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Not long ago, I found myself sitting at the edge of a field with a bear and thirty or forty thousand very angry bees. The bear was there because of the bees. The bees were there because of me, and why I was there was a question I found myself unable to answer precisely.
In a roundabout sort of way, the encounter had been set in motion several months earlier, in late February, when the Times ran a story about a new ailment afflicting honeybees. It had been given a name—colony-collapse disorder—but no one had any idea what was causing it; beekeepers would open their hives only to discover that they were suddenly and mysteriously empty. According to the article, some keepers had lost seventy per cent of their colonies, and these losses, in turn, were likely to reduce the yields of crops ranging from kiwis to avocados. All this information struck me as disturbing, and therefore interesting. I thought that at some point I might want to write about it myself, and so I began to read up on bees.
The literature of apiculture is vast and seductive; I learned one amazing thing after another. Honeybees are the only animals besides humans known to have a representational language: they convey to one another the location of food by dancing. When the queen lays an egg, she is able to choose its sex. Males, known as drones, perform no useful function except to mate. They are loutish and filthy, and the workers—sterile females—tolerate their presence for a few months a year, then systematically murder them. A single pound of clover honey represents the distilled nectar of some 8.7 million flowers. In a week, a productive hive can add seventy pounds of honey to its stores. Pretty soon, I had moved on to beekeeping manuals. I learned about different "races" of honeybees, each with its own "dialect" and disposition: Italians, which are golden and laid-back but can have trouble producing enough honey for winter; Carniolans, which are darker and hardier but prone to swarm; and Russians, which build up slowly but are the hardiest of all. I also learned about honeybee diseases: varroa mites, tiny parasites that attach themselves to bees and feed on their blood; tracheal mites, even tinier parasites, which attack bees' breathing tubes; American foulbrood, bacteria that turn bee larvae into stringy goo; and sac brood, a virus that leaves larvae swimming in bubbles of muck. Finally, and, I suppose, predictably, I began leafing through beekeeping catalogues, weighing the advantages of wooden frames versus plastic ones and full-body "English-style" bee suits versus simpler (and cheaper) veils. By the time I ordered my hive, the initial reason for having one—to learn about colony-collapse disorder—had dissipated. The disease (or whatever it was) hadn't turned up in the region where I live, which is western Massachusetts. But by that point I wasn't sure whether I was writing the story to keep bees or keeping bees to write the story.
Bees, which are descended from predatory wasps, turned from eating other insects to feeding on flowers some hundred million years ago. Not coincidentally, this was shortly after flowers first appeared. Since then, it's been one long evolutionary tango. Some bees have evolved to feed on the nectar of a single type of flower; for example, Andrena florea, a small European bee, relies exclusively on the delicate white blossoms of bryony plants. Conversely, some flowers, like the showy, fragrant orchid Stanhopea embreei, native to Ecuador, are pollinated only by a single species of bee, in this case Eulaema bomboides. Worldwide, nearly twenty thousand species of bees have been identified. Out of these, only perhaps two dozen have been successfully raised by humans, and only one—Apis mellifera, commonly known as the western honeybee—accounts for nearly all the bees maintained by beekeepers in Europe and North America.
Apis mellifera is a floral generalist—the technical term is "polylectic"—meaning that it will feed on just about anything that is blooming. This trait makes honeybees essential to modern agriculture, which has itself evolved to depend on their services. In a five-hundred-acre apple orchard, for example, there simply aren't enough indigenous pollinators to produce a commercial crop: either the yield will be too low or the fruit will be small or stunted. (An apple has ten ovules, each of which can produce a seed; unless at least six are pollinated, the apple will be misshapen.) Apple growers, therefore, bring additional pollinators into their fields, and honeybees are the only ones that can be delivered in sufficient numbers. Other commercial crops that have come to rely on honeybees include blueberries, cranberries, cherries, cucumbers, watermelons, cantaloupes, and pumpkins.
Almonds, in particular, have extremely high pollination requirements—nearly all the flowers in an orchard must be cross-pollinated to produce a commercial crop—and so California's increasingly large (and lucrative) almond industry is almost entirely honeybee-dependent; it is estimated that to service the state's two billion dollars' worth of almonds next year will require nearly 1.5 million hives, or roughly two-thirds of all the colonies that existed in this country before colony-collapse disorder. (The price of renting a hive during the almond bloom, which starts in late February, rose from fifty-five dollars three years ago to a hundred and thirty-five dollars this year, and next year will likely reach a hundred and seventy dollars.) Five years from now, as more acreage goes into production, it is expected that almonds will require 2.1 million colonies, or nearly all the hives that are currently being kept, both by commercial beekeepers and by hobbyists.
Typically, commercial beekeepers ship their hives by flatbed truck; the hives are stacked on pallets, then unloaded with a forklift. The process is efficient—two men can easily move ten million bees into an orchard in a single day—and also profitable, or at least more profitable than selling honey to a world drenched in corn syrup. But it is hard on the bees. One keeper told me that every time he loads up his hives he expects to lose ten per cent of his queens simply as a result of the jostling. Insecticides are also a problem; even assuming that farmers are careful to avoid spraying when bees are in their fields—something that beekeepers complain is not always the case—there are residues. Finally, the mass movement of honeybees spreads parasites and disease. (Truck 1.5 million hives in to pollinate almonds, and some sixty billion bees will be buzzing around the same trees.) The blood-sucking varroa mite was first reported here in 1987; within a few years, practically every managed colony in the United States had been infected. Since the early eighties, the number of hives has dropped by almost half. Wild honeybees, meanwhile, which were once common across the country, have nearly disappeared.
The first person to notice that there was something seriously wrong with his bees—or maybe just the first person to admit it—was David Hackenberg. Hackenberg, who is fifty-eight, is the owner, founder, and chief source of labor for Hackenberg Apiaries, which is based in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. He has a weathered face, grayish-brown eyes, and legs that seem to take up three-quarters of his body. He has been keeping honeybees for forty-five years.
"I started with one hive for a Vo-Ag project," Hackenberg told me not long ago. We were standing in a field somewhere near Lake Ontario, and a few yards away his oldest son, Davey, was collecting boxes of honey. There were so many bees in the air that it seemed to be vibrating. "I thought there was money in it. And there is. I keep putting it there." By the time Hackenberg graduated from high school, he had a hundred and fifty hives. That figure kept on growing until it reached nearly three thousand.
Last year, as usual, Hackenberg spent the spring ferrying his hives from Pennsylvania, where the bees pollinated apples, to Maine, where they worked lowbush blueberries, to upstate New York, where they fed on clover, and finally back to Pennsylvania, where they pollinated pumpkins. In October, Hackenberg and his son trucked the bees down to Florida for the winter. They left four hundred hives on a lot south of Tampa, so that the bees could feed off an invasive weed, Brazilian pepper, that was blooming nearby. In mid-November, they returned to pick up the hives, because the owner of the lot—a man who rents out carnival rides—needed it to store equipment. At that point, they did what they always do—put on their protective gear and lit a smoker. (For reasons that are not entirely clear, bees respond to the smell of burning wood or straw by becoming more docile, so beekeepers usually smoke hives before handling them.)
"After I smoked about five pallets, I realized I'm not smoking anything," Hackenberg recalled. "I started jerking covers off, and the hives are empty." Increasingly frantic, he began pulling the frames out of the hives. The more he saw, the weirder the situation looked. The frames all had honey in them, indicating that there had been plenty of food. They were filled with young larvae, or brood, meaning that the bees, usually fiercely maternal, had abandoned their young. There were no signs of moths or other pests that normally invade sick colonies. And Hackenberg couldn't find any dead bees.
"I got down on my hands and knees looking," he told me. "They weren't there. It's like somebody swept the boxes out. There were just no bees." Every time he came across a dead hive—what beekeepers refer to as a deadout—he flipped it on its side. By the time he had gone through the four hundred hives on the lot, only forty were still standing. Hackenberg had shipped twenty-nine hundred hives to Florida. When he finally went through all of them, he found that two thousand had been wiped out.
Hackenberg likes to talk. (Davey told me that one month this spring his father had a cell-phone bill for fifty-three hundred minutes.) He began calling around—to fellow-beekeepers, to officials at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, to entomologists he knew at Penn State. He told them that some strange new ailment was killing his bees; they told him he had probably just screwed up. "Them mites'll get you," one of Hackenberg's closest friends said. But Hackenberg persisted. Within a week, other beekeepers—people he didn't even know—began calling him to tell him that their bees, too, had disappeared. "I became an expert all of a sudden on something I don't know anything about," Hackenberg said.
All sorts of theories were soon proposed. The mysterious ailment was a new disease, or it was a response to drought, or to stress, or to toxins. According to one widely reported hypothesis, cell-phone transmissions were disrupting the bees' navigational abilities. (Few experts took the cell-phone conjecture seriously; as one scientist said to me, "If that were the case, Dave Hackenberg's hives would have been dead a long time ago.")
For his part, Hackenberg decided that the culprit was a new class of insecticides, called neonicotinoids. Neonicotinoids are neurotoxins that, as the name implies, chemically resemble nicotine. They are considered safer for humans than many other classes of pesticides, because they interfere with neural pathways that are more common in insects than in mammals, but from a bee's perspective that obviously isn't much of a recommendation. (The most commonly used neonicotinoid, imidacloprid, is considered "highly toxic" to bees, and therefore is not supposed to be applied while they are around.) In March, Hackenberg sent a letter to growers, asking that they "please try to use something beside these products" on their crops.
Meanwhile, he and Davey began to rebuild. They ordered new bees, which they had air-freighted from Australia, and new queens, which were flown in from Hawaii. They split any colony that seemed to be healthy into two and persuaded a firm that usually sterilizes contact-lens solution to blast several truckloads of beekeeping equipment with radiation. By the spring, they had managed to restock some two thousand hives. They had also spent more than three hundred thousand dollars.
"Last year, we had just enough to keep going, but not enough to survive on," Davey told me. "It's, like, give us a sign: either wipe the damn things out or tell us what we're supposed to do here. We're just hanging on by the skin of our teeth. If we go through this another year, we'll be flat-broke out of business."
On a sunny Saturday this spring, I drove to Betterbee, an apiary-supply store in Greenwich, New York, about forty miles north of Albany. When I arrived, the place was crowded with beekeepers and aspiring beekeepers, some from as far away as Maryland, who were queued up in the parking lot. On reaching the front of the line, I was handed a package, much the way you would be handed a loaf of bread, or a pizza. It gave off a slight, insistent buzz.
A package—in beekeeping, this is a precise rather than a generic term—is a container about the size of a shoebox, with wooden sides and wire mesh covering the front and back. It holds about fourteen thousand worker bees and a single queen, who is housed, along with a few devoted attendants, in a tiny cage. The workers and the queen are not from the same original colony, and the queen is kept secluded to give the other bees time to grow accustomed to her odor. The queen cage has a special stopper on one end, made out of a substance called "queen candy." The hope is that by the time the workers are able to eat their way through the candy and liberate the queen they will have accepted her as their leader and not try to kill her.
Left to their own devices, honeybees construct their hives in cavities, usually in trees and preferably with small openings that face south. They attach their wax combs to the top of the cavity, and build downward in parallel sheets lined on both sides with hexagonal cells. These cells are used for all the bees' various needs—to house the young, to store pollen and nectar, and to preserve honey. (To make honey from nectar, bees combine it with special enzymes in their "honey stomachs" and then evaporate out the water.) The key to beekeeping is to persuade a colony to construct its combs where people can get at them. The ancient Egyptians fashioned conical hives out of hardened mud. Since then, hives have been made out of practically every substance imaginable, including clay, stone, logs, bark, wicker, cork, and bamboo. Skeps—bell-shaped straw hives of the sort still popular in cartoons—were widely used in seventeenth-century Europe and were brought to the New World by some of the earliest colonists. (Before the colonists arrived, there were no honeybees anywhere in the Americas.)
Nowadays, nearly all beekeepers use hives of the same basic design, developed a century and a half ago by the Reverend Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth, a Congregational minister from Philadelphia. Langstroth suffered from severe psychiatric difficulties; attempting to preach his first sermon, he came down with an acute case of what might be called rector's block, and was unable to speak. (He referred to this as the start of his "head troubles.") He took up beekeeping in the hope that the outdoor work would clear his mind.
Langstroth's crucial insight—"I could scarcely refrain from shouting 'Eureka!' in the open streets," he wrote of the moment of revelation—was the concept of "bee space." He realized that while honeybees will seal up passageways that are either too large or too small, they will leave open passages that are just the right size to allow a bee to pass through comfortably. Langstroth determined that if frames were placed at this "bee-space" interval of three-eighths of an inch, bees would build honeycomb that could be lifted from the hive, rather than, as was the practice up to that point, sliced or hacked out of it. He patented L. L. Langstroth's Movable Comb Hive in 1852. Today's version consists of a number of rectangular boxes—the number is supposed to grow during the season—open at the top and at the bottom. Each box is equipped with inner lips from which frames can be hung, like folders in a filing drawer, and each frame comes with special tabs to preserve bee space.
I set up my hive at the edge of a small brook that runs through the back yard. Within a day of being installed, my bees—Italians—were hard at work. They could be seen zipping out of the little opening in the front and returning with yellow wads of pollen stuffed into the baskets on their legs. Even my teen-age son found the sight of their proverbial busyness hard to resist. On returning home from school, he would lounge against a nearby tree and watch.
