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Busy Bees and Biofuels
Posted by Phil Hart on November 2, 2011 - 10:15am
My partner and I have been reading the interesting if somewhat unusual book "Meditation and the Art of Beekeeping" by Mark Magill. One particular paragraph in the book struck me as a compelling analogy for the difference between biofuels and oil. It beautifully captures the incredible amount of work bees perform to harvest energy from plants. If only we valued a teaspoon of ethanol as much as we do a drop of honey!
The Effort in a Drop of Honey
It's easy to say 'busy as a bee'. Are bees busy?
Consider that each drop of honey represents about 80 drops of nectar. Once the watery nectar is deposited in the honeycomb cells, the bees have to evaporate nearly all of the moisture before it becomes honey.
A strong working hive can contain close to 90kg (200lb) of honey. What remains is only 20 per cent of the nectar the bees originally carried in, drop by drop. Even a teaspoonful represents thousands upon thousands of flights of foraging bees.
Honey as an analogy for biofuels
Consider the similarities between honey and harvesting corn and other crops to produce biofuels.
Tens of thousands of bees in a hive scout and then collect nectar from up to 5 miles away to bring back to the hive. For biofuels, we have to sow, tend and harvest the crop and then transport it tens or even hundreds of miles to the nearest biofuel facility. All biofuels, whether third, fourth or tenth generation suffer this same handicap of harvesting low energy density crops over a large area and bringing them back to a central facility.
But the work doesn't end there. Just as the hive of bees fan the nectar with their wings to evaporate the bulk of the moisture from the nectar, so conventional biofuels have to be boiled to distill the alcohol from the water. This process demands huge inputs of energy and severely limits the energy return of conventional biofuels. No wonder people are looking at alternatives, but cellulosic ethanol still looks like damn hard work compared to drilling for oil.
Drilling for oil is more like sticking a straw into the beehive and collecting the honey into jars. Somebody else has already done the work of harvesting and concentrating the energy for us. Indeed, the geological processes that lead to the formation of oil have done exactly this. Vast blooms of algae were deposited on the seabed, buried to great depths by layers of sediment piled on top of them. As the temperature and pressure increased the deeper they were buried, eventually they got 'cooked'. In their new liquid state, the great pressures forced the oil up to the surface through fissures in the rocks. But in some places it was trapped by impermeable barriers above, thereby forming reservoirs of oil underground, just waiting for us to come and collect the spoils.
With all due respect to the engineers in the industry (I was one of them), we can compare their role to that of a beekeeper. It's not something everybody could do, it has its risks and occasionally you might get stung. But ultimately it's a big reward for the amount of effort required. On the other hand, biofuels are sheer hard work. On a good day, you get out a little more than you put in.
One calculation has it that 450g (1 lb) of honey represents visits to two million flowers.
So the next time you're spreading a teaspoon of honey on your toast, think about the visits tens of thousands of bees made to a hundred thousand flowers, just to bring you something you can devour in a couple of mouthfuls.
And the next time you put a gallon of gas in your tank, think about just how much effort and energy is required to replace it with a gallon of biofuel grown, gathered and processed from crops.
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A bee colony could not hold itself together if its members spent most of their effort pursuing individual ends. Yet that is what humans do. While we can still savor the petroleum gift we better value the freedom that allows us, NOW. For once the energy squeeze sets in there may be many limitations (whether they manifest as economic/political/social/physical barriers) on what we can do, where we can go, who we can consort with., and how we spend our time.
Isn't there a mathematical inconsistency here?
I did note that myself too.. but I've left the quote as it is in the book. Either way it's a lot of work and a lot of moisture to evaporate!
I think the confusion arises from the fact that there are two processes at work here.
One is the simple evaporation. Water is taken from the nectar, reducing the volume.
Additionaly, there is also a fermentation process, that converts the nectar to honey, leaving 20% of the original mass behind.
Not certain myself. But Im pretty sure honey is more than nectar without water.
Additionaly, there is also a fermentation process
Fermentation:
An anaerobic (without oxygen) cellular process in which organic foods are converted into simpler compounds, and chemical energy (ATP) is produced.
