Day 11

So my compatriots just wanted to go straight home, despite the fact that we were still a day ahead of schedule and at Yellowstone.

But the others had expressed an interest in seeing the Mammoth Hot Springs which just so happened to be at the far end of the park, so I said "lets go there and then straight home." So we went.. and stopped at everything cool along the way ... and it was 10pm by the time we got to the hot springs!!

Went out through West Yellowstone, which it turns out is in Montana. There I came the closest to having a social life of the entire trip ... this hot girl at Dairy Queen was totally flirting with me. Yeah I suck.

Exterminate Exterminate!

   Today I spent the day researching and writing up my cross-referenced findings.. and I loved it!
   The downside is that I think I've officially sold out -- I was writing press releases on why people should NOT be trying to have their bees removed live, but rather just opt for extermination.
   But I do believe in what I was writing and I think I made some very good points. The bottem line is no one wants your stinkin unhygenic feral bees. Tomorrow when the press release is finalized I'll post it.

   The instigation of this is that the OC Register has carried a number of articles lately on honeybee Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), and how OC Beekeepers Association volunteers will remove your bees live, and this allegedly will in some way mitigate the problem (it won't, because commercial beekeepers, who are the ones relevant to the problem, will not accept random feral bees). However this has had a real impact on OUR business at Bee Busters, as now we get over a hundred calls a day from people looking for free live removals, we're losing some business to the OC Beekeepers who do do the removals (god knows what they do with all of them), and calls to botched removal attempts by the volunteers. So boss Dave is really incensed. So we're putting out a press release and letter to the editor in hopes of counteracting the misconception.
   Don't get me wrong, I like bees probably a lot more than you do. I think I'd have more sympathy for not exterminating the feral colonies if they were native to this region, but they are actually an invasive species here (honeybees are not native to the Americas at all). On any account, feral colonies are unhygenic and threaten clean bees with disease. Also here on the front lines of the Africanized Honeybee influx, battling feral colonies is one and the same with battling the influx.

   Anyway though, so today I spent my day calling commercial beekeepers and professional bee researchers for quotes and best reports on the current state of CCD. It felt so good to actually be writing a paper based entirely on primary sources, and on a topic that is actually pertinant to society.

   Tomorrow I'll post the finished letter-to-the-editor and press release, and then I'll explain what is really going on with this Colony Collapse Disorder.


Picture of the Day

I rescued this bee from the pool

   And now I have to write a paper for the Amwest Model UN Conference (Vegas, weekend before Thanksgiving) on "Petroleum's Role in Development" (for the OPEC committee). Back to dredging up dreck from the internets and compiling it into something totally bland.


   Yesterday I went to a BBQ Amy & Ryan from work were having.


   Today it is Jeremy's birthday (turning 26). I'm going to his BBQ this evening.