One of the people that David Hackenberg called to tell about his dead hives was Pennsylvania's state apiary inspector, Dennis van Engelsdorp. Van Engelsdorp does not normally keep bees himself, but at the time that I went to visit him, a few weeks ago, he had eight hives in his yard, arranged in a horseshoe. The hives' owner had iden-tified them as suffering from C.C.D., and van Engelsdorp had brought them home because he was interested in seeing how long it would take for them to collapse entirely. He asked me if I wanted to have a look. We both put on bee gear—a sort of cross between a hazmat suit and a fencing mask. Van Engelsdorp smoked the first hive, then pulled out a frame. To me, it looked perfectly ordinary, except that, as van Engelsdorp pointed out, there were almost no bees on it.
"If you look here, you can see eggs, so the queen's trying," van Engelsdorp said, passing me the frame. We had neglected to put gloves on, but this didn't seem to matter, because the few bees there were so listless. I could see eggs, which resemble tiny grains of rice, at the bottom of several dozen cells.
"She's cranking," he went on. "Those eggs are on their side, so they're three days old. But this colony's just not building. It's not a factor of there not being enough young bees coming out, but it seems to be a factor of the fact that the adult population is disappearing. So this is an indication where I think this colony will be completely collapsed next week."
And so it went. In the second colony, van Engelsdorp spotted what are known as "supercedure" cells. These cells, which hang off the honeycomb like misshapen peanuts, are a sign that worker bees are trying to produce a new queen. (An ordinary larva grows into a queen if it is fed on a special high-calorie diet of royal jelly.)
"This is another thing we're seeing," van Engelsdorp told me. "The queens don't seem to hold as long. It's sort of like bees coughing, trying to get rid of some illness that they associate with the queen." A third hive was almost completely empty. Van Engelsdorp poked around inside it, looking for signs of wax moths or small hive beetles, insects that prey on weak colonies, but found none. "So whatever is killing the bees, is it also killing the moths or is it just driving them out, or what?" he asked. After going through the rest of the hives, van Engelsdorp decided to conduct an anatomical inspection. He picked up a worker, pinched the end of her abdomen between his fingers, and pulled. A slimy, cream-colored thread emerged. This was the bee's rectum, its kidneys—or Malpighian tubules—and its intestines. He tossed the bee on the ground, and repeated the process with another bee.
Van Engelsdorp, who is thirty-seven, has a bearish build, thinning blond hair, and deep-set blue eyes. He lives in the woods about thirty miles west of Harrisburg, in a one-room cabin with an unheated porch that he sleeps on year-round. Like many people who started to hear from Hackenberg last fall, van Engelsdorp wasn't initially very concerned. He figured that the problem had to do with mites or—much the same thing—with one of the many diseases, like deformed-wing virus, that the mites transmit. (The fact that Hackenberg hadn't found any dead bees was odd, but sick honeybees often leave the hive to expire.) What convinced him otherwise was slicing up some bees that Hackenberg brought from Florida.
Normally, if you cut open a bee its innards, viewed under a microscope, will appear white. Hackenberg's bees were filled with black scar tissue. They seemed to be suffering not so much from any particular ailment as from just about every ailment. "There was just so much wrong with them," van Engelsdorp recalled. "And there weren't any mites."
After more beekeepers began reporting problems, van Engelsdorp started travelling around the country, collecting samples. Some he preserved in alcohol, for his own lab; others he put on dry ice, to be sent out for more sophisticated molecular tests. (Soon, he was so overwhelmed by samples that he had to hire an assistant, whose job consists entirely of conducting bee autopsies.) When the molecular tests were performed, by entomologists at Penn State, they con-firmed van Engelsdorp's initial impression. The bees were infected with just about every bee virus known, including deformed-wing virus, sac-brood virus, and black-queen-cell virus, and also by various fungi and bacteria. In addition, genetic analysis revealed the presence of new pathogens, never before sequenced. Such was the level of infection that van Engelsdorp and other researchers concluded that the bees' immune systems had collapsed. It was as if an insect version of AIDS were sweeping through the hives.
One evening at around ten o'clock, in the middle of a downpour, my husband heard an odd noise. It sounded to him like clattering, and it seemed to be coming from the general direction of our hive. When he went outside to check, a bear was standing where previously the boxes had been stacked. The frames were scattered in the weeds.
The next morning, thousands of bees were clustered against the base of a nearby tree. Thousands more were lying dead on the ground. I righted the hive and gathered up the frames. Then, using a garden trowel, I spooned as many of the survivors as I could back into the boxes. That night, the bear attacked again. Do bees suffer? I regret to say that I think they do. Those who made it through the second attack spent their days grumpily buzzing around, or huddled pathetically together. Within two weeks, they, too, were dead.
Most beekeeping manuals advise against trying to raise bees on the basis of a manual. Instead, they suggest find-ing a more experienced beekeeper who lives nearby or joining a local beekeeping organization. The nearest group I could find was the Southern Vermont Beekeepers, and one evening I attended a meeting in the back of a Manchester bookstore. The guest speaker was the Vermont state apiary inspector, and he spent a while talking about colony-collapse disorder, which hadn't been found in Vermont, and then about varroa mites and tracheal mites and American foulbrood and nosema and small hive beetles, all of which had. When he called for questions, the discussion quickly turned to bears. Practically everyone had a story to tell. Ordinary fences, it was agreed, were useless, and even electric ones could be breached. One man said that he draped his electric fence with bacon; this enticed the bear to stick his nose against the wires and get zapped. Another recommended driving nails through plywood, then laying the plywood around the hive, nail-side up.
"It definitely keeps the bears out," he said of the arrangement.
"It's not too good for the inspector who steps on a nail," the inspector said.
"Get a tetanus shot," a second man suggested.
On my return home, I relayed what I'd learned to my husband. I told him I was opposed to the nail approach, and he said he was opposed to an electric fence. Ultimately, we settled on a third option, not recommended by anyone. We ran a wire cable between two trees, about twenty feet off the ground, and attached a pulley to it. Then we mounted the hive on a platform that could be raised and lowered by rope. Since it was too late in the season to get another package, we ordered what's known as a nucleus hive, or nuc, which, once again, I went to pick up at Betterbee. It came in a plastic-foam container resembling a cooler. Instead of Italians, the bees in the nuc were Carniolans. The queen, who can be hard to spot, because Carniolans are so dark, had been marked with a tiny yellow dot.
For ten days, the aerial hive worked fine. On the eleventh, I went out to check on it and found the boxes on the ground. The frames had all tumbled out, and the bees were buzzing around wildly. I wasn't sure what had happened until I spotted a small black bear a few yards away. Presumably, he had climbed a tree and swatted at the hive until it fell. I chased him away, put on my beekeeping gear, and set the frames back in place. The platform was dangling over my head. While I was trying to figure out my next move, I got stung on the chin. I retreated, and, when I looked up, the bear had returned. He sidled over to one of the boxes I had righted, and tried to tip it over. Bees swarmed toward his face. He tumbled back. He tried again. The same thing happened. He sat down. For several minutes, we eyed each other warily. Finally, a tractor came to mow a nearby field and the sound of it drove him off.
I had lost one colony, and now it seemed that I was about to lose another. My husband announced that he had had enough of bees, but, both morally and journalistically, I felt committed. I persuaded him to restring the cable between two trees that were farther apart, and we raised the hive back up. Much to my amazement, this seemed to work.
Dr. Ian Lipkin is the head of the Jerome L. and Dawn Greene Infectious Disease Laboratory at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. He is a slight man with sandy-colored hair and a boyishly unlined face. When he was in medical school, Lipkin intended to become an internist, but then he became interested in neurology, which, in turn, led him to molecular biology. "The thing about molecular biology is, it's like a magic trick," Lipkin told me when I went to speak to him one day this summer in his office, in upper Manhattan. "Once you know the trick, you say, 'I should have seen that.' "
Last December, Lipkin received an e-mail from an entomologist at Penn State. The e-mail asked for his help in solving the mystery of C.C.D. This was two months before C.C.D. began to make news, and Lipkin had no idea what the entomologist was talking about. He wondered whether the e-mail was genuine. "I get a lot of kooks writing me," he explained. Lipkin knew almost nothing about the ailments of invertebrates, and even less about bees, but his lab had done a lot of work on zoonoses—diseases, like avian flu, that originated in animals and have "jumped" species to infect humans."I decided, Well, why not diseases of insects? It's sort of a natural extension," he told me. He agreed to help, and soon was sent some of the bees that van Engelsdorp had collected.
Lipkin subjected the bees to what is called "metagenomic analysis." As he described it to me, the goal of the process is to extract all the genetic information available from a given sample, in this case not just the bees themselves but also the protozoa, bacteria, viruses, and fungi that had been living in them. "It's like if we took you, your shoes, your socks, your sweater, and sequenced everything," Lipkin said. "Then we need to figure out what was shoes, what was socks, and what was you." (Just last year, scientists at the Baylor College of Medicine, in Houston, published the entire honeybee genome sequence, consisting of some two hundred and sixty million base pairs.) At various points, Lipkin assigned more than a dozen researchers in his lab to work on the project, sometimes seven days a week.
The metagenomic analysis confirmed van Engelsdorp's initial impression. Bees suffering from C.C.D. were infected not with one pathogen but with many, and the most economical explanation was that their immune systems were compromised. This left the central question still to be answered: Why was this happening?
At the time that I spoke to him, Lipkin had just sent off a paper on C.C.D. to a scientific journal_._ He was reluctant to discuss its contents, for fear of jeopardizing its acceptance, but he did indicate that it contained what he considered to be a breakthrough. One patho-gen in particular was, in his words, "highly associated" with C.C.D.
"My speculation would be that this particular pathogen is a trigger that takes an otherwise borderline population and throws it over the edge," he told me. "I think that's what we're seeing." Lipkin explained that the process of finding the pathogen responsible for an outbreak was "the same whether we're talking about encephalitis or diarrheal disease or hemorrhagic fevers or respiratory disease. You put up a candidate and then try to tear it down. And, if you can't tear it down, it's probably bona fide. That's how we do science." He wouldn't tell me what kind of pathogen he was talking about in the case of C.C.D., but soon I learned that it was a virus. I also learned that it was suspected that the virus had entered the U.S. on imported bees.
So far, C.C.D. has been reported in thirty-six states, including California, New York, Texas, Florida, and New Jersey. There are no reliable estimates of how many hives have been wiped out by the disorder, but commercial beekeepers seem to have been particularly hard hit, with some reporting losses of up to ninety per cent. A number of beekeeping businesses have already failed; when I met up with David Hackenberg, he showed me a stack of boxes he had bought from an operation that had recently gone under. It's impossible to predict how many businesses will be left after this year. During the summer, when the nectar is flowing, even weak colonies can appear to be healthy. The test will come in the fall, the season when C.C.D. was first discovered.
I asked several entomologists what could be done if, in fact, C.C.D. did turn out to be caused or, to use Lipkin's word, "triggered" by a virus, and got back a wide range of answers. New, resistant strains of honeybees could, at least in theory, be bred. Bees could, once again in theory, be treated with antiviral drugs or, alternatively, the virus might burn itself out. (A recent paper co-written by van Engelsdorp shows that unexplained honeybee die-offs have occurred in the U.S. fourteen times in the past hundred years.) Finally, there is the possibility that C.C.D. could keep spreading until people just give up on raising honeybees.
Under this last, worst-case scenario, other pollinators would have to be found to perform the work that honeybees now do. There are thousands of candidates—mostly other species of bees, but perhaps also certain moths or thrips. For some crops, alternative pollinators could well prove more efficient than Apis mellifera; honeybees don't particularly like squash or pumpkin flowers, for example, while Peponapis pruinosa, commonly known as the squash bee, does. But the challenges are enormous. Only a fraction of pollinators are generalists, and even fewer are social. Meanwhile, wild pollinators are, by most accounts, in the midst of a crisis of their own.
Last October, just a few weeks before Hackenberg observed the strange symptoms of C.C.D., the National Research Council issued a report titled "The Status of Pollinators in North America." Fifteen scientists from the U.S., Canada, and Mexico had spent a year reviewing the available literature and interviewing experts. They noted that few systematic studies had been done; still, there was plenty of evidence of decline. The Franklin bumblebee, for instance—a mostly black bee native to northwest California and southwest Oregon—was abundant in 1998, but the following year went into a steep and probably terminal decline. None were seen in 2004 and 2005 and only one was found last year. Similarly, the rusty patched bumblebee, once common in New York, hasn't been sighted since 2001. In Britain, where better records have been kept, more than half the native bumblebee species either have become extinct or are facing extinction in the next few decades. Among the many possible contributing factors that the report cited are habitat loss, pesticide use, climate change, and introduced pathogens. May Berenbaum, a professor of entomology at the University of Illinois, chaired the National Research Council panel; she recently characterized C.C.D. as "a crisis on top of a crisis."
"We can't count on wild pollinators, because we've so altered the landscape that many are no longer viable," she said.
As the National Research Council report noted, invertebrate extinctions don't tend to have much "marquee appeal." Yet if it's a bad sign when an ecosystem loses its large mammals, it is proba-bly an even worse sign when it can no longer support its insects. The report put it this way: "Pollinator decline is one form of global change that actually does have credible potential to alter the shape and structure of the terrestrial world."
As for my honeybees, they seem to be doing fine. After their unfortunate fall, I was worried that the queen might have been crushed or perhaps suffocated by her nervous attendants, an accident known as "balling." In that case, the colony would have had to go through the risky exercise of breeding a new queen and getting her mated. But just the other day I lowered the hive, smoked it, and opened the cover. When I pulled out a frame, it was dripping with honey. I could see lots of fat little larvae curled up in their cells, proof that the queen was alive and laying. To my fond, unpracticed eye, it all seemed beautiful. I put the cover on and hoisted the hive back up. As of this writing, it is still there, swaying between the trees. ♦


