美国国家公共电台 NPR Honeybees Help Farmers, But They Don't Help The Environment

 

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

We've heard a lot in recent years about the struggles of honeybees, how their numbers are down. So environmentalists have rallied to their aid - even helping¹ people to set up their own beehives. But this bothers a lot of ecologists who say that honeybee hives aren't natural and they don't help the environment. In fact, they may harm it. NPR's Dan Charles has the story.

DAN CHARLES, BYLINE²: Honeybees are amazing and adorable. And they suffer when people spray pesticides³ or mow⁴ down wildflowers. Biologist Jonas Geldmann at the University of Cambridge started to notice that among environmentalists, the honeybee has become a cause.

JONAS GELDMANN: Lots of conservation organizations are promoting buying local honey and even promoting sponsorships of honeybees and that kind of stuff. So that increasingly annoyed me.

CHARLES: It annoyed him because honeybees are not exactly part of nature. They were originally imported from Europe. Beekeepers keep them by the millions to make honey and pollinate crops like almonds. They're agricultural animals, like sheep or cattle. But there are thousands of other bee species living in the wild, hiding away in the ground or in hollow plant stems. Researcher Nigel Raine has a whole array of them in his laboratory at the University of Guelph, in Canada. Each one's impaled⁵ on a pin. Many are tiny. Rein⁶ says gardeners often assume they're flies.

NIGEL RAINE: If you sit down and say, no, that's a small solitary⁷ bee, you know, that's a metallic⁸ green one - when you show them metallic green bees in their yard, they're kind of like - wow, that's amazing.

CHARLES: A lot of wild bees are in real peril⁹. Some species have disappeared. And when flowers are scarce, like when an orchard¹⁰ stops blooming, farmed honeybees and these wild bees end up competing with each other for food - for pollen¹¹ - making it harder for the wild ones to survive. Basically, Jonas Geldmann says a healthy environment needs bees but not honeybees. This week, he published a commentary in the journal Science trying to spread the word.

GELDMANN: The way we're managing honeybees in these human-kept hives has nothing to do with nature conservation.

CHARLES: Scientists who study bees actually know this already, but they struggle with how to talk to the public about it.

MARLA SPIVAK: We're on a learning curve, all of us.

CHARLES: This is Marla Spivak, a bee researcher at the University of Minnesota.

SPIVAK: It's like honeybees were our portal in - the door in to much larger issues - just conservation issues in general.

CHARLES: Honeybees helped people understand why it's important to have more land covered with wildflowers and trees and free of pesticides. This helps honeybees and wild bees.

SPIVAK: My preference is to not pit one bee against another. I would prefer to live on a planet where there are bountiful flowers to support all of our bees.

CHARLES: But the bee that needs our help most may be that tiny green bee in your garden and not the honeybee.

Dan Charles, NPR News.

1 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 pesticides   

n.杀虫剂( pesticide的名词复数 )；除害药物

参考例句：

• vegetables grown without the use of pesticides 未用杀虫剂种植的蔬菜
• There is a lot of concern over the amount of herbicides and pesticides used in farming. 人们对农业上灭草剂和杀虫剂的用量非常担忧。 来自《简明英汉词典》

4 mow   

v.割（草、麦等），扫射，皱眉；n.草堆，谷物堆

参考例句：

• He hired a man to mow the lawn.他雇人割草。
• We shall have to mow down the tall grass in the big field.我们得把大田里的高草割掉。

5 impaled   

钉在尖桩上( impale的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• She impaled a lump of meat on her fork. 她用叉子戳起一块肉。
• He fell out of the window and was impaled on the iron railings. 他从窗口跌下去，身体被铁栏杆刺穿了。

6 rein   

n.疆绳，统治，支配；vt.以僵绳控制，统治

参考例句：

• The horse answered to the slightest pull on the rein.只要缰绳轻轻一拉,马就作出反应。
• He never drew rein for a moment till he reached the river.他一刻不停地一直跑到河边。

7 solitary   

adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士

参考例句：

• I am rather fond of a solitary stroll in the country.我颇喜欢在乡间独自徜徉。
• The castle rises in solitary splendour on the fringe of the desert.这座城堡巍然耸立在沙漠的边际，显得十分壮美。

8 metallic   

adj.金属的；金属制的；含金属的；产金属的；像金属的

参考例句：

• A sharp metallic note coming from the outside frightened me.外面传来尖锐铿锵的声音吓了我一跳。
• He picked up a metallic ring last night.昨夜他捡了一个金属戒指。

9 peril   

n.(严重的)危险；危险的事物

参考例句：

• The refugees were in peril of death from hunger.难民有饿死的危险。
• The embankment is in great peril.河堤岌岌可危。

10 orchard   

n.果园，果园里的全部果树，(美俚)棒球场

参考例句：

• My orchard is bearing well this year.今年我的果园果实累累。
• Each bamboo house was surrounded by a thriving orchard.每座竹楼周围都是茂密的果园。

11 pollen   

n.[植]花粉

参考例句：

• Hummingbirds have discovered that nectar and pollen are very nutritious.蜂鸟发现花蜜和花粉是很有营养的。
• He developed an allergy to pollen.他对花粉过敏。