{"id":18524,"date":"2016-03-06T15:37:44","date_gmt":"2016-03-06T20:37:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=18524"},"modified":"2016-03-06T15:37:44","modified_gmt":"2016-03-06T20:37:44","slug":"the-newest-strategy-for-saving-bees-is-really-really-old","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=18524","title":{"rendered":"The Newest Strategy For Saving Bees Is Really, Really Old"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"postHeader span-full\">\n<div class=\"postTitle\">\n<h3><a href=\"http:\/\/ensia.com\/features\/the-newest-strategy-for-saving-bees-is-really-really-old\/\" target=\"_blank\">THE NEWEST STRATEGY FOR SAVING BEES IS REALLY, REALLY OLD<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"postIntroText\">With pollinators in decline around the world, conservationists turn to traditional farmers for answers.<\/div>\n<div class=\"postIntroMedia postIntroImage span-full clearfix\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" id=\"introImage\" class=\"introMedia\" src=\"http:\/\/ensia.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/feature_pollinators_main2-760x378.jpg\" alt=\"Asian apis cerana honeybee\" width=\"760\" height=\"378\" \/><span class=\"introMediaCaption\"><span class=\"captionText\">Photo by budak (Flickr\/Creative Commons)\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"postBody span-full\">\n<div class=\"postAuthor left\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"postAuthor left\"><span class=\"postDate\">February 15, 2016 \u2014\u00a0<\/span>In northwestern India, the Himalaya Mountains rise sharply out of pine and cedar forests. The foothills of the Kullu Valley are blanketed with apple trees beginning to bloom. It\u2019s a cool spring morning, and Lihat Ram, a farmer in Nashala village, shows me a small opening in a log hive propped against his house. Stout black-and-yellow native honeybees \u2014\u00a0<i>Apis cerana<\/i>\u00a0\u2014 fly in and out.<\/div>\n<div class=\"postContentOuter left\">\n<div class=\"postContent editable left\">\n<p>For centuries beehives have been part of the architecture of mountain homes here, built into the thick outside walls. Traditionally wild colonies of bees found the hive themselves, or farmers brought a log with a hive in it from the surrounding forest so the inhabitants could set up shop in the village and produce honey for their human caretakers.<\/p>\n<p>But in recent years those wild colonies have become increasingly rare in this valley, where 90 percent of farmers are small landholders. Modern agriculture has replaced natural forests and the diverse crops of subsistence farms almost exclusively with a single apple variety: royal delicious, favored at the market. Producing this high-demand fruit has improved economic conditions for farmers in the Kullu Valley. But it also has contributed to an untenable environment for pollinators. Similar to other situations around the world, a mix of monocropping, climate change, diseases, changes in land practices, pesticide use, deforestation, loss of habitat and an exploding human population that\u2019s taxing the valley\u2019s natural resources has caused native honeybee populations to decline. With the decline, orchard harvests have dropped by as much as 50 percent.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>THE NEWEST STRATEGY FOR SAVING BEES IS REALLY, REALLY OLD With pollinators in decline around the world, conservationists turn to traditional farmers for answers. Photo by budak (Flickr\/Creative Commons)\u00a0 February 15, 2016 \u2014\u00a0In northwestern India, the Himalaya Mountains rise sharply out of pine and cedar forests. The foothills of the Kullu Valley are blanketed with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[66,6513,12764,422,12763],"class_list":["post-18524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-bees","tag-ensia","tag-himalaya-mountains","tag-india","tag-kullu-valley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18524"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18525,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18524\/revisions\/18525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}