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This Blog focuses on Ancestor Stories, both the stories themselves about my family's ancestors and discussions of where they come from and how to prepare and share them. These stories may be non-fiction or fiction – we will always tell which is which, of course. Also see my KINNICK blog and The HOMEPLACE Series Blog, left sidebar, scroll down.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Treasure Chest Thursday - Treasure Box
This is the photo:
Here is the message in the box:
This box belonged to Great-Grandmother Mary Eileen Smith.
She was your Grandpa Smith's mother.
It had been a Christmas Gift from Grandpa Bill and Grandma Nancy Smith to her many years ago.
It is a special box to keep your treasures.
Take good care of it and you can give it to your child (or grandchild) someday.
Love, Grandpa and Grandma Smith, Christmas 2009
Families are Forever! ;-)
4 comments:
What a wonderful way to make Family History important to your grandson! This is truly a precious gift.ReplyDelete
Happy New Year!
Word Designer
Very nice box. I hope he understands the significance of such a gift. I'm sure this will establish a love for family and genealogy.ReplyDelete
Have a good New Year!
~ Just Joany
Red Wagon Flights
Thank you for the comments. We will work with him and his parents to carefully make it more valuable as the years go by. ;-)ReplyDelete
What a beautiful gift! Someday, maybe he will post a picture of it on his blog for "Treasure Chest Thursday" :)ReplyDelete

