Bees Sting Facebooks AI Expansion Plan

 Ars Technica, Endangered bees stop Meta’s plan for nuclear-powered AI data center

Plans by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta to build an AI data center in the US that runs on nuclear power were thwarted in part because a rare species of bee was discovered on land earmarked for the project, according to people familiar with the matter.

Zuckerberg had planned to strike a deal with an existing nuclear power plant operator to provide emissions-free electricity for a new data center supporting his artificial intelligence ambitions.

However, the potential deal faced multiple complications including environmental and regulatory challenges, these people said.

The discovery of the rare bee species on a location next to the plant where the data center was to be built would have complicated the project, Zuckerberg told a Meta all-hands meeting last week, according to two people familiar with the meeting.

The blow comes as rivals Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have all struck deals recently with nuclear power plant operators to fulfill rising energy demands from data centers as they race to train and maintain power-hungry AI models. One AI query consumes up to 10 times the energy of a standard Google search.

Meta is continuing to explore various deals for carbon-free energy, including nuclear, one of the people said. Meta declined to comment.

Nuclear is increasingly viewed as a way to get stable, round-the-clock power during the AI wars between Big Tech groups.

Rusty Patched Bumblebee

The article doesn't explain what bee species is causing the problem, but at SAN, Rare bee discovery halts Facebook parent Meta’s nuclear power plans

According to Financial Times, CEO Mark Zuckerberg informed Meta employees that the decision to halt the project stemmed in part from concerns surrounding the bee species. Although the specific type of bee has not been disclosed, the rusty patched bumblebee is the only type of bee in the continental U.S. that is protected under the Endangered Species Act.

The Science was Settled

Hubble Ultra Deep Field  Space Telescope  Photo Image

It's been in a tab so long it's got mildew but, from Jazz Shaw at Hat Hair, Physicist: There is no Dark Matter and the Universe is Twice as Old as We Thought

Dr. Rajendra Gupta, a theoretical physicist from the University of Ottowa made a remarkable announcement recently. He claimed that new data suggests that the universe is nearly twice as old as the 14 billion-year figure we've been given for a very long time. And if that's true, he further claims that there is no need for anything like dark matter to exist because the universe is behaving precisely as it should. That would really change the landscape of current astrophysics. (Science Alert)

Sound waves fossilized in the maps of galaxies across the Universe could be interpreted as signs of a Big Bang that took place 13 billion years earlier than current models suggest.

Last year, theoretical physicist Rajendra Gupta from the University of Ottawa in Canada published a rather extraordinary proposal that the Universe's currently accepted age is a trick of the light, one that masks its truly ancient state while also ridding us of the need to explain hidden forces.

Gupta's latest analysis suggests oscillations from the earliest moments in time preserved in large-scale cosmic structures support his claims.

Gupta went on to state that if the universe is 26.7 billion years old as his team believes, "the Universe does not require dark matter to exist." I'm obviously nowhere near smart enough to grasp everything these eggheads are talking about, but the layman's explanation for this part of it boils down to missing data. Previous studies all suggested that the universe is expanding faster than it should be based on the amount of physical matter we are able to observe in space. That's why physicists had to dream up dark matter (and its corresponding partner, dark energy) to explain what was being observed. But the vastly larger universe now being posited would allow for the apparent motion of all of the heavenly bodies.

Well, I can live with that. I had heard, though, that one of the more compelling arguments for dark matter was the rotation of galaxies; most galaxies rotated as though they were surrounded by a halo of matter which could not be observed, but a few galaxies had been observed that seemed to be striped of this excess mass by a galactic collision. I don't see how this observation explains that. 

This one's not quite so stale. From Dave Strom at Hat Hair,  The Beepocalypse Has Been Canceled. Remember, a few years ago all the concern that Honeybees were dying out from some "colony collapse disorder" of unknown origin?  You might be shocked to find that now honeybees are so abundant as to be a "problem."

The beepocalypse was always a manufactured panic, although a rather profitable one for a small slice of the population who "consulted" on how to save the bees. Environmentalists loved the story because it provided another angle to attack industrial agriculture. And, of course, for the media, which regularly push false narratives to keep us excited.

