Anyone who has ever followed  Erykah Badu’s career knows that the artist is talented and very opinionated.

In November 2015, Erykah Badu went on Zane Lowe’s Beats show and released an amazing song list. Recently, that song list, along with “who” the artist dedicated the list to has received some attention.

Now, you may be thinking, “I bet she dedicated those songs to her loved ones, family, or friends…” Not so. Badu decided to make a statement — one we happen to agree with — and dedicated her music mix to the bees. Yes, bees — as in honey and bumble.

“+++BEATS BEES LIKE FOR B-BOYS AND B-GIRLS+++,” the title of Badu’s mix, is filled with amazing tunes from artists such as Sun Ra, DeBarge, and more. Badu published the mix with a pretty hilarious and quite poignant note: “Save the bees, else we aint gone have no where to fight and discriminate… cause they aint have’n that shit on MARS.”

Badu’s mix became even more… appropriate? needed? … this past week.

On February 26, CNN published a post that reports that “bees, birds, butterflies and beetles are among a growing list of pollinator species in jeopardy of global extinction, a United Nations study warns, a trend that could threaten the world’s food supply.”

According to the two-year study, titled “Thematic Assessment of Pollinators, Pollination and Food Production,” these creatures as well as other pollinators could face extinction thanks to “diverse pressures, many of them human-made.”

“Pollinators are important contributors to world food production and nutritional security,” Vera Lucia Imperatriz-Fonseca, Ph.D., co-chair of the assessment and Senior Professor at the University of São Paulo, says. “Their health is directly linked to our own well-being.”

You can read more about how pollinators are at risk here. And while you’re reading that sobering research, you may as well stream Badu’s killer mix on MixCloud.

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Image of Erykah Badu via Shutterstock

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Maryland lawmakers are looking at adopting a bill that protects honey bees from certain pesticides. The Pollinator Protection Act will require that plants, seeds, or nurseries that stock plants treated with certain pesticides carry a warning label.

“This place is a hive of activity,” one man quipped as beekeepers entered the Maryland Environmental Legislative Summit dressed in their white canvas suits in Annapolis, Maryland, recently. They had come, mesh hoods hanging down their backs, to show support for the proposed Pollinator Protection Act of 2015. Some wore political buttons emblazoned with a cartoon bee and #beesafe, according to the blog WhereYouArePlanted.

The pesticides are known as neonics, a controversial class of pesticides linked to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). It’s a phenomenon that beekeepers first started to report in 2006 when 30 to 90 percent of their hives died off. CCD occurs when honey bees abandon the hive for unknown reasons. Chensheng Lu and his team of researchers found that even tiny levels of neonicotinoid pesticides may impair honey bees’ neurological function, memory, and cognition, causing them to abandon the hive. Overuse of pesticides may also weaken the bees so they’re more susceptible to other diseases caused by the parasitic Varroa mites. Many environmentalists say the pesticides do more harm than good.

“The critical issues are neonic pesticides are a major contributor to honeybee decline, resulting in Maryland beekeepers losing nearly 50 percent of their hives in 2012,” said Sen. Shirley Nathan-Pulliam, who is sponsoring the bill, reported on WRAL.com.

The bill would make the pesticide available to certified applicators and farmers but it would prohibit the use of neonics by retail consumers.

“This bill should be a no-brainer,” said Roger Williams, President of the Central Maryland Beekeepers Association, as he addressed the standing-room only crowd at the Miller Senate Building, reported on WhereYouArePlanted. Many of those present were beekeepers and environmentalists, but it was a full house.

Beekeepers in Maryland have reported losing some 30 percent of their hives to CCD and in 2012 they lost an astounding 50 percent. Human health and the state’s blue crabs have also been impacted by the pesticides. Pollinators, like honey bees, are extremely important to the economy because they pollenate a whopping 75 percent of flowering plants and nearly 75 percent of crops. Without pollinators we’d have fewer fruits, vegetables including almonds, blueberries, squash, coffee, and chocolate. We wouldn’t have the variety of foods that we so enjoy today, and what we would have would be considerably more expensive without the pollinating done for free by honey bees.

In June, the Obama Administration announced $8 million in funding for farmers and ranchers to establish safe habitats for honey bees who have also been hit hard by the onslaught of pesticide use. Maryland is taking a step in the right direction protecting bees from an unnecessary and hazardous pesticide. I just hope that the number of certified applicators of neonics pesticides are severely limited.