subset: commoncrawl


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This week I have been playing around with threading in MzScheme… I like it!
(thread (lambda () …))
is enough to create a thread and start it running.
You can use channels to pass data between threads safely with (make-channel), (channel-get <channel>) and (channel-put <channel> <data>).
Just to prove you can write Java in any language… say I wanted to have a connection manager. The API is pretty simple – I want to add connections and remove connections. Also, it might be useful to be able to start and stop the connection manager and display the number of connections. There are a number of ways I could implement this, e.g. have a global variable and synchronise access to put and get connections. Alternatively, I could have a thread that looks after connections and send messages to that thread via a channel. Just for fun, let me choose the second option.
The functionality is encapsulated and available through the following API.
(connection-add <input-port> <output-port>)
(connection-remove <input-port>)
If this was production code, I should put the code in a module and only make the above functions available using (provide…). Outside a module, we can of course by-pass the API and put messages in the channel directly.
;; Support function LOG (define (pad n) (substring (number->string (+ n 100)) 1 3)) (define (now) (let* ((date (seconds->date (current-seconds))) (secs (date-second date)) (mins (date-minute date)) (hour (date-hour date))) (format "~a:~a:~a" (pad hour) (pad mins) (pad secs)))) (define (LOG . args) (printf "[ ~a ] : " (now)) (for-each display args) (newline) (flush-output)) ;; First of all, we define a struct for the connection which has ;; an input and an output port (define-struct connection (input output)) ;; Globals for the channel, and the thread - it is a singleton obviously (define *connections-channel* (make-channel)) (define *connection-manager-thread* #f) ;; The actual manager function ;; this constantly loops and accepts messages via *connections-channel* ;; possible messages are: ;; 'stop, 'add-connection, 'remove-connection, ;; 'show-connection, 'clear-connections (define (connection-manager) (letrec ((show-command (lambda (command) (LOG "Received command [" (symbol->string command) "]"))) (show-connections (lambda (connections) (let* ((num (length connections)) (plural (not (= num 1)))) (LOG "There " (if plural "are " "is ") num " connection" (if plural "s" ""))))) (loop (lambda (connections) (let* ((command (channel-get *connections-channel*)) (head (car command))) (cond ((eq? head 'stop) (LOG "Connection manager stopping...")) ((eq? head 'add-connection) (loop (cons (cadr command) connections))) ((eq? head 'remove-connection) (let ((c (cadr command))) (LOG "Removing connection [" c "]") (loop (remove (lambda (e) (eqv? (connection-input e) c)) connections)))) ((eq? head 'show-connections) (show-connections connections) (loop connections)) ((eq? head 'clear-connections) (loop '())) (else (LOG "Error: unrecognised-command [" head "]") (loop connections))))))) (LOG "Connection manager starting...") (loop '()))) ;; connection-manager-running? checks if the connection-manager ;; is currently running - it is a belt and braces effort (define (connection-manager-running?) (and (thread? *connection-manager-thread*) (thread-running? *connection-manager-thread*))) ;; We always check if the connection-manager is running before ;; trying to send a message as (channel-put ...) waits until there ;; is a corresponding (channel-get ...) on another thread. When ;; testing at the REPL, this can cause problems. We could use an ;; asynch stream which wouldn't have this problem but I prefer ;; the explicit check (define (connection-manager-send-message message) (if (connection-manager-running?) (channel-put *connections-channel* message) (begin (LOG "WARN - Connection manager is not currently running") #f))) ;; The actual API functions. Most of these simply check if the ;; connection manager is running, and if so, put the appropriate ;; message in the channel. (define (connection-manager-start) (if (connection-manager-running?) (LOG "WARN - The connection manager is already running") (set! *connection-manager-thread* (thread connection-manager)))) (define (connection-manager-stop) (connection-manager-send-message (list 'stop)) (set! *connection-manager-thread* #f)) (define (connection-manager-clear-connections) (connection-manager-send-message (list 'clear-connections))) (define (connection-manager-show-connections) (connection-manager-send-message (list 'show-connections))) (define (connection-add input-port output-port) (connection-manager-send-message (list 'add-connection (make-connection input-port output-port)))) (define (connection-remove input-port) (connection-manager-send-message (list 'remove-connection input-port))) ;;; Connection Manager Test ;; The test... (define (test-connection-manager) (connection-manager-start) (connection-manager-clear-connections) (connection-manager-show-connections) (connection-add 1 2) (connection-manager-show-connections) (connection-remove 1) (connection-manager-show-connections) (time (begin (do ((i 0 (+ i 1))) ((= i 100000) #t) (connection-add 1 2)) (connection-manager-show-connections))) (connection-manager-stop)) ;; (test-connection-manager)


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Breaking up is hard to do, as that old pop standard goes. And sometimes, if the breakup-ee is a little unbalanced, clothes can get thrown onto lawns, windshields get smashed, and third party observers get hit with cars.
The latter is exactly what police say happened in sunny Austin, Texas recently. According to this report from KXAN News, cops have charged 22-year-old Elizabeth Segundo McClain with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and stalking after she allegedly ran over her ex's mother with her car.
The TV station reports that McClain had been dating the victim's son off and on for three years, but it ended in September. Over the next few months she would call him as many as 750 times a day(!), and in November sent him 126 text messages in a row. All were blank, the report said, except for two that read, "Annoying Uh?" She also reportedly threatened his family and put sugar in his gasoline tank. That's never cool, lady! Not ever!
But last week, McClain drove to her ex's mom's house, and when the woman walked behind the car to write down a license plate so she could call the cops, McClain "told her 'Oh no you are not' with a big smile on her face" and then ran her over in reverse, the Austin American-Statesman reported. Sounds like a real charmer.
Anyway, the mom is in intensive care with a bunch of broken bones, and McClain is in jail. No word on whether she and the ex are getting back together.
Do you have any car-related "crazy ex" stories?
Thanks for the tip VeeArrrSix!
Photo credit Shutterstock/KXAN


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20 Feb 2013 20:11
A total of 102 rhino have been killed since the beginning of 2013. (AFP)
Spokesperson Albi Modise said on Wednesday that the Kruger National Park (KNP) was the hardest hit, with four rhino being killed there this week alone.
A total of 70 KNP rhino have been killed since January 1.
"In the past 48 hours five alleged poachers were arrested in Limpopo and one in the KNP. This means a total of 40 alleged poachers, among them three alleged couriers, have been arrested since the beginning of the year," said Modise.
Police officers recovered ammunition, rifles and a silencer from the suspected poachers.
A total of 11 rhino have been poached in the North West, 10 in KwaZulu-Natal, seven in Limpopo and four in Mpumalanga.
Modise said while the numbers remained high, there was a slight drop in the number of rhino killed per week.
"[It] may be attributed to the implementation of the turnaround strategy aimed at eliminating poaching by the SA National Parks," he said.
Last year, the country recorded that three rhino were being poached per week.
This year, the number had dropped to two.
Over 630 rhino were killed by poachers in 2012.
– Sapa
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Your doctor has ordered a brain SPECT scan. The role of this procedure is to diagnose Alzheimer's and other neuro-degenerative diseases, stroke, seizure, and to evaluate memory loss. Our team of specialized doctors, nurses and technologists is led by Alan Waxman, MD, Chief of Nuclear Medicine.
- Directions and parking information
- Adler/Nail and Cedars-Sinai Research for Women's Cancers P.E.T. Center
- Why choose the S. Mark Taper Foundation Imaging Center for a brain SPECT scan?
Before Your Exam
There are no pre-exam instructions.
If your doctor gave you an order, please bring it with you.
We want to make your waiting time as pleasant as possible. Consider bringing your favorite magazine, book or music player to help you pass the time.
Please leave your jewelry and valuables at home.
During Your Exam
Upon arrival, the technologist will explain your procedure and answer any questions you may have.
You will receive an intravenous injection (in your vein) of a tracer dose of radioactive material.
The level of radioactivity is extremely low and has no side effects.
Approximately 30 minutes to one hour later, you will be brought into the exam room for the scan.
Your scan will take approximately 30 minutes.
During this time you will be required to lie flat on your back, without moving.
Using a special nuclear medicine camera, pictures of your brain will be obtained. The camera does not produce any radiation; it simply detects and records the distribution of the radioactive material in your brain.
After Your Exam
There are no post-exam instructions.
You may be asked to return for a comparison scan, called a Diamox brain SPECT scan, between two to 14 days after your initial scan. Diamox is a drug which increases the blood flow to the brain. A comparison of the baseline brain scan with a Diamox brain scan provides helpful information to your physician about the blood flow to your brain.
Your study will be reviewed by an imaging physician specialist and the results sent to your physician. Your physician will discuss these results with you and explain what they mean in relation to your health.
To request a copy of your report, call 310-423-8000, option 2 or submit an online request.
For more information or to schedule an appointment, please call 310-423-8000.
The S. Mark Taper Foundation Imaging Center provides a full range of advanced imaging, both radiology and cardiology, as well as interventional radiology and interventional tumor (oncology) treatments to the greater Los Angeles area, including Beverly Hills, Encino, Mid-Cities, Sherman Oaks, Santa Monica, Silver Lake, Studio City, Toluca Lake and West Hollywood.


