Bees get a town council meeting buzzing

A while back, I was invited to attend a local town council meeting at which honeybees were to be a topic for discussion. Excuse me? Let me explain.

It seems that a town resident wants to put a couple of hives in her yard as an educational hobby and to produce some honey. And a group of high school students with an ongoing project wants to establish a demonstration hive at their school. Problem: there is a town ordinance against raising honeybees. And the strange thing is that the ordinance lumps the prohibition of beehives with that of raising goats. Go figure. (Sorry, I just couldn’t avoid using that cliché—the situation is just so go-figure-ish).

Before considering the reason for the ordinance, the council heard from a representative of the student group, from the hive-desirous resident and from the state apiarist, all of whom gave eloquent arguments for bee keeping as a hobby and against the ordinance. The apiarist described the habits of honeybees and those of other bee, wasp and hornet species, asserting that honeybees are the safest to have around, as far as the danger from stings is concerned.

Council members asked probing questions and said they would take the matter under consideration, reminding the bee lovers that there are bee haters who are tax-paying citizens as well. And of course the council members pondered over how the ordinance lumped bees with goats. They concluded that it must have been a good idea at the time—a time long before the terms of any of the present members. One member quipped that the whole thing sounded like the plot of a B movie—and that pretty much killed the discussion.

Of course, I learned a lot from attending the session, about bees and apiculture, and about the operation of a suburban town council—and it got me reflecting about all the honeybees and other buzzing hymenopterans that I have annoyed with my camera’s macro lens—without ever being stung.

Today’s photos were taken during the summer of course, when the honeybees and others were busy nectaring the milkweeds and other meadow flowers and pollinating them in the process. Pictured are a honeybee, a carpenter bee (with the black abdomen), which we usually confuse with a bumblebee—and a real yellow bumblebee, which you won’t confuse with anything else, once you’ve seen one, the furry little bugger.

By the way, our domestic honeybee, Apis mellifera, is not native. It is an Old World species, as are all true honeybees. Our species was introduced into the Jamestown Colony in 1622 and has been here ever since. There is so much to know about this very important creature that the best thing I can do is to refer you to good old Wikipedia.

Now one more thing, lest we ever forget. The various species and varieties of honeybees may have—in fact, almost certainly did—diversify from a common bee ancestor. That may be called natural selection or microevolution. But that is not the same as saying they evolved by random, unintelligent processes from “lower” forms. The fantastically complex bodies of insects are preeminent examples of intelligent design. A tremendous amount of information is programmed into their miniscule bodies. Precision flight, a brain that can interpret signals from multi-faceted compound eyes, the precise mechanism of master gene-controlled metamorphosis from larva to adult, not to mention hive-building skill and complex social structure—all reflect non-randomness and purposefulness to the nth degree.

Biblically speaking, believing that a honeybee is the product of anything but divine design—or even failing to give the Divine Designer full credit and honor—puts one in a precarious position, as described in Romans 1:18-25. That position is, of course, under the wrath of God—not a good place to be.

I know, I’ve gotten harsh again, just as in my anti-booze rantings. But truth is truth and we must face it squarely even though it stings. (Ouch—I promised myself I was going to avoid using bee metaphors). Of course we don’t want to stop at the bad news of Romans 1. We must go on to see that the news gets even worse, placing us all under God’s wrath—until we get to the middle of Chapter 3—and then we keep going as the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ unfolds before us—the Good News of justification by grace alone, through faith alone, on account of Christ alone.

Well, they say that the key to good preaching is to be able to start from anywhere in the Universe and head straight for the Cross. So you will have to forgive me for starting at a small town council meeting and winding up at the Gospel. An elected council may be an effective way to govern a small town, and the honeybee may be a beautiful expression of God’s intelligent design, but the Gospel is the ultimate expression of His unfathomable grace and totally undeserved love for all who believe.

Soli Deo Gloria

Grays, browns and a splash of green

Click on the photos to enlarge them

A walk in the woods yesterday revealed mostly grays and browns, as would be expected in mid-February. But the ground ivy (or Gill-over-the-ground or Creeping Charlie) was showing off its first leaves. Charlie says, “Who cares if it’s 32 degrees out here—I want to photosynthesize!” Some photographic trickery reveals the intricacy of the leaf’s vascular system and even individual cells, if you look closely.

Meanwhile, the saprophytic fungi can’t, or care not to photosynthesize, preferring to dine from a fallen tree, their hyphae secreting enzymes to digest their meal extramurally. Recycling is their business.

Last year’s grasses, sere and broken, in sun and shadow, exhibit a palette of ecru, coffee, ochre, umber—you name the brown—it’s there.

