Call #2: Maureen Dowd is Wrong on Bees Too
Using Maureen Dowd’s “honey bee factory in Weslaco Texas” as a search term did not bring up anythign about factories. It DID however link me to the Honey Bee Research Unit of the USDA, located in Weslaco. It took a few calls, since the office was closed, but I spoke to Mr. Kevin Hackett, a USDA researcher. he told me that the $1.7 million that Dowd objects to is to study colony collapse disorder, a looming threat to our food supply. Hackett confirmed that 1 in every three bites of food, 33%, is produced through the work of bees. No bees? Then no squash, no apples, no almonds, and no beef either, since the alfalfa and clover cows eat is pollinated by bees.
Bee pollination is responsible for $15 billion in added crop value, particularly for specialty crops such as almonds and other nuts, berries, fruits, and vegetables. About one mouthful in three in the diet directly or indirectly benefits from honey bee pollination. While there are native pollinators (honey bees came from the Old World with European colonists), honey bees are more prolific and the easiest to manage for the large scale pollination that U.S. agriculture requires. In California, the almond crop alone uses 1.3 million colonies of bees, approximately one half of all honey bees in the United States, and this need is projected to grow to 1.5 million colonies by 2010. …
One of the tools that will help in this research is the recently sequenced honey bee genome to better understand bees’ basic biology and breed better bees, and to better diagnose bee pests and pathogens and their impacts on bee health and colony collapse. The use of this genome information certainly will have great applications in improving honey bee breeding and management.
The search for factors that are involved in CCD is focusing on four areas: pathogens, parasites, environmental stresses, and bee management stresses such as poor nutrition. It is unlikely that a single factor is the cause of CCD; it is more likely that there is a complex of different components.
What does Maureen Dowd have against farmers and food? Why does she want to bring on mass starvation in America? Why does Maureen Dowd want my child to starve to death? What does she have against agricultural communities in California, Iowa, Nebraska, and every other state that uses bees to pollinate their crops? Does she have a plan to replace bees?
March 5th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
Actually, Brandon, it was John McCain who was complaining about the honey bee thing. Dowd just reported it.
Sheesh.
March 7th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
First of all, it’s “brendan”. says so in giant letters up on top.
second of all, the point isn’t that mccain said this stuff: it’s to be expected, he’s a member of what he calls the “loyal oppostion”, and so part of his job is to undermine the president’s agenda.
But it is maureen dowd’s job, AS A JOURNALIST/ COLUMNIST FOR THE NYT, to call bullshit when necessary. Just because John McCain says something is so, doesn’t make it so: remember when he said the fundamentals of our economy are strong?
The point is that reporting is not the same as stenography. Reporters and columnists are supposed to criticize what politicians tell them, because politicians are prone to lying and misrepresenting the facts.
What maureen dowd did wasn’t reporting on mccain’s twitters: what she did was let john mccain borrow her column to lob questionable and easily debunked claims at barack obama, who he opposes.
that’s not reporting: that’s stenography.