Garden Bees

A page to celebrate, a page to inform, a page to notice things often unnoticed.
A page to reflect and encourage others to do so.

   Humankind has an urge to garden. While many people manage to suppress this instinct, or are in situations where they are unable to fulfil it, others indulge it joyfully. Humankind started in a garden, created in the image of the Creator, therefore we are creative. But we are also destructive. "To harm the earth is to heap contempt on its Creator." -Chief Seattle

  The earth itself is a garden of incredible beauty and diversity. It is also complex beyond comprehension. It could not have been an accident. A friend of mine who is good at such things calculated the odds of the simplest of all life forms - a virus - to auto-assemble given a full pool of amino acids (which has itself never been witnessed). The virus in question has 50,000 DNA base pairs, which yields an astronomical 1 in 4 to the 50,000 power. That's 1:999,000 followed by over 6 typed pages of zeros. This doesn't even take into account that viruses need hosts - bacteria, which are far more complex.

   We are not the owners of the earth. We are but stewards, and we are accountable for what we do. Will we smother our vegetables with insecticide dust? Or will we learn how the pest in controlled in Nature, and find out why we are having a problem with it, and how to fine tune our gardening so the problem is fixed without poisons?

   Many years ago I was shown (by a "native" American friend), a stinking sewer pipe dumping raw sewage into the creek. The pipe came from the village where I lived. They did not have, nor had ever had any kind of sewage treatment for the village. I was able to publish an article on the pollution, with photos, in the local newspaper. This made some folks mad at me, but embarrassed some public officials enough to spur them toward the establishment of a modern sewage treatment system. Within three years, the creek was cleaned up. Fish and wildlife habitat was restored.

   There is nothing more powerful than knowledge. Neither I, nor most of my village, knew the results of the lack of sewage treatment, until it was plainly shown to us. Once the problem was generally known, it was solved.

   One of the chief environmental problems today is indiscriminate pesticide use. Pesticides should be the last resort, but are usually the first. A little more thinking, some careful planning, and pesticide usage could be reduced many times over.  And it should be because many unnoticed creatures that make our survival on this planet possible, are threatened by overuse and misuse of pesticides. I refer to the wonderful "bugs" that pollinate our plants, break down our wastes, and control our pests. A lot of folks think all insects are pests. But without the beneficial insects, life on earth would be impossible for us.

   Now let me go back to stalking these critters for awhile with my camera. When I get a good set of pictures, I'll be back here to post them....

This Page is Under Construction, but here's what we have so far...

Pollination for the Home Gardener by Howard Veatch (reprinted here by permission)
A Photographic Plant/Pollinator Database    a work in progress at a companion site. See what visits the flowers.
Helping the Good Guys: beetle banks, nectiary banks and other techniques
• Garden Gallery You never know what interesting things you'll find
• The bug that launched a revolution in pest control    How a fast growing field got its start
• An illegal public mosquito spraying, and the aftermath.
• Cotton spraying: The pest died - or did it? And so did a lot of other creatures.: Observations and reflections
A sloppy spray on soybeans the public gets sprayed whether we want to or not.

Kids!  Visit the Kids' Good Bug Page.  (Adults might enjoy it too)

Links to other interesting web pages and books

This page is dedicated to the One who created this world, then entered it to redeem it.

This page is copyrighted 2003-2010 by David L. Green. Usage of photos or text (other than brief quotes in reviews) without permission is theft.