The walk, the close observation, the photographing, the reflection, all make me think of Edwin Way Teale, the writer who stirred my fascination with nature in my boyhood days. Wish I could find my copy of Circle of the Seasons. Maybe it’s off to Amazon.com in search of a replacement.

Two cuddly babies born on the same day--what contrasting differences their lives have made!

The illustration is presented courtesy of Creation-Evolution Headlines. On this important day of double commemoration, the best thing I can do is to refer you to that site. Spend some time reading the article here. Click on the links to Steve Austin's ICR article and video. They present an excellent example of how the reading and placing credence in two different books can lead two people along two different paths in their thinking--each with huge society-altering consequences.

Society-altering consequences, you say?
Darwin: "scientific" support of racism.
Lincoln: significant step in correcting the problem of racism.

In Darwin's case, the book was Lyell's Principles of Geology. In Lincoln's case, surely Holy Scripture played a large part in his presuppositions and decision making. Much of Lyell's work has since been discounted; God's Word never will be.

And don't be a stranger to Creation-Evolution Headlines. I have it among my links over to your right. It is a constant source of insightful analysis and debunking of evolutionary literature.

So harsh!

If you are new here, be sure to scroll down and read the last post, or this one will make no sense.

One of the customers (as one of my favorite columnists calls his readers) commented in an email that my anti-alcohol polemic was harsh, over the top and indefensible. Any fool, he proclaimed, knows that red wine has great health benefits and that moderate drinkers have fewer heart attacks and strokes.

Well, there may be some truth to those claims, but I’ll risk going without those perks, thank you. The Lord has taken care of me without my partaking since probably 1968, except for the time that I was invited to take communion in a church that used alcoholic wine for the purpose, and perhaps a courtesy lip touch of champagne at a wedding reception.

But let me tell you a little more about that lowly fungus that produces the stuff. After I tell you, you’re less likely to call it lowly. With a name like Saccharomyces cerevisiae, one dare not call it lowly.

Yeast is a Eukaryote. A what? That’s what I said—a Eukaryote, an organism with “advanced” cell structure with a nucleus—as opposed to cells like bacteria, which are supposed to be simpler, but aren’t. I’ve said it a thousand times here and everywhere—there is no such thing as a simple living organism or cell thereof!

All living cells have PhDs in biochemical engineering. They know how to make hundreds or thousands of very complex molecules that very smart human chemists struggle to reproduce in multi-million-dollar, government-funded laboratories—if they can do it at all. Hundreds of precisely constructed protein molecules for their structure and function, fats and oils, carbohydrates and vitamins are all engineered under instructions from their DNA. Their membranes exercise precise control over what enters and leaves.

All the operations of a cell, including yeast cells, require energy, which is obtained by “burning” sugar in a precisely-controlled, multi-stepped process. When operating most efficiently, with oxygen used in the final step, cellular respiration produces two simple waste produces, carbon dioxide and water. But when deprived of oxygen, the process stops short, producing carbon dioxide and a still rather large molecular waste produce, our old acquaintance ethyl alcohol.

Yes, ethyl alcohol is a waste product, which in my anti-booze zeal I have been known to call fungus urine. Well, it isn’t really urine because it isn’t a nitrogenous waste, but using the term tends to get peoples’ attention.

Of course, yeast produces ethanol only when cruel humans confine it in a low oxygen fermentation vessel or lump of bread dough, forcing it to self-intoxicate and die in its own waste. If given plenty of oxygen, it carries on respiration just like the rest of us and lives a long, happy life. And, as part of its own defense against invading germs, it produces an extremely useful molecule in its cell walls—a molecule that has recently been isolated and has been found very useful as an immune system strengthener. It’s called 3-6 Beta-glucan, (pictured above). Taken as a supplement, it is thought to strengthen all those hard-working white blood cells that fight off invading germs.

Another marvel of biochemistry is a molecule engineered by grape plants and incorporated into the skin of their fruit. It’s the compound that gives red wine its supposed health benefits. It’s called Resveratrol, (See above). It has had some publicity lately on 60 Minutes. Watch it here. One pill of the product pictured on the bottle equals the Resveratrol content of 165 glasses of red wine—and won’t even make you dizzy. So if we’re of a mind to, we can get the benefits without the poison. Yes, poison. (There he goes again, being so harsh.)

