Good morning, it’s Monday.
This past weekend you could almost taste summer. The sun was hotter than it has been, and there was a touch of humidity in the air. That’s how we roll here in upstate New York – we go almost directly from winter to summer, with a slight detour to mud season.
Technically speaking, summer won’t start for another 31 days (June 20). But the unofficial start of summer – Memorial Day weekend – is bearing down on us…May 27! Right around the corner. I hope you have some good things planned. I hope to send as much time as possible outside, though the forecast is looking sort of iffy at the moment. Hopefully, that will change.
Being outside in the warmer months means one has to learn to coexist with all manner of bugs. I’m not a big fan of bugs – especially the stinging and biting varieties – but I understand they have their place, which brings us to today’s topic.
Bees, who you really have to thank for the lion’s share of the fresh food you eat, (at least when it comes to fruits, veggies, and nuts), because wild and domestic honey bees perform about 80 percent of the pollination that occurs across the globe. Without them, we would likely starve, as they’re responsible for pollinating about 2/3 of the top 100 crops grown and consumed by humans.
The astute among you will have already noticed a departure from our regularly scheduled photo programming. Today’s photo is very illustrative of our buzzy text topic, but not nearly up to George Fazio’s standards. This was taken last week by the general contractor who is working on a renovation project behind my father’s house in New Paltz.
He called this a nest, but I’m pretty sure it’s a swarm, which is the term for a group of honey bees that have flown the coop – or rather, the hive – in search of a new place to colonize when the old hive gets too crowded.
A swarm usually includes one queen and about half of a hive’s worker bees, totally anywhere from 1,500 to 30,000 bees. We’re smack in the middle of primary swarm season (March to May) when there’s abundant food (nectar and pollen) about. Though it looks ferocious, a swarm is not particularly dangerous, unless you actively provoke it.
This one, thankfully, dispersed after some minor disruption. Often, you’ve got to call in a specialist to relocate a swarm. Apparently, one way to try to get them to move on is to spray them with soapy water. But experts use specialized equipment for the job – like a bee vacuum.
Bees seem to be everywhere right now, but there are actually quite a few fewer of them than there used to be. One rather exhaustive study revealed a decline in a honey bees from about 6 million hives in 1947 to 2.4 million in 2008, which is about a 60 percent reduction.
According to Greenpeace, the number of bee colonies per hectare among U.S. crops that require their pollination has declined by 90 percent since 1962. Pesticide use is largely to blame here, as is climate change, invasive species, habitat loss, poor nutrition, parasites, pests, and pathogens (a lot of those are interconnected).
The news is not all bad.
The world’s largest honeybee – the Wallace’s giant bee, a native of the rainforests of Indonesia that is four times larger than a typical specimen, boasting giant jaws and a wingspan of 6 centimeters – was believed to have been lost forever, having been last since in the early 1980s. Then in 2019, a team of scientists successfully rediscovered the giant insect, though it is still very, very rare.
While I personally hope to never run into Wallace’s giant bee, I am happy to know that it still exists somewhere very far away from here.
If you have – as I did – just learned about the existence of this natural wonder, consider it newfound knowledge in celebration of World Bee Day, observed on the birthday of Anton Janša, a pioneer of modern apiculture, (the technical term for beekeeping). He is reportedly considered the greatest Slovenian beekeeper. (I didn’t know of him, nor do I know of any others, so I’m going to have to take the interwebs’ word for it).
After a pretty stellar weekend, weather wise, we’re in for a stretch of progressively hotter weather over the next few days. It will be partly cloudy today, and temperatures will top out in the low 80s today and then head toward the low 90s (!) before cooling off over the weekend.
Sort of a cruel joke by Mother Nature, considering the big weekend we’re all planning for. But again, it’s early in the week yet. Things could change.
In the headlines…
President Joe Biden offered his most direct recognition of U.S. students’ anguish over the Israel-Hamas war, telling historically Black Morehouse College grads that he heard their voices of protest and that scenes from the conflict in Gaza break his heart, too.
“I support peaceful nonviolent protest,” he told Morehouse students, some of whom wore Palestinian scarves known as keffiyehs around their shoulders on top of their black graduation gowns. “Your voices should be heard, and I promise you I hear them.”
Biden got to speak uninterrupted and renew his pitch to Black voters. Protesters got to make their point by wearing keffiyehs or raising a fist. Even the skies were merciful, hinting at but never quite unleashing rain.
Jimmy Kimmel will moderate a conversation between Biden and former President Barack Obama for a Biden campaign fundraiser in Los Angeles next month. The event will also feature special guests George Clooney and Julia Roberts.
Biden’s campaign rejected two additional debates on Friday that former President Donald Trump’s campaign says it agreed to do.
Democratic senators who represent presidential battlegrounds agree with Biden — polls showing him trailing Trump in key states are wrong.
Biden told a crowd in Detroit last night thatTrump is out for “revenge” and would pose a bigger threat to the country in his second term than he did in his first.