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Image of a closeup honey bee on a flower from Shuttershock

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If you happen to have a run-in with a monarch butterfly in the near future, consider yourself lucky. They’re about to be listed as endangered species.

The Center for Food Safety, the Center for Biological Diversity, Xerces Society and renowned monarch scientist Dr. Lincoln Brower have petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to extend Endangered Species Act protection for the monarch butterfly. The agency will now review the status of the monarchs, a process that takes about one year.

Monarch butterfly populations have declined by a staggering 90 percent in the last 20 years, a drop that the groups say is beyond significant. “Our petition is a scientific and legal blueprint for creating the protection that the monarch so direly needs, and we are gratified that the agency has now taken this vital first step in a timely fashion,” George Kimbrell, Senior Attorney for Center for Food Safety said in a statement. “We will continue to do everything we can to ensure monarchs are protected.”

Experts agree that the monarch butterfly is experiencing such a decline due largely in part to the planting of genetically modified crops. Most genetically modified crops being planted in the Midwest, where most of the monarchs are born, are resistant to Monsanto’s Roundup, the glyphosate-based herbicide that kills off milkweed, the monarch caterpillar’s only food.

“The population has declined from a recorded high of approximately 1 billion butterflies in the mid-1990s to only 35 million butterflies last winter, the lowest number ever recorded,” the Center for Food Safety said in a statement. “The overall population shows a steep and statistically significant decline of 90 percent over 20 years. In addition to herbicide use with genetically engineered crops, monarchs are also threatened by global climate change, drought and heat waves, other pesticides, urban sprawl and logging on their Mexican wintering grounds.”

And the groups note that rising global temperatures could make the monarch’s homes, both winters in Mexico and summers in the U.S., unsuitable to sustain the species in the very near future.

According to the CFS, monarchs need “a very large population size to be resilient to threats from severe weather events and predation.” A whopping 50 percent of monarchs winter population in Mexico can be eaten by birds and mammals in just one winter. And extreme weather conditions can also be devastating: “a single winter storm in 2002 killed an estimated 500 million monarchs — 14 times the size of the entire current population,” CFS explained.

“We are extremely pleased that the federal agency in charge of protecting our nation’s wildlife has recognized the dire situation of the monarch,” said Sarina Jepsen, the Xerces Society’s endangered species director. “Protection as a threatened species will enable extensive monarch habitat recovery on both public and private lands.”

Monarchs, like bees, are important pollinators vital to the health of our food chain. Honeybee populations are also currently being threatened by similar environmental hazards.

Find Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

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The consequences of climate change aren’t always ugly. In the Rocky Mountains, it means an extra 35 days to find and photograph gorgeous wildflowers.

Every day, I thank the universe for transplanting me to the Front Range of Colorado. All I have to do is step out on my porch, and I’m blessed with a picture perfect view of the majestic Rocky Mountains. Living here also means I get the chance to see some consequences of climate change up close and personal, like drought, out-of-control wildfires, and more recently extra flowers.

Hikers and wildflower enthusiasts flock to the Rocky Mountains from mid-May to early September, which is the best time for catching the most blooms. However, recent research shows that, thanks to climate change, an increasing number of wildflower species have altered their flowering patterns.

The study, which analyzed 39 years of data at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory near Crested Butte, Colo., found that climate change has altered the blooming season of more than two-thirds of the 60 species of native wildflowers commonly found in mountain meadows. They say wildflower season in the Rocky Mountains now lasts 35 days longer, stretching from April to mid-September.

“Previous studies largely have focused on the first appearance of flowers in the spring, but that probably underestimates the true extent of the changes they are going through,” reports the LA Times. “To go beyond that, researchers analyzed wildflower species throughout the season. They found that half of them flowered earlier, more than a third reached their peak blooms sooner and 30% flowered later into the year due to a warming climate.”

At first glance, it’s hard to think of this development as a negative thing. Who doesn’t love an extra month and five days to experience the beauty of high alpine meadows full of colorful flowers? Unfortunately, changes for one species almost always affects everything else in the ecosystem.

“We don’t know if it’s good or bad for these plant species at this point,” Amy Iler, postdoctoral biology researcher at University of Maryland and co-author of the study, told the LA Times. Impacts on already-endangered pollinator species, like bees and butterflies, has yet to be investigated.