The Washington Post presents a fascinating observation: never before in American history have there been more bee colonies. This intriguing trend, like many others, is a product of economic forces.

Back in the aughts, you couldn't get away from the beepocalypse story, and in certain circles it continues to be pushed. Environmentalists testify at legislatures with scare stories about the lack of pollinators and the coming collapse of agriculture. And tax breaks for planting flowers at solar farms popped up. Bees dying provided jobs and fodder for lobbying.

None of it was true. There was, indeed, an epidemic of colony collapse syndrome during the Bush administration, but it turns out that colony collapse syndrome goes back as far as records of bee colonies do. It apparently is cyclical, and nobody knows why.

Even at the height of the "colony collapse disorder" hysteria, it was pretty clear that honey bees weren't in any danger, the bee keepers had matters well in hand. Also, it was pretty clear that bees were being used as a weapon in the fight against neonicotinoid pesticides. 

Search Google and you will see an unending list of attacks on these pesticides, mostly linked to how they kill off bees. Ironically, of course, we know that this is overblown because honeybees are constantly pollinating agricultural products using these insecticides, and there are a record number of hives and bees.

And the reason for the apparent surplus of Honeybees may surprise you, but should not shock you. Tax policy in Texas! 

Your plot of five to 20 acres now qualifies for agriculture tax breaks if you keep bees on it for five years.

Over the next few years, all 254 Texas counties adopted bee rules requiring, for example, six hives on five acres plus another hive for every 2.5 acres beyond that to qualify for the tax break. 

As usual, follow the money.  

I Guess Nobody Told Her About the Birds and the Bees?

TMZ: Kyle Richards Hospitalized After Bee Attack at Home, Posts Video

Kyle Richards had quite the scary run-in with Mother Nature this weekend -- and by that, we mean she got stung up by a bunch of bees at her house ... which sent her to the hospital.

The 'Real Housewives' star posted a terrifying update to her IG Story Sunday ... saying she'd been sent to the ER the day prior after apparently coming across a full-blown hive at her home in Encino ... and the black and yellow buggers went after her in an attack.

Yellow Jackets I would presume. I hate 'em. Who hasn't run afoul of a yellow jacket nest in their life? It's happened to me a couple of times, and one of my sons was stung 21 times upon encountering a nest in the ground beside our house. 

 

Kyle actually posted surveillance footage from the episode ... and you can see her making a run for it across her backyard, with the bees apparently giving chase. She says they were in her hair, her face and literally stinging her. All the while, she was screaming for help.

We kinda buried the lede ... Kyle says she's not only terrified of bees, but she's allergic to them. So, this was truly a life or death moment ... as she says she couldn't get her EpiPen to work for some reason. In the end, she warded off the bees by hopping in her pool.

 

Kyle says she can laugh about it now(ish) because she ended up being rescued and attended to by the local fire dept., whose firefighters bolted to the scene when 911 was eventually called. Speaking of those guys, she made sure to give them a major shout-out the next day ... posting a photo she took with them, and offering her thanks for their help.

 As far as I can remember, I have never watched an episode of "Real Housewives" of anything.

The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Jodie Comer and ready and waiting.

To Bee or Not to Bee

Blue Orchard Mason Bee

OK, this is the first I've heard of them, but I've probably seen them:  A key bee at Chesapeake orchards - The mason bee is a productive pollinator for all types of native fruits

Between September and October, orchards in Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania burst with wide varieties of local apples. In Pennsylvania, the Historic South Mountain Fruit Belt in Davison County is the sixth largest producer of apples in the nation. Though these farms have typically used honeybees to pollinate their fruit-trees, a growing number of small to mid-size orchards are employing the native mason bee to help get to the job done.

While honeybees are an important agricultural resource nationwide, research has shown that mason bees are a far better pollinator of local fruit. According to Penn State University Extension, six mason bees can pollinate an entire tree, where as it would take 360 honeybees to do the same job. Part of the reason that mason bees are such good fruit-tree pollinators is that they emerge in early spring before many others. From that point on, their life cycle coincides with the blossoming of various fruit trees, and they are generally only active for a few weeks in March and April when fruit blooms. With honeybee numbers in decline, mason bees have gotten even more recognition as an alternative fruit-tree pollinator for the Chesapeake region.

