Silence of the Bees on PBS this Sunday

CWBees · October 26, 2007, 10:26:42 PM

Nature is going to have a program on CCD this Sunday.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/bees/

reinbeau · October 29, 2007, 08:29:21 AM

It was a good show to give information out to the general public about the state of our bees.

BeeHopper · October 29, 2007, 10:31:36 AM

My thoughts: Great closeups of the bees and very informative to the non beekeeping public. HOWEVER, the program was a bit over the top with the DOOM and GLOOM, the SKY is FALLING mentality. The cause of the CCD in at this point is still inconclusive, and WHO the heck said the Honeybee faces extinction (sp) by 2035 :?

Kathyp · October 29, 2007, 11:27:16 AM

BeeHopper, are you trying to ruin the story?? who would watch if it were not doom and gloom? it did give some good info, and it gives people something else to obsess about. what a deal!!!!

BeeHopper · October 29, 2007, 12:25:05 PM

Quote from: kathyp on October 29, 2007, 11:27:16 AM
BeeHopper, are you trying to ruin the story?? who would watch if it were not doom and gloom? it did give some good info, and it gives people something else to obsess about. what a deal!!!!

I suppose you're right. Who pays attention to positive stuff anymore :(

tillie · October 29, 2007, 12:42:42 PM

I didn't see it, but better a more or less accurate portrayal of the bees than what the upcoming Jerry Seinfeld movie will bring us - with the worker bees being men and with bees coupled (ma and pa) in the hive, not to mention as Michael Bush did in an earlier post, that the bees in the movie all look like yellow jackets, bringing more confusion to the public about what is a bee and what is a yellow jacket!

Linda T in Atlanta

reinbeau · October 29, 2007, 02:36:24 PM

Tillie, I'm with you. Give me doom and gloom with good info otherwise - that movie is making me crazy. Precisely why I won't pay Hollyweird a dime to see it! :roll:

Kathyp · October 29, 2007, 02:52:26 PM

oh, come on. ogres aren't green and dragons and donkeys don't make babies, but the shrek movies were good :-D

tillie · October 29, 2007, 03:20:52 PM

It obviously hits a button for me :lol: :lol:

And I like Shrek, but I also don't raise ogres and donkeys in my backyard.....nor do I have to worry about whether my neighbors believe in ogres or donkeys like I know they believe that the "bees" sting them rather than the local yellow jackets.

LT in Atlanta

PS If ogres aren't green, what color are they????

Kathyp · October 29, 2007, 03:41:24 PM

they are brown.

i used to have the same problem with horse movies. the 4H kids didn't understand why their horses didn't respond like Black Beauty, or like being whispered to. even so, some of those movies were what got kids and parents interested in horses. then it was my job to help educate them to the reality of horse ownership. some made it. some didn't.

KONASDAD · October 29, 2007, 04:33:34 PM

no such thing as bad publicity say some. Keeping bees in the forefront of peoples minds is perhaps more important than complete accuracy. More people are aware of honeybees than in recent history and thats a great thing. We need to take this momentum as a group and educate people as best we can. One by one if necessary.

Moonshae · October 29, 2007, 04:36:49 PM

I had 4 or 5 people tell me about the bit in 60 minutes last night...I was driving, and I couldn't watch either one. Anybody have a digital copy somewhere, with a hyperlink? I haven't found anything on YouTube but the previews put out by PBS. 60 Minutes had a 1-min clip of its segment on their website, but that was it.

wayne · October 29, 2007, 04:41:10 PM

I watched both this and the 60 minutes piece. Both seemed fair to me. The usual gloom and doom you get from PBS and CBS but not bad.
I really liked the Chinese hand pollinating their pear crop.

Jerrymac · October 29, 2007, 04:43:09 PM

About those movies. Did anyone complain this much about the ant movies? Those were way off.

mgmoore7 · October 29, 2007, 04:54:36 PM

Quote from: Jerrymac on October 29, 2007, 04:43:09 PM
About those movies. Did anyone complain this much about the ant movies? Those were way off.

