Honeybees and US

Ten turned me on to an interesting article from earth.org about the vanishing bee population.

For years, media headlines have depicted a dire situation regarding global bee populations. While it is true that honey bee numbers in certain areas, especially in North America and Europe, have plummeted due to habitat loss, pesticide use, and climate change, recent data reveals a more nuanced picture. In fact, bee populations in some Asian countries have been steadily increasing. This contrasting trend prompts important questions: why are bees flourishing in some regions while facing challenges in others? (source)

On looking at the graphs it became clear to me that not all of North America’s bees are tumbling down. It’s the USA’s population that’s actually tanking. And has been since the ‘60s.

Note that the drop began at the start of Lyndon Johnson’s administration. This was just after John F. Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963. The ‘60s were an insane decade, what with Vietnam, Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King’s assassinations, the fight for equal rights, Tricky Dick’s ascent, etc. The bees were definitely unhappy.

In the Carter years, our honeybee friends started to relax and stabilize. They were starting to gain ground but then AIDs hit and Reagan ignored it all until two years after his friend Rock Hudson died. Before this, the Reagan administration treated AIDs as though it was a great joke.

This did NOT please the bees.

Under Bush Sr. and Clinton, the honey-maker population continued to decline. I’m guessing Reagan and the Repub’s frozen hearted disdain for their fellow humans really put them way the fuck off. I can’t blame them. Plus, all that ridiculous fuss over a goddamn blowjob. The bees just could NOT deal with the bullshit human antics.

The numbers continued to go down during the warmongering Shrub years. Of course.

They seemed to feel that humans in the US had made a turn for the better, for a more caring, smarter America when Obama was elected. Honeybee numbers began to recover and grow. The US was inching closer to universal health care. Marriage equality became the law of the land. Climate change was being addressed. Gays and lesbians could serve openly in the military for the first time. He banned Bush’s “enhanced interrogation” (AKA torture) techniques. And so much more. 

The bees and me were psyched! We’re coming back, babies!

Then Trump was installed by an assholian, racist electoral college. This was NOT the will of the US residents—not what the bees or anyone halfway sane and/or intelligent wanted. The honeybee population went on a downward spiral again. Four years of sanity with Biden was, undoubtedly (I haven’t seen the figures) not enough to reverse the cratering hives.

And now we’re in Hell again.

I’m glad that the bees are thriving in Asia and the colonies in Canada and Mexico seem stable. Here, even the bees are jumping ship. Only the zombie MAGAts want to live in the raging, apricot toupéd fucktrumpet's America.