text: TeamViewer 10 Crack Final Corporate Edition with Serial KeysTeamViewer 10 TeamViewer 10 Crack is the tool to connect different PC and work stations remotely. It allows solve computer problems remotely using computer for access. There are many remote desktop software available on the internet now a days. But TeamViewer 10 Crack Corporate is the most trusted and working tool. Unlike …Read More »


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Notes from a day in baseball:
• The Attack Of Rally Monkey. Hey, look at this: An actual sports rivalry in Los Angeles. It seems to us that the Dodgers have always owned this town, treating Angels fans like members of The Hat Squad treated mobsters in the '40s. But the Angels are becoming relevant these days, and they're beginning to actually fight back. Look at this blog throw-down from over the weekend: From Halos Heaven ... "Our team has 6 players who have been on the roster since 2002. Our team has won a playoff series in recent memory. Our team has a ring from a year that Duran Duran was not at the forefront of Pop Culture. Our team has 51 more runs scored than their's after an offseason of being scolded by the Dodger, er, Los Angeles Times that we needed a big bat. (The Dodgers) are blue, they are bitter, they are bastards. What part of this is so difficult to comprehend that we would express shock and/or dismay at their hissing from a cornered-squirrel position. To go into their house and leave with anything less than a black eye, a fat lip and a well-pitched victory would cheapen how far they have sunk, how high we have risen and how terrible the house that Garvey seeded remains." And from LAist ... "I'm a Dodger die-hard. It's in my blood. So I can't like the Angels. But do you know who I hate even more? That jackass who was sitting behind me at the game today. He and his Angel ass-kissing buddy did not stop speaking throughout the entire game. They seriously thought they were placed on this earth to be the walking and talking media guides and for three and a half hours they didn't shut up once. They loudly spewed stats and facts at each other which seemed rather pointless since obviously the other one was painfully aware of GA's batting average this year given that they are both big Angels fans, but also because the damn batting average is posted on the DodgerVision screen for everyone in the stadium to see so the fact that they could quote it meant nothing at all. Morons." Ha. Baseball in LA is fun, maybe for the first time ever.
• Oh Yeah, There Was A Game. Howie Kendrick and Orlando Cabrera each had three hits leading Los Angeles of Anaheim (we think that's right) over the Dodgers 10-4. The Angels dropped the opening game, then won the final two of the interleague series, giving them a 5-1 record against the Dodgers this season. The Angels have 44 wins, tied with the Red Sox for the most in baseball.
• We Blame Bloomberg. We Don't Know Why. Like two ships passing in the night, the Yankees and Mets are going in opposite directions (and the Mets would be the Titanic). Alex Rodriguez hit his major league-leading 27th homer, Chien-Ming Wang came within one out of a complete game and the Yankees won the second Subway Series of the season with an 8-2 victory over the Mets. Johnny Damon and Jorge Posada also homered, as the Yankees won their 11th in their past 12 games. The Mets have lost 11 of 13.
• Look Out, Mr. Peabody! What's this you say? Kevin Millwood in the win column? Marlon Byrd, a home run? Rangers 11, Reds 4, and yep, both of those things happened: Millwood's first win since April 13, and Byrd's first homer since July 4, 2006.
• Well That Was Quick. Justin Verlander lost his no-hitter in the second inning, the Tigers going on to take a 7-4 win over the Phillies.


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Questions & Answers for Reservists, Guardsmen and Other Military Personnel
The following information is provided regarding mortgage payment relief and protection from foreclosure provided under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA, formerly known as The Soldiers' and Sailors' Civil Relief Act of 1940).
Who Is Eligible?
The provisions of the Act apply to active duty military personnel who had a mortgage obligation prior to enlistment or prior to being ordered to active duty. This includes members of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Coast Guard; commissioned officers of the Public Health Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who are engaged in active service; reservists ordered to report for military service; persons ordered to report for induction under the Military Selective Service Act; and guardsmen called to active service for more than 30 consecutive days. In limited situations, dependents of servicemembers are also entitled to protections.
Servicemembers Civil Relief Act Notice (Mortgagee Letter 2006-28)
Pursuant to the statutory amendment, HUD has developed, in consultation with the Departments of Defense and Treasury, the form for the required notice of servicemember rights (Attachment 1, SCRA Notice Disclosure). All mortgage loans, including conventional mortgages and mortgages insured by HUD are subject to the notification requirement that became effective June 5, 2006. The notice must:
|Be sent to all homeowners who are in default on a residential mortgage;
|Include the toll-free military one-source number to call if servicemembers or their dependents require further assistance (1-800-342-9647); and
|Be made within 45 days from the date a missed payment was due, unless the homeowner pays the overdue amount before the expiration of the 45-day period.
Am I Entitled To Debt Payment Relief?
The Act limits the interest that may be charged on mortgages incurred by a service member (including debts incurred jointly with a spouse) before he or she entered into active military service. Mortgage lenders must, at your request, reduce the interest rate to no more than six percent per year during the period of active military service and recalculate your payments to reflect the lower rate. This provision applies to both conventional and government-insured mortgages.
Is The Interest Rate Limitation Automatic?
No. To request this temporary interest rate reduction, you must submit a written request to your mortgage lender and include a copy of your military orders. The request may be submitted as soon as the orders are issued but must be provided to a mortgage lender no later than 180 days after the date of your release from active duty military service.
Am I Eligible Even if I Can Afford To Pay My Mortgage At A Higher Interest Rate?
If a mortgage lender believes that military service has not affected your ability to repay your mortgage, they have the right to ask a court to grant relief from the interest rate reduction. This is not very common.
What If I Can't Afford to Pay My Mortgage Even At the Lower Rate?
Your mortgage lender may allow you to stop paying the principal amount due on your loan during the period of active duty service. Lenders are not required to do this but they generally try to work with service members to keep them in their homes. You will still owe this amount but will not have to repay it until after your complete your active duty service.
Additionally, most lenders have other programs to assist borrowers who cannot make their mortgage payments. If you or your spouse find yourself in this position at any time before or after active duty service, contact your lender immediately and ask about loss mitigation options. Borrowers with FHA insured loans who are having difficulty making mortgage payments may also be eligible for forbearance and/or HUD's other Loss Mitigation Programs. More information about help for homeowners who are unable to make payments on a mortgage is available on the HUD website.
Am I Protected against Foreclosure?
Mortgage lenders may not foreclose, or seize property for a failure to pay a mortgage debt, while a service member is on active duty for nine (9) months grace period prior to December 31, 2010 unless they have the approval of a court. After December 31, 2010, the grace period for Service member protection will revert back to 3 months. In a court proceeding, the lender would be required to show that the service member's ability to repay the debt was not affected by his or her military service.
What Information Do I Need To Provide To My Lender?
When you or your representative contact your mortgage lender, you should provide the following information:
|Notice that you have been called to active duty;
|A copy of the orders from the military service notifying you of your activation;
|Your FHA case number; and
|Evidence that the debt precedes your activation date.
HUD has reminded FHA lenders of their obligation to follow the Act. If notified that a borrower is on active military duty, the lender must advise the borrower or representative of the adjusted amount due, provide adjusted coupons or billings, and ensure that the adjusted payments are not returned as insufficient payments.
Will My Payments Change Later? Will I Need To Pay Back The Interest Rate "Subsidy" At A Later Date?
The change in interest rate is not a subsidy. Interest in excess of 6 percent per year that would otherwise have been charged is forgiven. However, the reduction in the interest rate and monthly payment amount only applies during the period of active duty. Once the period of active military service ends, the interest rate will revert back to the original interest rate, and the payment will be recalculated accordingly.
How Long Does The Benefit Last? Does The Period Begin And End With My Tour Of Duty?
Interest rate reductions are only for the period of active military service. Other benefits, such as postponement of monthly principal payments on the loan and restrictions on foreclosure may begin immediately upon assignment to active military service and end on the third month following the term of active duty assignment.
How Can I Learn More About Relief Available To Active Duty Military Personnel?
Read more information about the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, sponsored by the Legal Assistance Policy Division, Office of The Judge Advocate General, U.S. Army.
Servicemembers who have questions about the SCRA or the protections that they may be entitled to may contact their unit judge advocate or installation legal assistance officer. Dependents of servicemembers can also contact or visit local military legal assistance offices where they reside. A military legal assistance office locator for each branch of the armed forces is available at http://legalassistance.law.af.mil/content/locator.php
Source: HUD.GOV© 2010-19 FORECLOSURE FRAUD | by DinSFLA. All rights reserved.