Japanese Orchard Bee

The blue one is not familiar looking, but the Japanese one is.

The two species of mason bees best suited for apple orchard pollination are the blue orchard bee (Osmia lignaria) and the Japanese orchard bee (Osmia cornifrons), which was brought to the United States in the 1990s to help grow fruit. Though a non-native, the Japanese orchard bee is now well-established in the wild and is not considered to be invasive. Together, these species are earning attention among farmers and gardeners alike, and are some the few bee species to be managed at farms.

Of course, apples aren’t all the mason bee is good for, and there are many more species than the blue orchard and Japanese orchard. There are around 20 species of springtime mason bees in the Mid-Atlantic, and there are 140 species of Osmia (the mason bee genus) in North America. All of them are known for visiting fruit trees, such as apples, plums, pears, almonds, peaches and cherries, as well various flowers.

For many years now, actual Honeybees have been virtually absent from our region. Did a disease get them, or does nobody nearby keep beehives? I don't know. But still, all our flowers seem to be constantly visited by a variety of little bee-like  critters, and lots of seed and fruit get formed (except on our lone apple tree, which is another story). I'm beginning to doubt the seriousness of the honeybeecalypse.

A Walk Around the Neighborhood and in the Garden

Georgia, Skye and I decided to take a short walk around the neighborhood in lieu of a beach walk because it was bloody hot and humid out. Unfortunately, along the way, Skye ducked under vine, which unhitched her collar from the leash, and I had to go off and chase her while Georgia went home to wait for a call from the number on her collar. It was a relatively short chase; two streets up the hill she made the mistake of going onto someone's deck with only one way off, and I managed to corner her. On the way back, we met a young friend.

 Later, Georgia caught this female Ruby-Throated Hummingbird taking a heat bath on the deck rail under the feeder.

 After a while, I went out to see what kind of butterfly life was out in the garden. Zebra Swallowtails, although not as abundant as some years, are at least still fairly common.

And the Eastern Tiger Swallowtails still visit the Butterfly Bush

 As did this Clear Wing Hummingbird Moth.

 A bumble bee in Georgia's Cosmos.

And a Zabulon Skipper, another regular. 

A Bad Year for Bees

This came in the Chesapeake Bay news feed today, so I'm calling it my Chesapeake Bay post for the day, but it seems to a more general problem. Honeybee losses highest in 13 years this winter, University of Maryland-led survey finds

Honeybees are no longer disappearing suddenly and mysteriously. They’re dying persistently, in plain sight, and scientists often know why.

A parasitic mite is infesting commercial colonies, latching onto bees and sucking out the tissue that stores their energy and protein. The invasion is weakening the bees tolerance to pesticides, introducing new viruses and exacerbating a shortage of flowering plants they forage for nectar.

And the losses are mounting. A University of Maryland-led survey released Wednesday shows U.S. beekeepers lost 38% of their bee colonies last winter, the most seen in 13 years of research.

Those losses threaten an often overlooked but fundamental segment of the nation’s agriculture industry. Commercially raised honeybees pollinate $15 billion worth of the country’s food crops each year.

“We’re not worried about honeybees going extinct,” said Dennis vanEngelsdorp, a University of Maryland associate professor of entomology who helps lead the survey. “We’re worried about commercial beekeepers going extinct.”

Can you imagine anything worse?

It’s still not clear why, in 2006, bees began abandoning otherwise healthy colonies, a phenomenon that became known as colony collapse disorder. Scientists have been conducting annual surveys of bee losses ever since, in hopes of learning how they can better protect the pollinators.

But the latest survey results show the woes of the bees aren’t over. On average since 2006, beekeepers have lost about 30% of colonies each winter, when hives must subsist on honey reserves to survive. But this winter, that figure jumped, surpassing a previous high of 36% in the winter of 2007-2008, the survey found. Over the past year, about 41% of commercial colonies have failed.

Oh yeah!

“We don’t seem to be making particularly great progress to reduce overall losses,” said Geoffrey Williams, an assistant professor of entomology at Auburn University and co-author of the survey.

