Word: hives
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...starting to sour. Driven by surging global demand, California's almond growers have doubled acreage since 1981, forcing them to lean heavily on imported bees from as far away as Vermont. Drive along the unlined roads around Hughson, and it's easy to find 10 different almond farmers renting hives from 10 different states. Orin Johnson, whose family has been keeping bees around Hughson since the 1950s, remembers when beekeepers earned less than $10 per hive in pollination fees to supplement their main business: honey. "Almonds were nothing," says Johnson, examining some of his 700 hives, his snow white hair...
...industrial pollination may be starting to take its toll on the bees. Many keepers are feeding their colonies corn syrup, sugar and pollen substitute to artificially bulk up hives ahead of the almond season, while killing off parasitic mites with pesticides. Plus, parking the hives smack in the middle of this land of almonds "is comparable to us going to McDonald's every day for a month," says Johnson. "In the past, you'd have a blend of sources, and [the bees] seemed so much healthier." Johnson and many bee researchers believe this monocultural diet may have contributed...
...Merrill Lynch is shaky and that BofA will need billions more in federal assistance. Meanwhile, Citigroup is trying to stay one step ahead of the sharks, er, shorts, who have taken the stock down more than 20% in the past two days. Though Citi is moving aggressively to hive off assets and divisions - earlier this week it announced the merger of its Smith Barney brokerage unit with Morgan Stanley's Global Wealth Management division, a deal that will bring Citi more than $2 billion - investors are worried about worsening loan losses across the banking sector and also about Citi...
...typically stressful day for a honey-bee, in terms human hive-dwellers can understand: "You stagger off a coast-to-coast red-eye flight and chug a Pepsi for breakfast to revive. You hop in your rental car and head for your business meeting, but wouldn't you know it, the GPS is malfunctioning in the car and you get lost. You show up for the meeting late, edgy, and shaking. You have to excuse yourself to hit the bathroom because you've got a stomach bug and antibiotics just aren't helping. Not to mention the fleas that seem...
...what a "hive mind" - the highly organized honey bee hierarchy - looks like when it's suffering from CCD: "There were usually a few bees, yes, but they were wandering without purpose like survivors of an apocalyse, which they were ... Great lobes of the hive mind had died, and what bits remained had lost any organizing principle. If this was a mind, it was one with advanced Alzheimer's disease...