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Tag Archives: SUV Duster 2017
The Next-Gen Duster 2017: All Set to Rock
Renault Duster got all the love and appreciation from all over the globe. It is no mystery how many units of this fantabulous machine were sold. It was an epic success – one to remember and inspire. With a million ecstatic Renault Duster owners across the planet, it is not a surprise that the next level avatar is going to strike soon. We will tell you how soon. The Next-Gen Duster 2017 will set out to create history again. This is said, keeping in mind the course that was set seven years ago by the existing model. The upcoming model, we hope with all our might, will carry the baton zooming across the world.
Some speculative renderings of the daring new SUV Duster 2017 have been doing rounds. Must we say what a spectacle this machine is! The brawniness is distinctly there and well, it had better be there. It makes Renault Duster 2017 what it is. The formidable road presence has, however, grown, all because of a wider stance. Other details that caught the eyes of some fortunate spectators were distinguished wheel arches, grand shoulder line and an overall an exaggerated masculine appearance.
From what has been heard and if renderings are to be trusted, the next-level Duster 2017 SUV 2017 is, sure as hell, going to be meaner. The rectangular headlamps will, in all, probability, go missing. The slimmer ones are going to replace them. Add to this, a daring, dark black engine grille and we have ourselves a mind-blowing sight. If you think you have seen much, wait till you set your eyes on the fog-lamp enclosures that have been redesigned and retouched and lend themselves to its enhanced macho look. Like that was possible, we exclaim! Though some are of the view that they are more LED daytime running lights than fog-lamps, in a strict sense of the word.
Let's move to the rear now, where a lot of action has happened, we hear. The Next-Gen Duster 2017 SUV comes with an evolved rear tailgate and tail-lamps. So, when this one blazes past people, it is going to leave them gaping and breathless. The signature shell shape stays unchanged, thank goodness. So, one can say that even in this new avatar, the spirit stays the same. If anything, it has been built up to crazy levels. And we are loving the sound of it.
Let's see how the land lies in the face of competitors, mainly Ford EcoSport. Many motor experts believe that touching up the exteriors alone is not going to do the trick. What will actually decide how strong Duster 2017 SUV will stand against Ford EcoSport and other contenders is the cabin. There is a new dashboard, chic upholstery and all that, but will it be enough? Only time will show. Meanwhile, we can pin hopes on this magnificent new edition that is going to be a heady overdose of masculinity, something we totally love.


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Lucky for you a well-lit night is just a lightswitch away, but it wasn't always that easy. The "Weight Here" family of candleholders by Menu harkens back to a more fiery time, with a flourish of sleek minimalist design.
The collection contains single candleholders and three-pronged candelabras in thin models for normal candles, and thicker ones for, you know, thicker ones. The body of each holder is made of Polystone, a resin and stone-powder mixture, which gives them a solid heft to go along with that smooth, minimal aesthetic. These make a handy weapon not only against the darkness but also any intruders that might be hiding in it.
Price and availability have yet to be announced, but the collection is said to be coming soon. And if you like their style, then they should definitely be worth the weight. [Kibisi via Aquiremag]


text: The exhibition examines the changing social relativities of Korean society from the 1950s through the 1990s by reading its comic books. Featuring 83 artworks of 21 of the best-known South and North Korean artists, the exhibit provides a running commentary that reflects the lives of ordinary people, at once joyful, satirical and penetrating. What shines most prominently through these works is an engaged and vigorous civil society in Korea, continuously challenging and energizing the status quo in whimsical and provocative ways. By doing so, they pay an important role in characterizing and distinguishing the culture, sensibility and sentiment of two Koreas.