Not fermentation. Enzymes that break down things, yes. But not fermentation.
yes, there is a process of conversion, but it's digestion actually. The female bee has a specialized 'nectar stomach', which she uses both to carry the sweet stuff from the flower to the hive (when you see a bee loaded with pollen on its back legs, that's only half the payload), and also to digest the nectar with special enzymes - this is the job of two or more bees actually. After a bit of digestion, the nectar goes into comb cell where it is fanned by the action of the bees wings until it is sufficiently dried out. Finally it gets a nice waxy cap.
How come the nectar doesn't spill out of the comb cell while it's drying out, you ask? easy, it's the Coriolis effect - no just kidding, it's because the combs are slanted down slightly towards the comb center, and also the surface tension of the nectar is enough to hold it in.
backyard beekeeping for a better tomorrow, tomorrow :)
Question: what can we do to keep bees alive? They also perform other functions. We have a macadamia nut tree in our garden and how many nuts we get depends on the number of bees during a couple of crucial pollination days. Due to erratic weather the number of bees seems to have declined.
Some details on different types of bees can be found here:
http://www.rirdc.gov.au/programs/established-rural-industries/pollinatio...
/the following is a joke/
Step one: Find a way to make honey into biofuel.
Step two: Solicit millions of dollars from energy hungry investors for the development of super bees.
Step three: Develop super bees.
Step four: Release super bees, and plant flowers everywhere.
Step five: Super bees kill all of us.
Problem solved.
[edt sp]
For sure, that is the funniest thing I have ever read on this board!
Time to post this link again.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smTOgJN8WOs
I didn't finde the link to the classical scene from the nuclear plant:
"What about killer bees?"
"Bzzzzz!"
"Boom!".
Honey wine is known as mead. Honey liquer (brandy) is known as grapemiel. So yes you can make alcohol out of honey. Both are good. So I would not waste them in an ICE.
Both of those sound interesting.
LOL! I almost choked on my tea!
Support local backyard beekeeping and legalization efforts in your town or city.
Some cities that have legalized backyard beekeeping:
New York
Seattle
Minneapolis
Denver
Spokane
Pasadena
Detroit
Tulsa
Cleveland
Santa Monica
www.peakaware.com
One of the best ways to keep bees alive and healthy is to keep the farm areas organic with lots of hedgerows. Another is to leave plenty of honey, not sugar water, for the hives to overwinter on. Amazing as it may sound, bees do not get the same food value from GM crops as regular crops and certainly poisons of any type (pesticides and herbicides), weaken the bees and contaminate their honey.
Good points!
I have a friend who keeps bees and manages them mostly by benign neglect;and even though people all around him have lost a LOT of bees, his are doing very well overall for the last thre years or four years
His management system basically consists of taking just a little honey from each of his eight hives-enough for his own table and a little a few select friends.Other than that , the only thing he does is take a few precautions related to predatory skunks and bears.
He has never had a need to feed his bees, but if someone has some honey or jelly or fruit that is going to be tossed out, he puts it near the hives.
Bees seem to do ok working managed crops as food sources, when they are available, but large areas are nowadays often devoted to monocultures, and this puts the bees in a feast or famine-mostly famine-situation sometimes.
Farmers are generally pretty careful to conduct their pecticide applications in such a way as to minimize harm to domestic bees-they have no desire to shoot themselves in the foot.
But occasional bee kills are nevertheless a fact of life.
It does seem quite likely that many colonies are weakened by long term low level exposure to pesticides, thereby being less vigorous than usual, but proving this in any particular case is hard to do.
It also seems quite likely that colony collaspe is not caused by pesticides as such-there are cases of it in areas where the suspect pesticides have not been used, and some colonies where the applications are heaviest are doing fine.
Bees travels tens and sometimes hundreds of miles. So does the water used for irrigation (which is awash with pesticides). Its a VERY complex system - its difficult to pin point causation. We can notice correlation sometimes, but sometimes it may also be counter intuitive (such as removing a predator from the top of the pyramid results in the collapse of the bottom of pyramid's population).