Ahead of Biden’s campaign stop at the 69th annual Detroit Branch NAACP Fight for Freedom Fund Dinner, protesters gathered outside Huntington Place, advocating for the U.S. to divest from Israel.
China has hinted at possible tit-for-tat action against trade barriers imposed by the United States last week, as relations between the two economic superpowers become increasingly fraught.
China’s Ministry of Commerce said it was launching an anti-dumping probe into polyoxymethylene or POM copolymers, a thermoplastic used in various industries ranging from auto parts to electronics, imported from the US, the EU, Taiwan and Japan.
Arizona’s attorney general says former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani has been served an indictment in the state’s fake elector case alongside 17 other defendants for his role in an attempt to overturn Trump’s loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 election.
A federal judge in Manhattan is expected to rule anytime now on Saudi Arabia’s appeal to toss a lawsuit against the Kingdom, but if this landmark case goes forward, long-buried secrets of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks will be exposed.
North Country Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik harshly denounced Biden’s policy toward Israel during a speech to the country’s parliament, the Knesset, yesterday in Tel Aviv.
Stefanik, who represents a conservative district in northern New York, said the U.S. should supply “the state of Israel with what it needs, when it needs it, without conditions to achieve total victory in the face of evil.”
The White House hit back against Stefanik, the House Republican Conference chair, reaffirming Biden’s “ironclad” support for Israel’s security and insisting: “There has been no better friend to Israel than President Biden.”
Stefanik took exception to being asked about her loyalty to Trump by a Fox News host yesterday.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday rejected proposals by Israeli negotiators for renewing indirect talks with Hamas for a hostage release deal, according to reports by major Israeli networks.
Two key members of the wartime government have demanded that Israel’s leader come up with a decisive strategy for Gaza, with one issuing an ultimatum.
Israel Defense Forces released raw video footage it says its troops recovered in Gaza that shows former Israeli hostages 8-year-old Ela Elyakim and her 15-year-old sister Dafna Elyakim being forced by Hamas terrorists to film repeatedly.
The IDF recovered the remains of Ron Benjamin, a hostage killed during the Oct. 7th attacks, along with those of Yitzhak Gelernter, Shani Louk, and Amit Buskila based on intelligence from interrogating captured militants and the IDF’s Hostage Department.
At least 35 people, including seven children and nine women were killed in an Israeli airstrike on central Gaza in the early hours yesterday, officials at Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital said.
Three U.S. medical professionals remain in Gaza despite warnings from the U.S. State Department that the American government may not be able to get them out later.
Trump flirted with the idea of being president for three terms – a clear violation of the US constitution – during a bombastic speech for the NRA in which he vowed to reverse gun safety measures green-lighted during the Biden administration.
“You know, FDR 16 years — almost 16 years — he was four terms. I don’t know, are we going to be considered three-term? Or two-term?” Trump quipped at the National Rifle Association annual meeting, speaking before a crowd of gun rights supporters.
As Trump increasingly infuses his campaign with Christian trappings while coasting to a third Republican presidential nomination, his support is as strong as ever among evangelicals and other conservative Christians.
The season 49 finale of SNL opened with a message from James Austin Johnson’s Trump. Airing from “his new home, the barricades outside of a Manhattan courthouse,” Trump confessed to his supporters that he hasn’t been loving the past few weeks.
The machinery of celebrity is being laid bare in a Manhattan courtroom amid the first criminal prosecution of a former U.S. president.
The former president, who has sought to make some political appearances around New York as he stands criminal trial, is set to speak at an event this coming Thursday at Crotona Park in the South Bronx.
The deaths of President Ebrahim Raisi and Iran’s foreign minister leave the country without two influential leaders at a particularly tumultuous moment of international tension and domestic discontent.
The helicopter carrying Raisi, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and other officials crashed in foggy weather Sunday, according to state-run media.
The bodies of Raisi, Abdollahian, and those of the others on board the crashed helicopter, were being transferred by ambulance to the city of Tabriz this morning.
Credit card late fees should be capped at $8, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer urged, after the U.S. Supreme Court found the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s funding to be constitutional in the face of conservative attacks.
After meeting the pope and the mayors of Rome, London and Dublin, Gov. Kathy Hochul went to Kilshannig, a small fishing village in County Kerry, Ireland, where she is still known as Kathleen Courtney, the granddaughter of John Courtney and Mary Browne.
Hochul was recognized for her achievements in public life by Kerry County Council on the Maharees, the coastal community where her paternal grandparents were born and reared.
The New York state Public Service Commission has adopted a Statewide Solar for All program that aims to spur development of solar and retail energy storage projects, Hochul’s office announced.
Days before a Pro-Palestinian encampment formed at the SUNY New Paltz campus, Hochul told college leaders that they “must act to aggressively guard against antisemitism and all forms of hateful or discriminatory rhetoric.”