God has given us all things to enjoy richly (I Tim 6:17). He has engineered in every sort of creature thousands of special chemical compounds having properties that can add to our pleasure, health and longevity in His sin-cursed creation. He has allowed medicine men ranging from “primitive” shamans to PhDs to discover and refine a cornucopia of these substances and put them to use for our benefit. So I say, why not use those special molecules that the Creator has provided—and let the waste products be what they are—waste.

Now, having left that bottle of Beta-glucan on my desk for a couple of days while writing this post—and having forgotten to take any—I feel a sniffle coming on. So it’s off to the kitchen for one of those small capsules and a good belt of Welch’s (non-fermented) grape juice. Not at all harsh.

Winter nature blogging perilous to writer and reader

These winter months are dangerous for nature bloggers—and for their readers. In my case I get lazy about taking hikes and slogging through slush in search of photographic subjects. The danger lies in the fact that, in the absence of colorful subjects to image, my thoughts veer toward the political and its biblical implications as well as other negative thoughts about fallen human nature (with which we are all born) and its consequences that we witness every day. I went negative in the last post—and it will get worse, I suspect.

If you’ve stuck with me this far you’ve got to be wondering where I’m heading. Those with any sort of biology/biochemistry background may have gotten a clue from the illustrations.

The fancied-up diagram that looks somewhat like a Shmoo (only older Al Capp fans will understand) illustrates the tremendous complexity of a living organism (a fungus) that we usually think of as simple—if we think of it at all. It’s common baker’s yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae . The other stick figures are structural formulas for the first and last stages in one of yeast’s metabolic processes—alcoholic fermentation. It’s the process that under anaerobic conditions partially “burns” sugar (glucose) and produces ethanol—ethyl alcohol.

Ethanol is good stuff. It’s a useful solvent and fuel. We’ve probably got some mixed with the gasoline in our tanks right now. And of course, because the other waste product of fermentation is carbon dioxide gas, it’s what makes bread dough rise. What happens to the yeast in the process may be a clue to where this little blogotribe (a neologism?) is heading. Yes, the yeast poisons itself to death by producing the alcohol.

Yes, you guessed it: ethanol is poisonous, only slightly less so than Methanol (wood alcohol). Methanol will kill you in minutes—ethanol takes years, unless, under its influence, you hit a tree first—or someone else under its influence hits you. It destroys the brain; it destroys the liver; it destroys marriages; it destroys families; it destroys lives.

Gracious! What set this guy off? Well, I’m always “off” when it comes to talking about booze. Forty-one years of public school teaching gave me a lot of experience with the negative effects of the stuff—on my fantastic students and their families. I have spent a lot of time shedding tears and praying about them through the years.

Now wait a minute, you old prude! Who are you judging? Not judging anybody—I’m judging the stuff—and the society that has kids growing up immersed in it. A fish doesn’t know it’s wet, does it? And booze is so much a part of our society (if you can call it society any more) that our children probably think it’s normal. It’s not!

OK, at Bios & Logos we’re supposed to back up the Bios with the Logos. What is your biblical defense for this bloviation? Well, let’s give it a go.

Alcohol was probably involved when society was speeding to corruption in a hand basket in Genesis 6; But the first recorded incident of abuse involved Noah. Right off the boat he planted a vineyard, processed the grapes, got plastered and embarrassed himself; and the whole family. The effects were felt for generations afterward.

Warnings against use or at least abuse are scattered through the Old Testament, but Proverbs provides some gems. Check out 20:1; and 21:17; But.31:3-7; is the real kicker. Do you want to be a “king” or one who is “perishing”? The sad truth is that most are perishing. God’s common grace provides some momentary forgetfulness of their woes, for He knows they have nothing but everlasting woe in their future. Strong (non-alcoholic) medicine!

In the New Testament, Paul tells us “not to get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Holy Spirit”. Don’t want to be debauched, do you?

Well, what about Paul’s advice to Timothy?; Now, with a good W. C. Fields voice, say “for medicinal purposes”.

Now that I have added way too much yeast to this blog post and have over-filled your bread maker, I’ll end it with a picture of a Shmoo, for you youngsters out there. After all, he does look a little like the yeasty Pillsbury Dough Boy.

America has welcomed it with adulation!

Forgive me once more for a detour from forest and meadow nature into the jungle of fallen human nature. The following may be described as free verse, for surely no one is likely to pay for it. But in fact, we shall all pay the consequences for our nievete.

The Trojan Horse

America has joyfully welcomed the Trojan horse.
Its door has opened, with hardly a creak.
In less than a week, stealthy soldiers have spewed forth.

A pronouncement here; a pen stroke there--

More babies will die.

The immune system is weakened.
More evil will surely follow.

II Corinthians 11:14

Let the reader draw his or her own conclusions.