Maybe not, but I don't think there are thousands of antkeepers that have a stake in the public's perceptions of ants. Ants don't provide honey or pollination either.

TwT · October 29, 2007, 09:36:01 PM

Quote from: mgmoore7 on October 29, 2007, 04:54:36 PM
Quote from: Jerrymac on October 29, 2007, 04:43:09 PM
About those movies. Did anyone complain this much about the ant movies? Those were way off.

Maybe not, but I don't think there are thousands of antkeepers that have a stake in the public's perceptions of ants. Ants don't provide honey or pollination either.

I thought the 60 minute segment and the show (silence of the bee's) were both good, the main thing it has done is bring people that don't know anything about bee's to learning how much the bee's mean to us all and how they are less now that before, sounds like we might get more swarm and removal calls... I thought they were nice shows and they put a lot of time in the movie to make it look interesting to non-beekeepers

Bee1 · October 29, 2007, 10:00:00 PM

I thought it was informative. a number of friends were calling to tell me it was on. People are interested cuz they do keep hearing about this 'strange bee disease'. I didn't see the whole pbs piece but I enjoyed what I saw. I missed or just plain ignored most of the the doom and gloom. I just saw bees, bee guts (they would pull out the bees little intestines?? and mash it up, and tested it! ... what were they measuring/testing ?? ) , and perplexed scientists and some hard working ...

I personally am in awe of the the farmers in Sichuan Province who hand-pollinate their pear trees and than individually wrap each pear in a bag while it is still on the tree to protect from insects! Wow. It will be interesting to see/hear about how long it will take for bees to return to the area.... It was stated that the bees were killed off by pesticide use... which has since stopped (I think).

bee1

blckoakbees · October 31, 2007, 01:07:45 AM

I saw the program on PBS and thought it was good. I did not realize how many plants need pollinators and I am a gardener.

I think this program may give people a greater appreciation of the role bees play in nature.

Brian D. Bray · October 31, 2007, 01:24:41 AM

Quote from: BeeHopper on October 29, 2007, 10:31:36 AM
My thoughts: Great closeups of the bees and very informative to the non beekeeping public. HOWEVER, the program was a bit over the top with the DOOM and GLOOM, the SKY is FALLING mentality. The cause of the CCD in at this point is still inconclusive, and WHO the heck said the Honeybee faces extinction (sp) by 2035 :?

IMO, if we don't scream doom & gloom nobody will listen. An old saying goes: "The squeaky wheel gets the grease."
Also, if people think that honeybees could be extinct by 2035 maybe they'll do something, but personally, I think the extinct by 2035 came from the same ether that the 99% die off of feral bees came from.

Quote from: wayne on October 29, 2007, 04:41:10 PM
I watched both this and the 60 minutes piece. Both seemed fair to me. The usual gloom and doom you get from PBS and CBS but not bad.
I really liked the Chinese hand pollinating their pear crop.

.

I liked both programs too. I think the hand pollinating in an area that had become (and continues to be) deadly to honeybees due to over use of chemicals was very illustrative of what can happen if action isn't taken.
The other thing we need to do is get honeybees viewed as livestock by the WTO and not a plant organism as it is currently. With WTO defining honeybees as vegitation it makes it much harder to control and inspect shipments--Read the article by Jim Fischer, "Beepocalypse Now" in the November issue of Bee Culture Magizine.

Kathyp · October 31, 2007, 02:05:00 AM

QuoteThe other thing we need to do is get honeybees viewed as livestock by the WTO and not a plant organism as it is currently. With WTO defining honeybees as vegitation it makes it much harder to control and inspect shipments--Read the article by Jim Fischer, "Beepocalypse Now" in the November issue of Bee Culture Magizine.

wonder about that. when you mix the words livestock and food, you get FDA regs dropped on your head. that might mean the end of doing what works best for us, and doing what the feds think works best.