Almost Extinct Ants and Bees

>“NABU” says that as winter is approaching we should slowly start preparing things to help caterpillars and butterflies survive winter. For example when we collect the leaves that have fallen off the trees in our garden in autumn we shouldn’t burn the stack of collected leaves, but we should leave it where it is in the garden instead so that these animals can stay there during winter and come out in summer. Flowers that now slowly start to wither shouldn’t be destroyed by us as butterflies now tend to laying tiny and almost invisible eggs on them. Also we can save many of them by leaving windows of cellars, attics, garages and barns slightly open. Just a little so that small insects like butterflies or caterpillars can get inside to stay there during winter, but bigger animals or even burglars are still kept outside! Eventually when winter is over and the butterflies are leaving their winter-quarters people who have a garden or even a field can also help while starting to grow things in the garden in spring. Above all people should be careful not to harm butterflies by using too much fertilizer and they definitely should not use insecticides.
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Re-upload: “http://www.savetheants.com/donate/” and “http://honeybeekind.com/”, but also – and especially “http://www.hivessavelives.com/_gifts.asp” and “http://www.endangeredspeciesinternational.org/mission.html”!

“NABU” says that the Asian predatory wasp – that obviously arrived here as a stowaway by ship and by plane – now officially is on the loose in Germany, France and probably some other European countries. These insects are known to attack and kill bees so people fear that the already fragile population of bees in these two industrial nations could decline even more. They say that in France people already start to hunt the Asian predatory wasp down just to save the bees.

>The makers of the German “TopZehn”-series now published a rather morbid episode that contained the ten most cruel ways to die. One of them dealt with a man who according to the narrator “recently” – and I don’t know what “recently” means – got attacked by 40.000 bees. After telling this story the narrator said we shouldn’t go anywhere near nests of bees or wasps and contact a professional instead.
>DBIB (German), BUND (German), Greenpeace (international), NABU (German) and PAN (German) now protested against the intense agriculture in Germany. They say that thanks to our intense use of pesticides and intense growing of monocultures every year bees are extremely likely to lose their primary sources of food – which would also explain why this year so many apiarists complained about bad harvest.

“NABU” now republished an about 10-year-old article written by the famous biologist T. Schmidt in their magazine – the edition of the month of June to be precisely which in Germany ended just a few seconds ago -, since this is still current. It says that in Germany more than 60% of all butterflies are at great risk of starving as flower fields become rarer and rarer in my country. Furthermore their natural habitat where they breed, lay eggs and feed are either destroyed, meanwhile are contaminated by pesticides or got replaced by garden-lawns that exist of grass only. Also it recently has become kind of modern in Germany according to Schmidt to replace gardens consisting of native plants by gardens that completely consist of exotic plants that our butterflies can’t feed on.
The author even gave us tips what we can do if we want our garden to be more butterfly-appropriate and by the way also more bee-appropriate. This may be a tough choice for most people, but at first you have to remove parts of the lawn you already have in your garden. Where you removed the grass you have to plough the ground, add some sand as you can find it in any supermarket and then add some seed of wild, native flowers, like asters, buddleja, ivy-leaved bellflower or – my favorite – lavender. Their caterpillars need parsley, wild grass, wild carrots, apple-trees, willows, nettles, thistles, fuchsia, thornapple and rhamnus. In late autumn you should always leave some piles of leaves – even just small ones – and of brush-wood to give them a save place where they may survive winter.
By the way you shouldn’t worry that your garden could look somehow neglected after you treat it like that. My grandpa’s garden looks about the same and everyone finds it pretty. He told me that recently he had seen an unknown gentleman leaning over the fence and taking photos of some of his wild flowers with all these butterflies surrounding them. When my grandfather approached him and asked him what he was doing, the unknown gentleman apologized visibly embarrassed and explained to my grandfather that he had just liked this scenario and that he had photographed nothing but these concrete flowers and the insects surrounding them. Of course my grandpa didn’t mind that and let him go.
By the way: From what I understand this should also work with gardens – even very tiny ones – that are located to bigger cities and I think I recall that from what I heard having a garden like this with lots of colourful butterflies and buzzing bees also should have a positive psychological effect on you.

The latest episode of “TopZehn” – which is the German adaption of an English series of which I forgot the name dealt with ten things of which some scientists say that they could cause our extinction. Apart from some common theories that involved, diseases, an extreme and sudden climate change, a giant meteorite hitting our planet and some other things this episode also included the following theories:
1.) Exploiting of resources and the pollution of nature – including CO2-emissions – could not only cause a climate change, but also make huge parts of our food – like seafood or crop – at least decline. Some experts fear that someday this could at least drive us close to extinction.
2.) The following idea involving self-learning technology killing off mankind that was brought up by a scientist was ridiculed by many. Who would be dumb enough to create a robot that could be smart enough to decide all by himself to turn against its owners? Wouldn’t we always be able to outsmart them and to destroy them by force if necessary? Fact is however that there are laboratories where people try to develop robots that will be able to make decisions on their own and won’t have to be reprogrammed whenever they are supposed to do something else. This way the individual robot will be able to fully replace the human worker to avoid human failure. The dangerous part about this is that some of these self-thinking robots are going to be used in wars and thus will be armed.
3.) Last but not least the reason why I posted this here: Dying of bees could be the cause of death of 35% of all species according to some experts. I am aware of the fact that lately there have been some diseases in Europe that endangered the lives of many bees and I also heard that the extensive use of pesticides in some countries is a serious threat to these little creatures, but considering the fact that there are several species of bees living in every single country worldwide I don’t see how this scenario could be a serious threat to us.