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Bee populations are in decline, and Cheerios wants to help. So far, so good. But they are sending free packets of wildflower seeds to people all over the country—and some of the flowers included are invasive species that, in some areas, you should probably not plant.
Forget-me-not (listed above but, the seed packager told me on 3/21/2017, not included in the seed mix) is banned as a noxious weed in Massachusetts and Connecticut, for example. The California poppy is nice in California, but listed as an "invasive exotic pest plant" in southeastern states. And many of the flowers on this list are not native to anywhere in the US, so they are not necessarily good matches for our local bees.
http://lifehacker.com/don-t-plant-those-bee-friendly-wildflowers-cheerios-i-1793370883
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 5, Insightful) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday March 28 2017, @01:29AM (8 children)
This is what happens when you hire a marketing agency full of hipster idiots.
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Tuesday March 28 2017, @01:42AM (5 children)
Is there a word for funny and sad at the same time?
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday March 28 2017, @02:06AM
Fad or Sunny
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday March 28 2017, @02:26AM (1 child)
"soblol" as reaction, based on a "reversed" second urbandict interpretation of lolsob [urbandictionary.com] (as in "LOL, SoB - An expression of bitter anger over something funny") - likely "Stupid SoB-es, so clueless it would be laughable if it wasn't sad"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @04:10PM
Subtract one and branch on LOL?
(Score: 3, Funny) by Gaaark on Tuesday March 28 2017, @01:18PM
jassasin:
"WHO ARE YOU?"
(said in weird, husky voice): "I'm
Batmanjassasin."funny, yet sad that i will die soon.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @07:08PM
Irony
(Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday March 28 2017, @11:35AM
In any case unless people stop using bee-genociding neonic insecticides, planting all the flowers in the world won't help. It could even make things worse if the flowers lure bees into areas contaminated with neonics.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday March 28 2017, @11:37PM
This is what happens when you hire a marketing agency full of hipster idiots.
Wait, are you talking about Cheerios or Lifehacker.com?
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @01:47AM (7 children)
In each box, place a queen bee and a hundred worker bees. This is a lot easier for people to deal with because there is no need to plant anything. All you have to do is open the box, which you were going to do anyway, and the bees come out.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @01:53AM (2 children)
Oh no, I'm not falling for that one again. They made the same pitch when I bought my mail order bride, damn thing was dead by the time the crate arrived.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @04:40AM
(Score: 3, Funny) by Gaaark on Tuesday March 28 2017, @01:21PM
But if you pose the body with the legs apart and the hands folded across her breasts, it could be quite the erotic mome..... uhhhh, yeah. Too bad.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday March 28 2017, @01:04PM (2 children)
That would be a record amount of product in a cheerios box. Heart healthy? You bet! Just crush a bowl full of cheerios into dust and watch it only consume a few cm2. No wonder it's so good for you. There's nothing in the box but air with some grain in it.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday March 28 2017, @01:43PM (1 child)
LOL crushing cheerios into a few square centimetres. No volume at all!
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday March 28 2017, @04:01PM
Doh! Always proof read. Though, to be fair, they barely have any volume to begin with.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @02:01PM
Instead of cereal package contained killer bees. Would not buy again. A---------
Alternatively: Not the bees!!!!!!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by epitaxial on Tuesday March 28 2017, @02:05AM (6 children)
How is this any different than those wildflower seed packs sold in stores? This is a non story.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday March 28 2017, @02:42AM (1 child)
I'm reminded of an anecdote told on some agricultural forum.
The man watches as neighbors and customers carefully prepare the ground, ridding themselves of weeds, then very carefully plant the seed mix prepared for their area within the region. Plants sprout, and in the mix, are seeds for the very same "weeds" that they so carefully pulled out of the ground.
But, yeah, if you're going to plant wildflowers, use a reputable dealer, and be sure that those "wild flowers" are native to your region. The plants that most people call "flowers" aren't native at all. Roses, for instance. There are native wild roses in my area. I'm not even real sure that they are the same plants as most people's idea of roses. These come out of the ground, and spread out, very much like a vine. They'll climb anything, and will reach 20 feet up, if they find support. They aren't especially pretty, IMO, but the wife likes them. We have them in three places in the yard. They don't need special watering, they don't need fertilizer, all they need is for me to stay away from them with the lawn mower until they are well established.
Most "well tended" flower gardens are full of invasive species. Bulbs from Holland, for instance. As far as I know, none of those popular bulb flowers are native to America.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Jiro on Tuesday March 28 2017, @03:05AM
An invasive species is a species that not only isn't native, but causes trouble because it spreads. Bulbs from Holland are not invasive species just because they aren't native to the region.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @03:27AM
How is this any different than those wildflower seed packs sold in stores? This is a non story.
Bingo.
Here's what the seed packager had to say in response:
"In most locations, the seed mixture species will be non-native but not considered invasive," said John Barrett, director of sales, marketing and development with Veseys, based in York, P.E.I.
To be invasive, he said, a species has to be non-native and have the tendency to spread and threaten the environmental, economic or social health of an area.
"Some species within the mixture have the potential to become naturalized, adding to the biodiversity of the area without negatively impacting the environment," he said, adding Veseys complies with the seed purity requirements of the Canada Seeds Act.