There are some 2.69 million commercial honeybee colonies across the country, including about 14,000 in Maryland. Many of them are actually mobile apiaries, moving around the continent throughout the growing season, depending on what is blooming when and where. As honeybees forage for nectar, they spread pollen, fertilizing flowers that then produce fruit and nuts. The bees produce honey to live on over the winter.

Varroa mites began attacking commercial honeybee colonies in the United States in the 1980s, jumping from an Asian variety of bees to the European breed that has been used commercially to make honey in this country since colonial times. The parasites latch onto honeybees and their brood, eventually sucking the life from a hive if not checked with a variety of countermeasures beekeepers use to stop their spread. “If you control them, your bees are fine,” said Jim Fraser, president of the Maryland Beekeepers Association. “There are an awful lot of people who don’t control them.”

But, as I blogged a few years ago in Honeybees - Not Yet Dead, all is not doom and gloom.

 A 2012 working paper by Randal R. Tucker and Walter N. Thurman, a pair of agricultural economists, explains that seasonal die-offs have always been a part of beekeeping: they report that before CCD, American beekeepers would typically lose 14 percent of their colonies a year, on average.

So beekeepers have devised two main ways to replenish their stock. The first method involves splitting one healthy colony into two separate colonies: put half the bees into a new beehive, order them a new queen online (retail price: $25 or so), and voila: two healthy hives.

The other method involves simply buying a bunch of bees to replace the ones you lost. You can buy 3 pounds of "packaged" bees, plus a queen, for about $100 or so.

Incidentally, the current online price of a queen bee seems to be about $40. The market works.

Also note that Honeybees are not a native to the Western Hemisphere, and are technically an invasive species (particularly so in the case of so-called African Bees). It sounds like their native parasites are starting to catch up with them.

As I noted back in 2015, I see very few honey bees anymore, but our flowers are always swarming with a large number of bumble bees and other native bees.

The Wombat has Rule 5 Monday: Camila Cabello up and running.

EPA Identifies Cause of Bee Deaths

Bees threatened by a common pesticide, EPA finds

An insecticide widely used on grains, vegetables, fruit and other crops nationwide threatens honeybees, federal environmental regulators said in a decision that could lend impetus to efforts to ban the chemical.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Wednesday that imidacloprid, a nicotine-imitating chemical found in at least 188 farm and household products in California, “potentially poses risk to hives when the pesticide comes in contact with certain crops that attract pollinators.”

The EPA's decision was prompted by increasing concern that the chemicals might be contributing to the sudden collapse of commercial honey bee colonies over the last decade.

Those bees pollinate crucial food crops and contribute about $14 billion in value to the agricultural economy nationwide.

This is the first of four risk assessments conducted by the EPA on the class of pesticides known as neonicotinoids. The rest are slated for completion by the end of the year, after which the agency could tighten controls over the insecticides.

However, as we've seen before, the problems with colony collapse disorder may be substantially exaggerated:

I rarely see Honey Bees around our garden any more. However, I do see plenty of native bees, and other pollinators, including butterflies, wasps and beetles. and things seem to get pollinated (especially the weeds). Remember, the Honey Bee is a non-native species in the western hemisphere, and they displaced many native species.

Honeybees - Not Yet Dead

Another wannabe environmental disaster which failed to live up to its hype: Call off the bee-pocalypse: U.S. honeybee colonies hit a 20-year high

You've heard the news about honeybees. "Beepocalypse," they've called it. Beemageddon. America's honeybees are dying, putting honey production and $15 billion worth of pollinated food crops in jeopardy.

The situation has become so dire that earlier this year the White House put forth the first National Strategy to Promote the Health of Honey Bees and Other Pollinators, a 64-page policy framework for saving the nation's bees, butterflies and other pollinating animals.

The trouble all began in 2006 or so, when beekeepers first began noticing mysterious die-offs. It was soon christened "colony collapse disorder," and has been responsible for the loss of 20 to 40 percent of managed honeybee colonies each winter over the past decade.

The math says that if you lose 30 percent of your bee colonies every year for a few years, you rapidly end up with close to 0 colonies left. But get a load of this data on the number of active bee colonies in the U.S. since 1987. Pay particular attention to the period after 2006, when CCD was first documented.

So what happened to the beetastrophe?

. . . One word: Beekeepers.