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Re-do search in this area
The Silver Fox
Streator, IL
Banquet Hall/Restaurant, Historic/Landmark Building, Event Center
Starting from $6,605 to $13,062 for 50 guests
Be part of a legacy when you hold your wedding at The Silver Fox, a venue housed in the historic Masonic Temple located in downtown Streator. Built in 1905, this stately brick building has been lovingly restored and offers a venue that is steeped in history with a modern twist! Hold your ceremony o...
Showing other similar Wedding Venues Venues in Illinois
Drury Lane
Oakbrook Terrace, IL
Hotel/Resort, Ballrooms
Starting from $8,843 to $12,656 for 50 guests
Nestled in the Western suburbs of Chicago only minutes away from Downtown, Drury Lane is an elegant space that seamlessly blends timeless style with modern amenities that are sure to suit even the most grand or intimate affair. Throw a stunning ceremony in one of our highly customizable yet decidedl...
Pazzo's 311
Chicago, IL
Banquet Hall/Restaurant
Starting from $15,603 to $21,864 for 50 guests
Located near the banks of the South Branch Chicago River on South Wacker Street, Pazzo's 311 presents brides and grooms a magnificent space to tie the knot within the central portion of downtown Chicago. A stunning space to walk into, this venue features tall walls that soar to a glass pane ceiling....
Eagle Ridge Resort & Spa
Galena, IL
Hotel/Resort, Golf Course, Ocean/Waterfront View, Ballrooms, Outdoor
Starting from $6,785 to $10,046 for 50 guests
Set in one of Northern Illinois' most beautiful and secluded locales, the 6,800-acre Galena Territory, Eagle Ridge Resort & Spa is a truly one-of-a-kind getaway that blends country manor-style luxury with sophisticated touches to create a stunning property. Surrounded by rolling hills and the beauti...
Illinois Beach Resort
Zion, IL
Hotel/Resort, Event Center, Park/Garden, Ocean/Waterfront View, Beach, Ballrooms
Starting from $5,369 to $8,808 for 50 guests
If you ever dreamed of an outdoor wedding, set against a beautiful background, then do we have a scene for you! Lake Michigan provides a spectacular and romantic look for your special day. With a professional Chef to cater your event with the expert attention it deserves, your family and friends wil...
Concorde Banquets
Kildeer, IL
Banquet Hall/Restaurant, Event Center, Private Estate, Park/Garden, Ballrooms, Outdoor
Starting from $4,971 to $5,606 for 50 guests
Host your upcoming wedding celebration at Concorde Banquets in Kildeer, Illinois, a charming Chicago suburb located just 20 minutes northwest of O'Hare Airport. Featuring stunning event spaces and exquisite cuisine, this unrivaled venue is the perfect place to celebrate your once in a lifetime event...
Osteria Via Stato
Chicago, IL
Banquet Hall/Restaurant, City/Skyline View, Vintage/Rustic
Starting from $7,398 to $17,112 for 50 guests
Osteria Via Stato has mastered the art of bringing Italy's festive and hospitable spirit to downtown Chicago's bustling River North district. The menu promises to guide your guests on an epicurean journey that highlights the best of Italy—its food, its wine, and its sense of la dolce vita. The déco...
Renaissance Chicago North Shore Hotel
Northbrook, IL
Hotel/Resort, Ballrooms, Outdoor, Modern
Starting from $5,239 to $6,798 for 50 guests
Celebrate your special day at the Renaissance Chicago North Shore Hotel. This luxurious Northbrook, Illinois hotel offers several gorgeous event venues that can accommodate parties of any size or style. For large celebrations, choose either the majestic Northbrook Ballroom or the elegant Winnetka Ba...
Halim Time & Glass Museum
Evanston, IL
Event Center, Museum/Gallery, City/Skyline View, Ballrooms
Starting from $10,283 to $11,162 for 50 guests
Take yourself back in time with an event at the Halim Time & Glass Museum, just north of Chicago. This is a private collection housed in a contemporary building that is extraordinary both inside and out. On display is a personally curated collection of over 1,100 timepieces and 70 stained-glass artw...
International Museum of Surgical Science
Chicago, IL
Historic/Landmark Building, Museum/Gallery, Mansion, Ocean/Waterfront View, Vintage/Rustic, Outdoor
Starting from $2,282 to $6,086 for 50 guests
The International Museum of Surgical Science is a distinctive venue available for special events. Events hosted at the Museum offer guests an elegant setting, interesting exhibits and breathtaking views of Lake Michigan and just minutes from Downtown Chicago. Few other venues in Chicago offer such a...
The Westin Chicago Northwest
Itasca, IL
Hotel/Resort, Ballrooms, Outdoor
Starting from $5,900 to $6,985 for 50 guests
Allow the grand architecture and majestic atmosphere of the Westin Chicago Northwest sweep you off your feet as you celebrate your big day in style.
Comfort Suites O'Hare Banquet
Chicago, IL
Banquet Hall/Restaurant, Hotel/Resort, Event Center, Ballrooms, Modern
Starting from $3,000 to $6,250 for 50 guests
Formerly known Allegra Banquets, its conveniently located just minutes from the Chicago O'Hare International Airport and the CTA Blue Line Rosemont Station, Comfort Suites O'Hare is the perfect destination for your wedding, especially if you're hosting lots of out-of-town guests! With more than 5,00...
InterContinental Magnificent Mile
Chicago, IL
Historic/Landmark Building, Hotel/Resort, Event Center, City/Skyline View, Ballrooms
Starting from $10,187 to $79,247 for 50 guests
Located in the heart of Chicago's Magnificent Mile and one block from the Chicago River, the InterContinental Hotel provides an elegant space for your big day. Originally built in 1929 as the Medinah Athletic Club, a luxury men's club for members of the Shrine organization. After a multi-million dol...
Peoria Marriott Pere Marquette
Peoria, IL
Historic/Landmark Building, Hotel/Resort, Ballrooms, Modern
Starting from $9,174 to $11,701 for 50 guests
Celebrate your special day at the Peoria Marriot Pere Marquette. Located in downtown Peoria, Illinois, this historic hotel features 18,840 square feet of elegantly appointed event space, including four magnificent ballrooms with capacities ranging from 120 to 440 people. High ceilings, ornate woodwo...
Parker Run Vineyards
Windsor, IL
Winery/Vineyard/Brewery, Barn/Farm/Ranch, Ocean/Waterfront View, Church/Temple, Vintage/Rustic, Outd...
Located in New Windsor, Illinois, Parker Run Vineyards complements the great outdoors and reflects the restored heritage of simpler times. Conveniently host your entire wedding celebration here from ceremony and cocktail hour, to your grand reception! Situated on beautiful grounds, the vineyards off...
Bottom Lounge
Chicago, IL
Banquet Hall/Restaurant, Vintage/Rustic, Outdoor
Starting from $8,266 to $11,855 for 50 guests
Bottom Lounge is an 18,000 square foot multi-purpose event facility conveniently located in the West Loop, moments away from downtown Chicago and easily accessible from two expressways. Walking distance from Restaurant Row, Union Park, and The United Center, it is ideally situated for your wedding e...
Sheraton Suites Chicago O'Hare
Rosemont, IL
Banquet Hall/Restaurant, Hotel/Resort, Event Center, Ballrooms, Outdoor, Modern
Starting from $5,525 to $6,423 for 50 guests
Make wedding planning easy when you book your celebrations at Sheraton Suites Chicago O'Hare! With 19 various rooms to work with, the hotel can accommodate anywhere from intimate gatherings to lavish festivities of up to 250 guests in the Grand Ballroom. You'll delight your guests with the convenien...
The Zephyr Chicago
Chicago, IL
Event Center, Loft, Vintage/Rustic, Modern
Starting from $4,830 to $10,995 for 50 guests
Classic elegance receives a dash of urban-industrial chic at The Zephyr, which is located on Chicago's historic Motor Row. This building was, in its heyday, a car dealership in the early 1900s, and the exposed brick walls give it a vintage charm that hints of the speakeasy fun of the Roaring Twentie...
Ruffled Feathers Golf Club
Lemont, IL
Banquet Hall/Restaurant, Golf Course, Ballrooms, Outdoor, Modern
Starting from $5,950 to $20,747 for 50 guests
Ruffled Feathers Golf Club offers an unequaled locale for extraordinary wedding celebrations. The club's emerald green golf course and lovely grounds offer ample opportunities for a picturesque outdoor ceremony. Let the friendly, experienced wedding specialists create a one-of-a-kind wedding that c...
Bartlett Hills Golf Club & Banquets
Bartlett, IL
Golf Course, Ballrooms, Outdoor
Starting from $2,786 to $6,552 for 50 guests
Scenic pond views with fountain and spectacular wooded views & lush landscaping. Private outdoor Veranda for a lovely ceremony or for outdoor seating throughout the celebration-S'mores station anyone? The ballroom is elegant yet charmingly rustic with fireplace and mahogany woodwork & beams leading...
Turnberry Country Club
Village of Lakewood, IL
Private Club, Golf Course, Ballrooms
Starting from $3,110 to $8,162 for 50 guests
Experience Turnberry elegance on your wedding day at the Turnberry Country Club! The venue has an outdoor wedding site or a beautiful Garden Room available for your ceremony. After a lovely ceremony on the expansive green lawn, bring your guests inside for pre-reception cocktails. Now is the chance ...
Moonlight Studios
Chicago, IL
Event Center, Museum/Gallery, Loft
Starting from $10,283 to $13,066 for 50 guests
Situated in Chicago's hot West Loop neighborhood, Moonlight Studios offers a highly unique and versatile space for your special day. The facility, a repurposed factory, provides an industrial-chic venue, ready for your distinct wedding style to liven up the space. Guests enter through an elongated f...
Morgan Park Academy
Chicago, IL
Park/Garden, Outdoor
Starting from $2,244 to $6,294 for 50 guests
Located in Chicago's historic Morgan Park-Beverly neighborhood, the Morgan Park Academy offers numerous spaces that are perfect for weddings of any size. Known as the "Hidden Gem of the South Side," this lovely campus can accommodate everything from intimate tented events to elaborate indoor affairs...
Eagle Brook Country Club
Geneva, IL
Private Club, Golf Course, Ballrooms, Outdoor, Modern
Starting from $5,910 to $17,391 for 50 guests
Eagle Brook offers exclusive use of our ballroom and our undivided attention for your special event. Our elegant reception area is separated from the foyer for a private cocktail hour area. Our grand ballroom provides an unobstructed view of the Bride and Groom and easy access to the dance floor. We...
Chicago, IL
Banquet Hall/Restaurant, City/Skyline View, Vintage/Rustic, Outdoor, Modern
Starting from $5,280 to $14,757 for 50 guests
Named after the last letter of the British alphabet and the temperature at which fire ignites, ZED451 delivers an unforgettable experience from start to finish. An urban setting in the heart of Chicago, your wedding celebration becomes the talk of the town. A beautiful sunset ceremony takes place o...
Luxury Wedding Yacht Valara
Chicago, IL
Ocean/Waterfront View, Cruise Ship/Yacht, Outdoor
Starting from $9,730 to $10,080 for 70 guests
What's better than a romantic wedding on the water, the sweet exchange of vows, joined by your family and friends on scenic Lake Michigan? There is not a more perfect way to spend your wedding day in Chicago, than in the comfort and privacy of your own chartered luxury yacht—the VALARA. Host your in...
Hyatt Place Chicago/O'Hare
Rosemont, IL
Hotel/Resort, Ballrooms, Modern
Starting from $8,347 to $14,044 for 50 guests
Get to know the Windy City at the Hyatt Place Chicago/O'Hare. It is a convenient distance from the airport and just under 20 miles from the city, offering great value and greater fun. This stylish hotel is the recipient of the 2018 TripAdvisor Certificate of Excellence, and boasts a number of amenit...
Renaissance Chicago Downtown Hotel
Chicago, IL
Hotel/Resort, Event Center, City/Skyline View, Ballrooms, Modern
Starting from $28,252 to $30,879 for 50 guests
Whether you are planning a casual affair or an evening of culinary luxury, allow the Renaissance Chicago Downtown Hotel to host your event. The hotel offers spectacular venues to make your wedding fairytale perfect. They have award winning chefs willing to work with you to create a unique experience...
JW Marriott Chicago
Chicago, IL
Hotel/Resort, Ballrooms
Starting from $29,769 to $57,098 for 50 guests
Plan an unforgettable, dream wedding at the JW Marriott Chicago. This venue features 44,000 square feet of full-service event space that will sweep you off your feet. Your guests will be enchanted by soaring ceilings, majestic chandeliers and exquisite architecture throughout the entire hotel. The J...
Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center...
Schaumburg, IL
Hotel/Resort, Event Center, Ballrooms, Modern
Starting from $7,490 to $8,960 for 50 guests
Modern elegance meets convenience at Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center Hotel. Located just 25 miles from downtown Chicago, it blends sleek futuristic architecture with an appreciation for the surrounding natural wetlands. With the best of both worlds at their fingertips, your guests will appr...
Carbondale Civic Center
Carbondale, IL
Historic/Landmark Building, Event Center, Community Center, Ballrooms
Starting from $1,183 to $3,475 for 50 guests
Say "I do" at the Carbondale Civic Center. Located in the heart of downtown Carbondale, Illinois, this gorgeous venue offers more than 8,000 square feet of flexible event space. Its beautiful banquet hall can be used for large parties with up to 500 guests or it can be broken down into up to six sma...
Marriott Marquis Chicago
Chicago, IL
Hotel/Resort, City/Skyline View, Ballrooms
Starting from $16,725 to $18,607 for 50 guests
Central and luxurious, the Marriott Marquis Chicago offers a world-class location for celebrating your wedding day. This newly constructed hotel spans 40 stories and overlooks stunning views of Lake Michigan, downtown Chicago, and South Loop. Characterized by modern elegance and a timeless sense of ...
River Roast
Chicago, IL
Banquet Hall/Restaurant, Historic/Landmark Building, Ocean/Waterfront View, City/Skyline View, Outdo...
River Roast in Chicago is a handsome venue to host your wedding celebration. Its location right on the Chicago River offers unique and dramatic views of the Chicago city scene. The interior of River Roast provides an inviting atmosphere for your guests. Raw bricks, tall ceilings, stunning natural li...
Promontory Point - Chicago Park District
Chicago, IL
Event Center, Ocean/Waterfront View
Starting from $4,925 to $9,637 for 50 guests
Positioned directly on the banks of Lake Michigan n South Lake Shore Drive, Promontory Point presents brides and grooms a historic and scenic setting to host a remarkable wedding and reception. Located south of downtown Chicago inside scenic Hyde Park, this venue lies just steps from the water and p...
The Grove Redfield Estate
Glenview, IL
Historic/Landmark Building, Mansion, Private Estate, Park/Garden, Vintage/Rustic, Outdoor
Starting from $4,241 to $8,124 for 50 guests
Nestled in one of the largest parklands in Illinois, the stately Redfield Estate was erected as the home of one of the Grove's first settlers. Perfect for 2 to 100 guests, this historic house's picturesque Prairie style architecture is intended to simulate idyllic cottages in the northern European c...