Buried in beans

Let me explain. The girls originally were standing next to or sledding down a gumdrop mountain. The fact that now they are buried in coffee beans certainly needs some clarification.

The original picture was a Christmas card. The altered (caffeine-rich) version is a thank-you note for the girls and their parents for the Christmas gift of two cans of Trader Joe’s Arabica beans. And tasty beans they are! So good, invigorating and mind-altering a brew as to inspire a synaesthetic couplet:

See those beans; feel how they glisten.
You can almost smell them, if you listen!

That bit of rhyming weirdness could lead in either of two directions in this post: a scintillating discussion of synaesthesia—or a maudlin meditation about why coffee beans aren’t beans.

In favor of synaesthesia is the fact that I have recently re-read a book on the subject by an old student of mine (Kevin T. Dann: Bright Colors Falsely Seen). The discouraging thing is that his writing makes mine look like a fourth grader’s.

In favor of coffee beans: I just took a sip of Trader Joe’s organic, fair traded, shade grown Ethiopian medium dark roast, medium bodied floral aroma 100% Arabica coffee from the Yirgacheffe region—the birthplace of coffee. Whew! Can you smell it?

I just flipped a bean (does a coffee bean have a head and tail?—take a look at one and judge for yourself) and the beans won. Synaesthesia will wait.

Here is the brutal truth: coffee beans are not beans, just as peanuts are not nuts. In fact, peanuts are beans, but to spoil the parallelism, coffee beans are not nuts; they’re drupes. Confused? Blame the botanists. They have come up with a phantasmagoric array of descriptive terms designed to help biology students fail their exams.

Peaches, cherries, olives and even almonds are drupes. They have fleshy outer layers and a hard inner layer enclosing a single seed. Mostly we eat the fleshy layer of drupes. We usually don’t even see the fleshy layer of an almond—we eat the seed inside the stony layer. By the way, coffee beans have two seeds—does this take away from their drupiness?

What about coffee? It’s like the almond; we get rid of the fleshy layer and use the highly processed seed. And wow, talk about processing. When we sip our morning brew, we seldom think about all that has happened to those little brown nuggets from tropical plant to can or sack on the kitchen counter. Maybe a few clicks to useful websites will help. For drupes, click here. For coffee beans, click here. And for a more general article on the beverage, click here. Not that I’m trying to get off easy, but good old Wikipedia will always do a better job than I can.

After reading all those articles, didn’t we learn some new things? I know I did. Sorry to get so pedagogical, but that’s what I am—an old retired pedagogue.

Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that plants are marvelous creations and that their Creator has given them all PhDs in chemistry. Just engineering a caffeine molecule is quite a feat. The plant does that to provide an insecticide to fend off leaf-eating bugs. It has no idea that humans are going to use its seeds for a tasty stimulant—but the Creator of the plant surely did. Here’s the Wiki article on caffeine.

Now it’s time for another mug of Trader Joe’s and maybe for me to take a couple of #2 pencils and tap out some inverted flam paradiddles on the plastic lids of the two coffee cans. The beans inside even produce a snare effect. Cousin Herb would approve. From synaesthetic couplets to inverted flam paradiddles? Whew, what a powerful brew!

Thanks Tom, Julie, Mady and Lulu for the coffee—and for the idea for this blog post!

A fast, cold trek on the penultimate day of 2008

I admit it—I’m not a big fan of winter hiking, in the woods or anywhere else. I don’t think my body is well adapted for it. I shiver; I turn various shades of red, purple, blue and mauve (never have been sure of what mauve is exactly, but it was probably in my epidermal palette today).

But on this penultimate day of the year, I made a quick jaunt around the trail at the Celery Farm—well, actually, I made it about a third of the way around, climbed Pirie platform, was hit by frigid wind gusts and turned back. I think one of the reasons for making the trip on December 30th is that I just like the word penultimate—sounds sophisticated.

Along the (short) way, I did click the shutter of the 40D a few times and was thankful for the image stabilizer on the Canon 100-400L and its ability to minimize the effect of my shivering and quivering.

Of course, I’m exaggerating here—it was an enjoyable, if attenuated little trek. The air was bracing and the Celery Farm always, even in the dead of winter, offers some enjoyment of the Creation and photographic opportunity.

After getting home and warming up—maybe even before warming up—I snatched the CF card from the camera, cussed the computer for its repeated error messages, and managed to get some jpeg files into a folder. Then, as is always true with my amateurish photography, came the fun part—making lemonade out of some pretty photographically rotten lemons. A few of the results appear above, for what enjoyment or criticism they may bring.