A 2012 working paper by Randal R. Tucker and Walter N. Thurman, a pair of agricultural economists, explains that seasonal die-offs have always been a part of beekeeping: they report that before CCD, American beekeepers would typically lose 14 percent of their colonies a year, on average.

So beekeepers have devised two main ways to replenish their stock. The first method involves splitting one healthy colony into two separate colonies: put half the bees into a new beehive, order them a new queen online (retail price: $25 or so), and voila: two healthy hives.

The other method involves simply buying a bunch of bees to replace the ones you lost. You can buy 3 pounds of "packaged" bees, plus a queen, for about $100 or so.

Will the people who have been agitating against Monsanto for their role in making pesticides and GMO organisms as causes for the beecapolypse be mollified? I doubt it.

Incidentally, Honeybees are not native to the Western Hemisphere, and if we didn't like them (and their honey) they would be considered an invasive species for the way they've pushed aside so many of the native bee species that act as pollinators.

For the last several years here, I have indeed noticed an almost complete absence of Honeybees. However, our flowers are visited by a steady stream of a wide variety of native bees, wasps, and butterflies.

Feds Buzzing Over Bees, Butterflies

Federal government announces plan to bolster honeybee, butterfly populations

The federal government hopes to reverse America's declining honeybee and monarch butterfly populations by making more federal land bee-friendly, spending more money on research and considering the use of less pesticides.

Scientists say bees -- crucial to pollinate many crops -- have been hurt by a combination of declining nutrition, mites, disease, and pesticides. The federal plan is an "all hands on deck" strategy that calls on everyone from federal bureaucrats to citizens to do what they can to save bees, which provide more than $15 billion in value to the U.S. economy, according to White House science adviser John Holdren.

Honeybees are not a native species to the Americas. They were introduced for honey production in the colonial era, and have displaced the native pollinators to a great extent. The recent decline of honeybees has been a boon to the more diverse native pollinators. In recent years, honeybees rarely visit our garden, but a wide variety of native bees, flies, butterflies, moths and even hummingbirds continue to visit our flowers in great numbers, and our flowers still seem to get pollinated.

"Pollinators are struggling," Holdren said in a blog post, citing a new federal survey that found beekeepers lost more than 40 percent of their colonies last year, although they later recovered by dividing surviving hives. He also said the number of monarch butterflies that spend the winter in Mexico's forests is down by 90 percent or more over the past two decades, so the U.S. government is working with Mexico to expand monarch habitat in the southern part of that country.

John Holdren, Preznit Obama's top "Science Advisor" is well known as a "global cooling" (caused by humans) fear monger in the '70s, converted to a global warming climate change stability (caused by humans) fear monger in the '00s and '10s.  He's for whatever catastrophe can be cited as an excuse for increased control of the world by the technocrats in government. Being right is strictly optional.

The plan calls for restoring 7 million acres of bee habitat in the next five years. Numerous federal agencies will have to find ways to grow plants on federal lands that are more varied and better for bees to eat because scientists have worried that large land tracts that grow only one crop have hurt bee nutrition.

They could bulldoze the federal government portion of Washington D.C. and plant that with meadows and forests. I suspect, however, that they will want to use this as an excuse to put more private lands under some sort of "bees and butterflies" management plans.

The plan is not just for the Department of Interior, which has vast areas of land under its control. Agencies that wouldn't normally be thought of, such as Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Transportation, will have to include bee-friendly landscaping on their properties and in grant-making.

That part of the bee plan got praise from scientists who study bees.

I'm shocked, shocked that bee scientists would be happy to see more money for bee landscaping grants. . .

The administration proposes spending $82.5 million on honeybee research in the upcoming budget year, up $34 million from now.

The Environmental Protection Agency will step up studies into the safety of widely used neonicotinoid pesticides, which have been temporarily banned in Europe. It will not approve new types of uses of the pesticides until more study is done, if then, the report said.

Of course, there is little evidence the neonicotinoid pesticides are responsible for the Colony Collapse Disorder, the sudden widespread death and loss of honeybee colonies.

Research has so far failed to determine what causes it, but the weight of evidence is tentatively leaning towards CCD being a syndrome rather than a disease, as it seems to be caused by a combination of various contributing factors rather than a single pathogen or poison.