Two state lawmakers say it’s time to roll the dice on awarding casino licenses in the New York City area and are backing a bill that would speed up the current much-criticized timetable.
The proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the State Constitution has become a divisive culture-war issue that encompasses abortion, discrimination and transgender athletes.
Dozens of business organizations from across the state are fighting hard against lawmakers’ efforts to expand consumer protections — shifting their pushback into high gear as the session nears an end.
It’s no secret that sex workers exist in New York, but two dueling bills sponsored by Democrats in the state Legislature would bring that industry into the light in very different ways.
Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lists his residence to vote as a tony Westchester County address — which is in foreclosure proceedings for non-payment, court records show.
Stretching across the Empire State are a slew of museums dedicated to preserving and highlighting everything from the hyper-niche tale of the wiggliest dessert to comedy’s biggest stars.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott vowed Saturday to continue bussing migrants to New York City — and took a shot at Mayor Eric Adams during a speech to the NRA.
Migrants staying in New York City shelters will be forced out starting as early as this week if they haven’t been able to prove they’ve experienced extenuating circumstances around finding new housing, a top official in Adams’ administration said Friday.
New York City’s $1,400 pre-paid debit card payments to migrants gets a boost from millennial voters, according to a new poll.
The Big Apple has $2.2 billion more than what Adams forecast would be available through next fiscal year, according to a new study by the Independent Budget Office.
Many New York City families counted on the prospect of free preschool, as Adams promised, but hundreds were not immediately offered a seat and may have to travel across town to available spots.
A new report exposed how a group of billionaires pressed Adams to crack down on pro-Palestinian protesters at Columbia University, showing an exceptionally direct level of influence on a highly fraught issue.
Dozens of centers for older adults in New York City could close and meal programs could be diminished if budget cuts proposed by Adams go through, senior advocates and Council members warn.
Four FDNY members nearly lost their lives in a 2023 blaze because of a city policy that closes firehouses for annual physicals — and the rule continues to pose a threat to residents and responders, new lawsuits charge.
A pro-terror protester proudly waved the flag of Hamas terrorists at a weekend Brooklyn rally, as the NYPD took heat over its “aggressive” response in breaking up the rowdy crowd.
Violent confrontations at the pro-Palestinian rally in Bay Ridge reflected what some local officials and protest organizers called an unexpectedly aggressive Police Department response, with officers flooding the neighborhood and using force against protesters.
Bubbles, balloons, tables and chairs and even tug-of-war are off limits for celebrations held in Central Park, and the no-fun edict is baffling parents, who are speaking out about the mysterious rules that must be followed for gatherings of more than 20.
New York City drivers, take note: If it seems like parking has turned into a nightmare, it is not your imagination.
A historic New York youth cadet group, the Knickerbocker Greys, is calling on lawmakers to step in and save them from being evicted from the Upper East Side building they’ve called home for more than a century.
The homeless attacker who slugged “Boardwalk Empire” actor Steve Buscemi, 66, in the eye was sent to jail on $50,000 cash bail at his arraignment Saturday, court records show.
Clifton Williams, a 50-year-old homeless man, was arrested on Friday and charged with second-degree assault, a felony punishable by up to seven years in prison. A police spokesman said the charge was elevated to a felony because of Buscemi’s age.
The “Portal” art installation connecting New York City and Dublin reopened yesterday after a multiday closure due to monkey business on both sides of the Atlantic.
An avalanche of sorrow swept down both sides of the political aisle this weekend as friends, colleagues and politicians reacted to the shocking death of CNN commentator Alice Stewart, who passed away suddenly Saturday at the age of 58.
Sean “Diddy” Combs apologized for a recently surfaced 2016 video of him brutally beating his then-girlfriend Cassie Ventura saying his behavior was “inexcusable.” For eight years, Combs had vehemently denied Ventura’s allegations of abuse.
Three Democratic candidates for an open Assembly seat in the city have turned a few hundred relatively small-dollar campaign contributions into nearly $400,000.
Upcoming track work in Canada is expected to mitigate long-standing issues that have plagued the passenger rail service between Saratoga Springs and Montreal, following an agreement between Amtrak and CN Railway.
A new report from the state comptroller’s office indicates child poverty rates in upstate cities are among the highest in the nation, with between 40 and 46 percent of children in Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo found to be living in poverty in 2022.
A rally in support of Israel and for the return of hostages kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7 drew more than 100 people to downtown Saratoga yesterday afternoon.
Chris Churchill: Public support for a downtown Albany soccer stadium is more palatable than the Buffalo Bills stadium deal.
Community gun buybacks in Kingston and Watervliet brought in more that 200 of the weapons on Saturday, the state attorney general’s office said.
A UAlbany grad and a business partner are pursuing their first commercial real estate development in the Albany area, seeking to turn a former tennis club into a storage facility.
A branch of a local day care in Malta has been closed by the state after a number of violations were reported, records show.