The chorus line of gulls (they certainly would fail in Rockettes tryouts) all aligned into the prevailing wind, was the only bird life evident (at least to my non-birder eyes) in or around Lake Appert. A few flew in and left during my brief visit, so I know at least a few were not frozen in the ice.

Ice is nice, especially when coming or going—offers some intriguing postmodern patterns and subtle pastel-ish hues (OK, I did un-subtle-ize some of the hues just a tad). And combine it with rocks and logs and it makes for something moderately interesting to stare at. In fact, it can be absolutely fascinating. Don’t get me started on the unique properties of water and our total dependence on them (the properties, that is). The Creator done it right when He invented the stuff.

Bark is nice, at any season—texture, texture, texture! It’s not just cork!

Of course, most everything (besides the gulls) is in a dead or dormant condition in late December, so to see a flash of green was a thrill. How those honeysuckle leaves manage to look like they’re actually doing some photosynthesizing is beyond me. But they sure look healthy and crisp (not in the same way my hands and toes were by that point in my walk).

Now I conclude, before the midnight chime strikes and the day is no longer the penultimate.

Enjoy staring for a while—and don’t forget Who made it all and sustains it even in the midst of a cold New Jersey winter. Happy New Year!

Soli Deo Gloria!

Finished (mostly)!

Here we are. Gifts are wrapped (mostly)—if what you call what I do wrapping. Well, what do you want? I didn’t have any (w)rap music to listen to while doing it. (By the way, if anyone is peeking, those tall green things are definitely not alcoholic.)

The minimalist decorations are up—with the smallest tree you’ve ever seen. No, it is not my custom to display a big organic conifer, ever since Willy the cat died around 1955. You see, it was Willy’s job to find exactly the same spot on the white sheet under the tree on which to sleep, every Christmas for fourteen years—and to knock the same ornaments off with his vertically oriented tail. So ever since, out of respect for Willy, I have enjoyed other people’s trees but have kept my decorations simple and inorganic.

And the cards are mailed, mostly, later than ever. With regards to addressing envelopes and signing cards, I am not a procrastinator; I’m a PRE-crastinator. I make up my mind in advance that I’m going to put it off until even past the last minute.

With all that said and done, it’s time to relax and reflect on the real meaning of the season. Let’s remember that the first Christmas gift was a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths, rather than brightly colored paper. And that that gift was laid in a feeding trough made of wood that He Himself had created (See John 1:1-3) . And let us remember that, thirty-three years later, that perfect gift gave His life on a tree—and that, unlike my procrastinating performance, His timing was perfect, as it always is and ever shall be-- and that, if we bow the knee to Him as Savior and Lord, we are wrapped in the white robes of His righteousness (wrapped around our still sinful flesh.)

So let’s take some time to read about these important matters, in books written by those who were there—you know, those guys whose names begin with M, M, L and J.

My imperfect Christmas wrapping and mailing plans are finished (mostly) and God’s plans are finished (mostly). His perfect sacrifice on Calvary finished His plan of salvation of those He came to save, (Matt. 1:21); but His final gift, that of returning for His people, is yet to be given. But it will be— soon!

Merry Christmas!

A Day Late and a Connection Short!

It’s getting dangerously close to a month between blog posts—and past my promise to escape from the political and to get back to the biological and theological. So here’s a little something.

Last Friday was Members’ Night at Fyke Nature Association. It was a fun meeting with eight or nine members presenting small sets of photos or other bits of handiwork related to nature. There were some outstanding examples of photography and even videos of Celery Farm birds.

For my part, I did a little study of Queen Anne’s Lace and its various stages of development, with a bit of comic relief at the end, showing a couple of pictures of a not-too-favored bird, the European Starling. I Introduced those images with a statement about the total non-connection between the two species, Daucus carota and Sternus vulgaris.

Well, wouldn’t you know it, I missed the perfect opportunity to make a connection between the two. You see, the very next day I was doing some additional research on Wild Carrot for a little book I am trying to get finished—and up pops the tidbit that starlings (at least in their home continent) actually line their nests with the leaves of Queen Anne’s Lace! It seems that the plant produces a natural insecticide that kills the mites that habitually infest starling nests. What a great segue that would have made!

Yep, It was indeed a day late and an educational opportunity lost. But at least I learned one more fact about the amazing intelligence with which the Creator has endowed His creatures, as well as the advanced biochemistry degrees He has awarded to all plants. And learning something new about the Creator's wisdom is always a blessing.

You learn something new every day. If you don’t, you’re probably dead. Check your

pulse.

Soli Deo Gloria