But it's hard to fight a battle against a combination of unknown factors, but it's easy, and showy to fight against an unpopular single cause, even if it's not really the cause.

White House Beer Recipe - You Didn't Build That

In an attempt to show one thing he can do better than Mitt Romney, Preznit Barack Obama has released the long sought after beer recipes:

Obama has been mentioning his love of beer regularly on the campaign trail in recent weeks, talking about how much he enjoys drinking a cold one at the end of a long day and even sharing a White House-made beer from his campaign bus with a man he met in Iowa last month. Although there’s no evidence that Obama is faking his love of beer, his regular willingness to pose with it is serving a political purpose: helping him appear to be an everyman who drinks a beverage favored by millions of Americans. And you can even serve the White House beer in a Vice President Biden can holder.

Perhaps coincidentally, Obama was back in Iowa on Saturday, one of the most competitive battlegrounds in his race against Republican Mitt Romney, when he released the recipes and video. It was during a three-day bus tour across Iowa in early August when he mentioned beer at almost every stop.

One could interpret this as a mild rebuke to Mitt Romney, who, following his Mormon faith, doe not drink beer or any other alcoholic beverage.  While I like a good beer (or an occasional bourbon and diet coke or gin and tonic) myself, the idea of having someone who abstains in the White House isn't the end of the world.

Obama’s attention to beer prompted an online petition urging the president to release the recipes. He also was asked to do so during an online Reddit chat Wednesday. He promised to do so, and the White House released the recipes Saturday — along with a four-and-a-half minute video that looked like it had been weeks in the making.

The White House released instructions for two beers: “White House Honey Ale” and “White House Honey Porter.” The recipes were developed with help from Matt Slattery, a brew master with the White House Mess, and White House beekeeper Charlie Brandt. Both beers use honey from the property’s beehives. Kass was also careful to point out that all the equipment was paid for by Obama — and that the kitchen staff donates its time to making the beer.

Also noted in the article is the fact that the recipe's were not actually created by Barack Obama, who was too busy golfing to do anything but test the final products, but rather created by White House assistant chef Sam Kass and sous chef Tafari Campbell.  And while the honey used was reportedly from bees from the Whitehouse hives (I wouldn't eat honey grown in Washington D.C.), the other ingredients were grown by farmers far away, trucked to the White House by vehicles made by private enterprises, on roads made of concrete and asphalt made by private enterprises, and sold to him by private enterprise.

UPDATE:  Electoral shenanigans involved in release beer recipe?

Monsanto Takes on Bee Disease

Article by some whacked out liberal site hurt that Monsanto would actually try to solve a problem that's been vexing government scientists and beekeepers; what's killing the Honey Bees:


What Biotech Company Blamed for Bee Collapse Just Bought Leading Bee Research Firm?

Bee colonies around the globe are mysteriously disappearing, a phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder (CCD). Since 2006, it's estimated that close to one-third of all honey bee colonies have simply vanished into thin air. Where are the bees going? What's causing their devastating demise?

One forerunning theory is that genetic engineering of crops is involved, either through the genetically modified crops themselves or the pesticides and herbicides that go with them.

Monsanto, which is the world leader in this type of biotechnology, is likely none too pleased about the recent accusations hurled against their product, so they've taken matters into their own hands and purchased one of the leading bee research firms – one that, conveniently, lists its primary goal as studying colony collapse disorder.

If this isn't the classic example of the fox guarding the henhouse then I don't know what is.

I just love the outrage being generated against the company that actually likely to do something about colony collapse disorder (if only for the profit), instead of studying it to death like the government scientists are likely to (why cure it, then you lose the grant gravy train).  If Monsanto doesn't find a treatment, Monsanto doesn't make any money.

In the past, colony collapse disorder has be blamed on a wide variety of different things including:

Zombies,  Cell phones, Mites, fungus, starvation, global warming (of course), genetically modified crops, and pesticides.

Of course, domestic Honeybees are not native to the Western Hemisphere, and are an invasive species much like Phragmites (the bad form) or Snakeheads.  In fact, without question, I daresay Honeybees cause more human deaths in the United States than either Phragmites or Snakeheads.

There are countless species of native bees willing to take up the slack that the honeybees leave behind...