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The once-common monarch butterfly is MIA, and it doesn’t bode well for the health of our species.

Unable to survive the cold temperatures that blanket the U.S. during winter months, the monarch butterfly population heads to Mexico and Southern California every year to bask in the warmth. Following instructions built into their DNA, subsequent generations of monarch butterfly seek out the very same trees and bushes in which their parents were born, even though they’ve never been there before. And the happy cycle begins all over again. That is, until this year.

“This year, for the first time in memory, the monarch butterflies didn’t come, at least not on the Day of the Dead,” reported Jim Robbins for the New York Times. “They began to straggle in a week later than usual, in record-low numbers. Last year’s low of 60 million now seems great compared with the fewer than three million that have shown up so far this year. Some experts fear that the spectacular migration could be near collapse.”

A world without the monarch butterfly. Think about that. Our children could grow up without ever knowing what it’s like to feel this orange-and-black fairy land on their arm, or seeing one hatch from their cocoon (my favorite science project as a child).

So what’s causing the monarch butterfly to break from thousands of years of tradition? Some say pesticides, specifically the neonicotinoids often blamed for the decline of the honey bee. But even if all pesticides had never been used on a single U.S. crop, experts say the monarch butterfly would still be in peril.

“There’s no question that the loss of habitat is huge,” Douglas Tallamy, a professor of entomology at the University of Delaware, told the New York Times. “We notice the monarch and bees because they are iconic insects,” he said. “But what do you think is happening to everything else?”

Every time we tear raze a meadow, cluster of trees, or wetland to put up a parking lot, we’re destroying a monarch butterfly’s home. Every time we uproot native plants like the milkweed to install a sterile lawn and genetically-engineered flowers, we take food out of a monarch butterfly’s mouth. Which eventually means less food for our own families.

Like the bee, the monarch butterfly is a pollinator. Many forms of life are sustained by the seeds, fruits, nuts, berries, and foliage that result from pollination–including humans. This is what the produce section of your grocery store would look like if pollinators like the butterfly go the way of the Dodo. Scary.

So what can we do to save the monarch butterfly? Well for one thing, eat organic when you can, and never use chemical pesticides on your property. Encourage the growth of native plants, especially the milkweed, as well as nectar-producing flowers that attract butterflies. Purchase only FSC-Certified wood products, since illegal logging in Mexico is devastating monarch butterfly habitats there. Lastly, support programs working to protect the monarch butterfly. Visit MonarchWatch.org to learn more.

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One-third of our world’s growing fields rely on the European honeybee, the type of bee kept by beekeepers in western countries. But according to a study conducted to solve the mysteries of CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder) honeybees are dying of infections that are difficult to identify and cure.

Research highlighted in Scientific American finds there are many possible contributing factors but no single culprit in the deaths of colonies. Bees suffering from CCD appear to be infested with multiple pathogens (including a newly discovered virus) and solving the problem may require “taking better care of the environment and making long-term changes to our beekeeping and agricultural practices.”

As I’ve described in past posts on CCD, many of the varieties of super foods and fruits and vegetables we consume –  apples, blueberries, broccoli and almonds – are greatly at risk as they require bees to flourish. The study reports that even before the onslaught of CCD, farmers watched their honeybee populations diminish because of a number of ailments.

While colonies have always collapsed, the drop in 2006 was major. The population was estimated at around 2.4 after the disorder took out colonies in large numbers, reducing the overall population to half of what it was in 1949. The losses got worse in 2007 and 2008. So much attention has been focused on this issue that there even is a website devoted entirely to CCD news, opinions and research.

SciAm says the concern now is not the extinction of our friend the honeybee but rather the disappearance of the skilled bee keeper.

“If beekeepers’ skills and know-how become a rarity as a result, then even if CCD is eventually overcome, nearly 100 of our crops could be left without pollinators and large-scale production of certain crops could become impossible,” states the report. It says we would still have starchy staples like corn, wheat, potatoes and rice, but much of the important and nutritious food we consume today we become “the food of kings.”

Here are a few major points from this important research:

• Millions of beehives worldwide have emptied out as honeybees mysteriously disappear, putting at risk nearly 100 crops that require pollination.
• Research is pointing to a complex disease in which combinations of factors, including farming practices, make bees vulnerable to viruses.
• Taking extra care with hive hygiene seems to aid prevention. And research into antiviral drugs could lead to pharmaceutical solutions.

Image: Kuribo

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