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I've never been one to collect events, however, on my trip to the Barnes & Noble Cafe yesterday, I did pick up a Michael Jackson commemorative book. First of all, they were hard to avoid. I've never seen MJ on so many covers at one time. He had the covers of various mags within the racks, a special MJ section with all of them together in the magazine section, and then another rack of "In Remembrance Of" which had about 10 MJ covers and one of Farrah Fawcett.
I didn't flip through them all. I don't think anyone has that amount of time. But I flipped through a few and was actually kind of turned off. Just more sensationalism with a hard focus of the troubled and questionable side. I was about to leave when I saw that Ebony had a commeorative book. For some reason, I expected quality from Ebony on the subject matter, and I was not disappointed. Ebony's book has a collection of beautiful pictures (including the cover), words from interviews with the singer, words from associates...it's all tastefully done. I was so impressed that me, the non-buyer of commemorative items, actually picked it up and purchased it to keep in memorandum. I believe Ebony's commemorative book is the best one out there.
Kudos to Ebony.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
3 comments:
- Rose Sun Jul 26, 03:03:00 PM EDT
I'll definitely pick up a copy. I don't want to see a bunch of sensationalism either. Thanks for the tip!
- Sharon Ball Mon Jul 27, 01:12:00 PM EDT
I would have guessed that Ebony would have a quality commemorative book. I'll have to tell my mom about the book since she's been following all of the media coverage on Michael. Thanks!
- Cherlyn Michaels Mon Jul 27, 05:59:00 PM EDT
We're on the same page so I know you wouldn't be disappointed.
Yeah. I would have walked out empty handed otherwise. Everything else was garbage to me. Your mom should appreciate it. :-)


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At some point, my readers were able to add comments on both the main (front) page of my site and from the post pages as well.
Without any obvious change to the configuration of my site, the comment form has disappeared from my article page and, when I click the link from the front page to "add a comment," I'm brought to the article page with no comment form.
You can see the behavior at http://www.full-stack.net.


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Published March 22, 2012
Eight graduate students in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning have spent months mining the complex network of activities, actors and resources that enable the production, processing, wholesaling, distribution, consumption and disposal of the food in Erie County.
They did so at the behest of the Erie County Department of Environment and Planning, with the aim of informing the development of a new farmland preservation plan for the county, which currently can produce only 12 percent of the food required by its population of 919,000.
The students will present their report, "Room at the Table: Food System Assessment of Erie County," to members of the Erie County Industrial Development Agency on March 28. They were enrolled in a fall 2011 planning studio in the School of Architecture and Planning under the guidance of food security expert Samina Raja, associate professor of urban and regional planning.
The report presents an ambitious plan for strengthening Erie County's $9.9 billion food system and offers detailed reasons for doing so.
The authors say their aim is to assure economical and viable agriculture in the county, promote access to local food by county residents, ensure lasting food security in the county, promote the overall health and wellness of residents, and educate the general public about the Erie County food system.
In the report, the research team argues that Erie County government is poised to rejuvenate the farming sector, promote the health of residents and foster economic development. Specifically, they say, efforts must be made to call attention to the need to protect existing farmland, reduce the adult obesity rate in the county (which currently is at 26.9 percent) by promoting healthy local food and increase local revenues by adding new cropland for local food production.
The plan also suggests a new and greater emphasis in Erie County on agritourism—the practice of attracting visitors and travelers to agricultural areas, generally for educational and recreational purposes.
Popular in Europe and throughout the U.S., agritourism already has a presence in the county. It can involve such things as farm stands or shops, U-pick options, overnight farm stays and holiday rentals, farm tours and on-farm classes, horseback riding, honey tasting, maple harvesting demonstrations, guest ranches, barn dances, pumpkin patches, youth camps, tree farms, fairs, festivals and orchard dinners.
All this helps rebuild a relationship between producer and consumer that has just about vanished with the rise of heavily industrialized farming methods.
The report also observes that if the county were to satisfy federal food-intake guidelines for its entire population, it would have to allocate 4.5 times more land to growing crops. It also points out that increased consumption of locally grown fruits and vegetables would provoke significant economic impact.
The researchers say a 20-percent increase in total demand for locally grown fruits, for instance, would result in an economic impact of nearly $1 million, they say. Add locally grown fruits and vegetables to the mix, and the impact would be $2 million.
Among the plan's high-priority recommendations are a county Web site on agricultural resources because there currently is no online food site to connect people in the food business or facilitate community feedback; the development of a master food-system contact directory to highlight existing local networks and minimize food supply chains originating outside the county; creation of a county food-policy council; and reorganization of business practices to express a preference for locally grown foods.
The students also recommend the county establish a food charter or food action plan, develop food-procurement policies for public institutions and set up a food system development fund.
They were motivated by an underlying premise that "thriving food systems ensure food security, agricultural and economic vitality, and county governments can do much to strengthen food systems through innovative policies and plans."
This, in particular, might be of interest to the many Erie County residents who suffer from diet-related diseases that disproportionately impact people of color. Erie County has a higher rate of adult diabetes (9.8 percent) and obesity (26.9 percent) than the rest of the state and the availability and affordability of healthy food is uneven across the county.
The authors of "Room at the Table" are Brian Conley, Jonathan Falk, Taylor Hawes, Yoon Hee Jung, Gun Hyoung Kim, Tony Maggiato Jr., Naoka Takahashi and Tamara Wright. Hawes served as lead editor, assisted by Falk, Takahashi and Wright.
The report was prepared with input from a number of local farmers and academic, county and private entities, including the Lexington Cooperative Market, Promised Land Community Supported Agriculture, the UB Food Systems Planning and Healthy Communities Lab, American Farmland Trust, Cornell Cooperative Extension and Erie County Department of Environment and Planning, as well as planning experts from UB, Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania.


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Cozy, warm, stylish. Be best dressed in our exclusive winter collection.
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Better Recruiting. Better Future.
A change for the better to college recruiting
Your dream is and always will be our goal. So much so, that it is now our new name—Next College Student Athlete.
Now as part of the Reigning Champs team, we'll continue to grow as the leader in youth athletics. With this new business leadership, don't miss any of our new products, services, or powerful tools.
We are so excited to help you on your path to college.
The Largest Recruiting Network
We're proud to be the largest athletic recruiting platform since we were founded as the National Collegiate Scouting Association more than 15 years ago. The sports recruiting world has shifted, and we're always evolving to make recruiting better for college-bound athletes. Here's what makes Next College Student Athlete's approach different:
Sports Recruiting Starts Here
Our recruiting experts often hear the question, "Do I really need a recruiting profile? If I'm good enough, won't coaches just find me?"
No one, no matter how much of a star player they are, can rely on serendipity in the recruiting process. Because of college recruiting regulations, time constraints and their athletic department's budget, college coaches don't have the resources to travel the country to see recruits.
You can become the next college student athlete. There's no better place to start. Not even close.


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Arts & Culture
Caveat EmptorBy Jason Novak
I was at Moe's Books in Berkeley looking for material on seventeenth-century shape poems with my not-yet-two-year-old daughter when a wizened man with mutton chops spotted me reshelving the books she was piling in the corner.
"What are you looking for?" he asked.
I quickly learned that he'd spent his entire scholarly life immersed in the study of shape poems. Moe's must be rich with encounters like this; it's a four-story bookstore just three blocks from the University of California, Berkeley campus.
He told me about a contemporaneous vogue for something called emblem books. Perhaps the best known emblem book is Hans Holbein the Younger's beautifully decorated The Dance of Death, in which woodcuts of various scenes and settings depict a skeleton reminding us of time's wicked work on our health and aspirations. Beneath each woodcut is an epigram in verse. The best-known English practitioners of emblem books, Francis Quarles and George Wither, are hardly known at all, possibly because it's hard to anthologize poems that are incomplete without an accompanying picture. Read More


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Water Pipe Worker
Seattle Public Utilities is not currently accepting applications for the Water Pipe Worker Apprenticeship Program.
Water Pipe Worker apprentices are expected to work outside in all types of weather, terrain and environment, and at all hours. Safety is of the highest priority. All apprentices will be trained to work safely around environmental hazards, wear personal protective equipment and clothing, and follow strict safety regulations. The positions are represented by United Association Plumbers and Pipefitters, Local #32. View job description (pdf).
Under guidance from a journey-level employee, Water Pipe Worker apprentices will also learn and be expected to:
- Operate tools and large equipment, and work around heavy equipment such as backhoes, dump trucks and excavators.
- Work with a crew.
- Perform work in confined spaces.
- Work at heights, and climb in and out of deep structures.
- Report to various work sites.
- Repair broken pipelines, install new service connections, perform routine maintenance, and respond to emergency situations within the water system.
- Investigate and resolve customer complaints.
- Develop communication skills and play an active role in solving problems.
Minimum requirements
- At least 18 years of age.
- High school diploma, GED equivalency certificate, or vocational school degree.
- Current driver's license (from any state) at time of application.
- Current State of Washington driver's license on or before date of hire.
- Able to obtain a State of Washington Commercial Class B driver's license (CDL), with a tanker endorsement, and with the airbrake restriction removed. Apprentices will have four months from date of hire to obtain CDL. Training is provided during the apprenticeship.
- Obtain your Complete Driving Record (pdf) (at a minimal cost) from the Washington Department of Licensing (DOL) or your home state.
- Willingness to work in the conditions described in the job description (pdf).
- Willingness to attend evening classes throughout the apprenticeship.
- Meet the conditions set forth in the Washington State Apprenticeship Standards. Complete standards are available by email, or by calling (360) 902-5320.
Testing applicants
Applicants who meet the minimum qualifications will also have to pass both written and working tests:
- The written test (pdf) includes reading comprehension, high school level math, and mechanical comprehension. No calculators are permitted.
- The working test includes fitness, strength, endurance, mechanical ability, and map reading.


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Interest Rate Forecast
An in-depth monthly report from Helmut Pastrick, Chief Economist, forecasting where interest rates are heading with an assessment of the key economic, financial and policy factors shaping those trends. Contains updated Interest, Deposit, Lending and Bank Rate Forecasts.*
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