Bumble and honey bees in Maine being industrious, driven to perform what they were placed on the Earth to do is a very good thing.

But pesticides, development and lack of concern for their well being has hurt farming in Maine, elsewhere. Colony Collapse Disorder is slowly killing our precious busy bees.

Our winged, buzzing pollinators have a bigger job of importance than many realize. Making sure pollen and seeds get UPS’ed to another flower. Some other forty acre field land three townships away. Fertilizing plants so food happens. Without bees, our crops around the world would not do, grow so hot. And some plants would die off, go ka-put. Extinct, no more thank you helpings of this or that to try.

As parents coax with the same old story about starving kids halfway around the world. To guilt you into how grateful you should be for that pile of lima beans. Or mmmm good steaming stewed tomatoes puddled on the dinner plate. Now cooling off before the hopefully one way gullet trip. Using a bottoms up, wash it down the hatch move to win clearance to leave the table. Freedom to get outside to play.

Don’t get in their way and bee, hornet, wasp stinging attack action does not happen is what I taught the kids.

They have a job to do. Growing up, reminding them the same advice I was told. Leave them alone to make their rounds. To do touch and go landings on flowers, vegetable plants, fruit trees around the Maine farm. And it was explained in the case of a bumblebee, if he has to sting you, it is a last ditch kamikaze harpoon maneuver. With no way out, no turning back. Do and die. Once the barb is launched better hope the bee’s affairs are in order. When it is let loose, it rips ups, tears out the bees vital innards. Kills, silences the buzzing bee for good who is turned inside out.

So like the pilot in the front of the airplane, who has a family and a 401K pension, a golf game to steadily improve his handicap on, does not want to die.

Just not on the clipboard, in his life flight plan manifest radioed into the tower before take off.

So enjoying their handiwork from a distance, putting the car window down to help him escape so he lives to buzz another day is important stuff. More than just honey produced you like to put in the medicine to help it go down. Or the other real medicinal effects bee honey provides us.

Know a local fellow that does not complain anymore about black flies at his Maine lake camp.

He said he found a cure. And it was not fogging the grounds for temporary relief solution either. Or putting up a bug zapping UV eerie hanging light. Where you see and hear the electrical contacts. Can count the winged dead row grid casualties. No no. He had found something more permanent. To rid the Maine lake lot of the pests once and for all. It came in a black bottle with a skull and crossbones pirate looking warning. Definitely not over the counter stuff found in aisle five of the lawn and leisure at Wally World or some other big box store.

He got rid of the Maine black flies, the mosquitoes.

But scratched his head and did have to admit there were not bees buzzing, no birds singing each day either. Napalmed those critters off the face of his grounds. Using a substance experimented with on foreign soil to control the local population in time of warfare defoliant. And you have to wonder what it does to his own, the family’s, his lake front neighbor’s DNA, chromosomes in some genetic life altering way. How harmful residue is to anyone down wind from his property on the Maine Lake.

This is the same Maine lake property owner that removed way more trees than shoreland zoning regulations allow.

And when I told him there are big fines, penalties, let alone the damage it does to the Maine waterfront in added soil erosion, he shrugged his shoulders. Silt that leaches into the Maine lake and choke fish did not seem to be keeping him up nights. I asked him how do you explain what happened? He said you play dumb, act surprised.

And tell the investigating powers to be it was the most peculiar thing.

When he went to bed, the stand of thick trees were soldier at attention, shoulder straight out front. But in the morning, wind sheer must have happened and they had fallen like bowling pins. Helter skelter, willy nilly in one big mess. And he was some kind of upset but had to clean up the debris, landscaping chaos. Blaming the trimming, need for dead tree removal on the weather. Not his own late at night or in the fall when less eyeballs, eardrums are around a Maine lake dark activities. Great.

Not a story I enjoy telling. Protect the birds and bees. Be a good steward of the Maine waterfront. Respecting it, passing it on to your kids in better shape than you were lucky enough to receive it.

I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
207.532.6573
info@mooersrealty.com