Prabhupada, New Vrindaban, June 6, 1969: Just like flies. They’ll sit down on the stool. Maksikam. And the bees, they will try to take honey. Even in the animals you’ll see. The honey… The bees will never come to the stool. And the ordinary flies, they never go to collect honey. Similarly, there are divisions in the birds, divisions in the beasts, divisions in human society. So you cannot expect that ordinary person will come to Krsna consciousness. You see? Because they have been trained to become flies, they will taste stool. You see? The modern education is to teach people to become flies, only stool. Not here, Krsna consciousness. But you make it a honeycomb. Those who are after, seeking after honey, they will find, “Here is something.” You see? Don’t make it a stool society. You see? Make it a honey society. At least, give chance, those who are seeking after honey. Don’t cheat people. So they’ll come.
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Replacing the Honeybee
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=replacing-the-honeybee
From the June 2009 Special Editions: Honeybees have been dying in record numbers, yet many commercial crops depend on them for pollination. Entomologists who have been struggling to find an alternative now report that another bee might fill the void.
The blue orchard bee, also known as the orchard mason bee, is undergoing intensive study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture pollinating insect research unit at Utah State University at Logan. James Cane, an entomologist there, says a million blue orchards are now pollinating crops in California. Like honeybees, the species can pollinate a variety of flora, including almond, peach, plum, cherry and apple trees. Unlike honeybees, however, they tend to live alone, typically in boreholes made by beetles in dead trees. In cultivation, the bees will happily occupy holes drilled into lumber or even Styrofoam blocks.
The blue orchards rarely sting and, because of their solitary nature, do not swarm. They are incredibly efficient pollinators: for fruit trees, 2,000 blue orchards can do the work of 100,000 honeybees. Their biggest drawback is that beekeepers can increase their population only by a factor of three to eight a year; a honeybee colony can expand from several dozen individuals to 20,000 in a few months.
“We’re still in the development stage” of applying the USDA’s research, says David Moreland, CEO of AgPollen, which is supplying blue orchard bees to the California almond industry. Last season local almond growers were paying up to $300 for enough honeybees to work an acre, 10 times what they paid a decade ago, making the blue orchard bees cost-competitive, albeit only barely.
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