的名词复数 )； 靠他人为生的人； 诸虫

参考例句：

• These symptoms may be referable to virus infection rather than parasites. 这些症状也许是由病毒感染引起的，而与寄生虫无关。
• Kangaroos harbor a vast range of parasites. 袋鼠身上有各种各样的寄生虫。

4 salvation   

n.（尤指基督）救世，超度，拯救，解困

参考例句：

• Salvation lay in political reform.解救办法在于政治改革。
• Christians hope and pray for salvation.基督教徒希望并祈祷灵魂得救。

5 pesticides   

n.杀虫剂( pesticide的名词复数 )；除害药物

参考例句：

• vegetables grown without the use of pesticides 未用杀虫剂种植的蔬菜
• There is a lot of concern over the amount of herbicides and pesticides used in farming. 人们对农业上灭草剂和杀虫剂的用量非常担忧。 来自《简明英汉词典》

6 intervention   

n.介入，干涉，干预

参考例句：

• The government's intervention in this dispute will not help.政府对这场争论的干预不会起作用。
• Many people felt he would be hostile to the idea of foreign intervention.许多人觉得他会反对外来干预。

7 tactic   

n.战略，策略；adj.战术的，有策略的

参考例句：

• Reducing prices is a common sales tactic.降价是常用的销售策略。
• She had often used the tactic of threatening to resign.她惯用以辞职相威胁的手法。

8 compendium   

n.简要，概略

参考例句：

• The Compendium of Materia Medica has been held in high esteem since it was first published.“本草纲目”问世之后，深受人们的推重。
• The book is a compendium of their poetry,religion and philosophy.这本书是他们诗歌、宗教和哲学的概略。