...
"Consumers throughout the entire U.S. will find any of the varieties contained in our seed mix in the many seed racks carried by all the major chains such as Lowes, Home Deport, Walmart, etc.," explained Barrett.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/pei-veseys-seeds-wildflower-mix-questions-gmo-invasive-species-1.4032641 [www.cbc.ca]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @04:28AM
Those packets ought to be illegal. What's OK in one part of the country can completely destroy the environment in another. California poppies around here are a mild problem, but in other places they take over.
Really, if you're going to grow random plants, they should at least not be known invasives.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by wisnoskij on Tuesday March 28 2017, @05:05AM (1 child)
I would really hope that the wildflower packets you find in the store are legally required to not contain dangerous invasive species for your area. Try and bring seeds across a boarder post and you are going to have a bad time. Presumably, America also has some legislation about invasive species as well. It is possible Cheerios broke the law.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @04:36PM
Its also possible you broke the law by making that post.
But you didn't, and neither did cheerios.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @02:20AM (8 children)
And many of the flowers on this list are not native to anywhere in the US, so they are not necessarily good matches for our local bees.
There are good arguments for avoiding non-native species, or at least being very selective in which ones you plant, but "not necessarily good matches for our local bees"? That's ridiculous.
It's not far wrong to say a honeybee is a honeybee the world over -- there's tremendous variation among them (within the US, as well as without), but they're all one species. (There's actually about 10 species in the genus of honeybees, but Europeans only spread one of them over the whole world a few centuries back, so Apis mellifera is far and away the dominant honeybee globally.) Any flower, provided it is really pollinated by honeybees in its native continent, is almost certain to suit your local bees well enough.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday March 28 2017, @02:34AM (3 children)
AC is right, of course. Professional bee handlers load up their hives, and drag those hives all over the US, according to some schedule that only they and their customers understand. The bees might originate in Mississippi, but they are transported to central Texas, then to Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, Montana, then make a hop over to New England, and finally come home to Mississippi.
You read about them in the papers from time to time, when the truck is involved in an accident, and the bees hamper rescue and cleanup efforts.
I think it safe to say that few (if any) flowering plants are going to affect bees adversely.
Note that I've met and talked to a few bee keepers, but I don't claim any special knowledge of bees. It's possible that if they were turned loose in the wrong area at the wrong time, the bee keeper would lose all his bees. But, I've not heard anything like that.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday March 28 2017, @03:14AM
But the reverse is true: the presence of the bees is likely to enhance the invasiveness of noxious weeds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @03:17AM
> AC is right, of course.
Runaway is wrong of course.
This isn't about honeybees. They aren't in danger of starvation because beekeepers look out for them since they earn. Its all the other kinds of bees that are at risk, bumble bees, carpenter bees, etc. Those are the ones taking a hit because of a loss of flowers. If runaway had RTFA he'd know that.
(Score: 2) by tfried on Tuesday March 28 2017, @08:05AM
Yes and no. The problem with invasive species (well one of the problems, anyway), is that they tend to supplant the native ones (that's why they're called invasive, not, merely non-native). So you end up with a kind of monoculture. Now that monoculture may still make for an excellent bee feed, but only during the blooming period, which is typically going to be a few weeks or months, at most. But the bees will need food continually, from spring to autumn, which is why they depend on diversity.
(Score: 5, Informative) by c0lo on Tuesday March 28 2017, @03:12AM (3 children)
This osn't necessary true. There are geos in which local bees are more prevalent than the introduced species - e.g. Australia [wikipedia.org]:
Even when it true, it doesn't necessary mean a good thing in areas with limited resources.
Australia again [environment.gov.au]
As a note on what humanity can lose by local bee species going extinct [wikipedia.org] (with my emphasis):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @03:58AM (1 child)
Seems clear. "Africanizing" something always makes it worse. Like America.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @05:07AM
Marine infantry?
(Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Tuesday March 28 2017, @01:04PM
Now I want some stingless bees for my backyard although I doubt they would survive a Minnesota winter. That said the bumble bees around here have stingers but are extremely docile and it takes a lot for them to sting you. Last summer my oldest (8 years old) was stung by one and insisted that they are mean. I later came to find out that he was stung by it when he stepped on it on the beach which seems like a perfectly valid situation for a bee to sting you.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday March 28 2017, @02:55AM (3 children)
Actually the California Poppy is shown as native in parts of the Southeast. UGA's extension service recommends them for flower gardens in Georgia. There is a reference to them being invasive but the link is dead.
Since the forget-me-nots aren't actually in the packet, they won't be a problem either.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @03:19AM (1 child)
Yeah this article seems more like a click-baity thing that had to really stretch the truth in order to get published.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @10:01AM
So, a marketing gimmick, as promised.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @03:04PM
They forgot the forget-me-nots?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Gaaark on Tuesday March 28 2017, @01:26PM (1 child)
Help the bees.... errr.... i dunno.... i got the munchies.... what were we talking abou ---- HEYYY, FAMILY GUY IS ON!
http://overgrowcanada.com/ [overgrowcanada.com]
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @10:14AM
Time to eat some mealworms, eh?