What type of hobbies do you have?

[silverwolf1]

6 hours ago, covfefelake said:




I could make some kind of joke here, but I am honestly trying to restrain myself, lol.




So, serious mode activate!




Cool hobby.  What’s your favorite specimen?




I will say to the audiophiles that I am a bit of a Schiit fanboy.  Not their tube gear though.  More Asgard 2 paired with decent headphones (AKG K702s)

Any of my Swallowtail butterflies. The Spicebush Swallowtail is particularly beautiful.




sw

[Vermilion]

Quote




Any of my Swallowtail butterflies. The Spicebush Swallowtail is particularly beautiful.

Oh, a fellow entomologist. I'm specialized in Hymenoptera species. I was never interested in Butterflies and Beetles. If it has a nasty stinger, it's mine. Pepsis formosa is my favorite insect.




Well, but in regards to butterflies there is one quite cool moth:




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[silverwolf1]

I dabbled while getting my training in Wildlife Rehab and my degree. Now that I have time, I'm getting back into it. I'm studying bees more as they become more endangered, and worrying about the food chain.




sw

[heavyhorse]

On 7/4/2018 at 7:51 PM, threelegs said:




Would this be one you could fuel from the woodpile?

Woodpile, construction scrap, compressed cardboard, biomass, anything free and combustible.  Bin with a feed chain to the firebox.  And a propane inshot burner, for automatically lighting the solid fuel or as emergency backup.

[heavyhorse]

On 7/6/2018 at 7:21 AM, silverwolf1 said:




I also collect dead bugs.




sw

Indeed.  But not by choice.  Running a trap line is like that.  (Keep your mind occupied with other stuff).

[Vermilion]

On 7.7.2018 at 3:39 PM, silverwolf1 said:




I dabbled while getting my training in Wildlife Rehab and my degree. Now that I have time, I'm getting back into it. I'm studying bees more as they become more endangered, and worrying about the food chain.




sw

Don't know. This "bees are going instinct" stuff seems a bit exaggerated in my opinion. The honey bee is a product of the homogeneity of our industrial agriculture. It's just a matter of time when that whole house of cards falls down, if not by the european honey bee, then because of the phosphourus peak or some black swan event.




The loss of the european honey bee will just make place for a wider diversity of bees and bumblebees. Less productive off course, but the world is overpopulated anyway and the soon failing industrial agriculture is just one of many problems.

[30-30]

Exaggerated? In China, they´re already inseminating apple trees by hand...talk to a beekeeper to regain correct bearings on this topic .It sadly is as bad as many say. Agricultural monocultures are only one tiny fraction of the problem, the vast part is our heavy usage of pesti- and insecticides. 

[Vermilion]

2 hours ago, 30-30 said:




Exaggerated? In China, they´re already inseminating apple trees by hand...talk to a beekeeper to regain correct bearings on this topic .It sadly is as bad as many say. Agricultural monocultures are only one tiny fraction of the problem, the vast part is our heavy usage of pesti- and insecticides. 

Maybe they should have thinked twice, replacing their varroa resitent asian bees with "more productive" european ones. As I said, it's just a matter of time till such things kick back. Same with the usage of antibiotica n' stuff. The genocide of the european honey bee is just a normal event to get things back into balance.




Yeah, billions of people will die some day, but that simply happens if a species grows to large and depletes its ressources. Shit happens. Humanity has gone through a lot of shite in the last millenias and that won't be the last thing to happen.

[heavyhorse]

I tend to agree that "modern agriculture" is mostly to blame for bee losses.  Local beekeepers haven't mentioned problems (I have asked specifically, we buy local honey).  




But you put hundreds of hives on a semi-trailer, move it around every 2 weeks, and ask why the bees can't find their way back home.  Seriously?  It's a wonder ANY of them can find the correct hive.  Then have a hundred semi-trailers of hives working an area.  All so you can have a harvest that ripens simultaneously, because gawd knows you don't want to actually pick as the crop ripens.  NOoooo.  Ethylene gas will fix that.  




Nature isn't a corporation.   Kiss my shiny metal ass, Cargill!    You can only push the land so far, before you find out why "nature is a bitch".

[Eagle]

Its more Monsanto to blame than the beekeepers.  Monsanto genetically engineered crops so they could drop harsher pesticides and herbicides on them -- but the bees don't have that genetically engineered protection.