We're better off mimicking nature as much as we can. Organic is kinda it. Permaculture is more like it. Conventional mono-cropping is only for those who are stuck in their comfort zones and can't think FOR anything other than themselves and their selfish profits.
Mono-cropping is forthe masses. Like that kind of "masses" that just turned around 7 billions. I don't likeit either. But we are hooked on this.
Yes-hooked is not quite adequate; "guthooked"is a term used by fishermen to describe a fish that has swallowed a bait, hook and all.Such a fish is sure to die.
But the practice is not as bad as some make it out to be.There are a number of ways farmers can correct the problems associated with it, so long as current bau conditions persist.
It has worked rather well in actual fact, and yields are steadily if slowly increasing from year to year on well managed farms which practice it-meaning for all intents and purposes, most commercial operations.
Once a readily available supply of fertilizers and pesticides becomes a thing of the past , monocropping will become a thing of the past too.
But as things stand now, there is simply no way we can switch horses, short of trying something along the lines of a "Great Leap Forward" such as the commies tried in China.
I doubt that would go over too well with such of us as would advocate doing it if they were expected to actually participate in the doing, rather than maintaining their current lifestyle.
Back to the bees-I do not doubt that pesticides play a significant part in the current problem with bees dieing off;but the problem is far far more complicated than just pesticides, which are only one piece of the puzzle.
My personal guess is that the current practice of hauling bees from place to place is the biggest single culprit;this would obviously spread any pathogen far and wide, and continiously reinfect any area where a disease might burn itself out.People are constantly throwing out food scraps too-scraps that bees feed on, such as fruit peelings and spoiled fruit.You can find a swarm of honey bees around dumpsters behind almost any place that sells fruit for instance.
It would be hard to think of more effective ways to spread a virus or bacterial spores from one corner of the earth to another in short order, would it not?
Then there is the problem of a lack of genetic diversity-this is the one that is apt to take out the worlds commercial supply of bananas in the forseeable future.Our domestic bees are subject to it to an alarming degree.
This is not to denigrate those of us who advocate self sufficiency and local food production , etc.The more of this the better imo.
I'm just pointing out that current day reality and monocropping, as the term is percieved by the public, are necessarily one and the same.Agriculturists use the term somewhat differently;most farmers rotate their crops, but any given field is still "monocropped", if not multicropped, in any given year.
There is simply no other viable way to supply the necessary quantities of food.
This is another of those "damned if we do" eventually, and "damned if we don't" immediately predicaments.
How many of us living on the East coast of the US would like to comtemplate getting by without the twenty percent or so of the electricity supplied by nuclear power for instance ? How many people would lose their jobs if we had to shut down the nuclear power plants?
There are so many of these predicaments that an eventual crash is virtually gauranteed.
The biggest problem with us is that we are not harvesting renewable sources of energy (nectar), but merely draining the equivalent of a bucket of sugar water. We have a cultural inertia that precludes us from making the necessary changes in the required timeframe.
More than mere cultural inertia, this seems to be an irresistible hardwired biological impulse to consume resources to their absolute limit. It overwrites our logical brain. It even subverts and bends our logical upper brain for its own end, which is where much of traditional religion ("consume now, god will provide more") and the modern-day equivalent, neoclassical economics ("consume now, natural resources are infinite, technology will provide more"), comes from.
While I see the latter two points you mention as (directly or indirectly) related to culture, the biological impulse you refer to is perhaps even the greatest influence, expanded upon in the following TOD article by Nate: Fleeing Vesuvius: The psychological roots of resource over-consumption.
ChrisInns,
"...this seems to be an irresistible hardwired biological impulse to consume resources to their absolute limit. It overwrites our logical brain."
Unfortunately the impulse to consume resources the way we do is completely logical in the Darwinian sense. If we leave anything for others to consume, they will grow bigger, stronger, and more numerous, and ultimately kill us. That is why our seemingly self-destructive behavior is hardwired. Calling our neocortex "logical" is the mistake. The impulse to conserve and share resources has never been logical for any lifeform on Earth. Sorry.
How do you explain Symbiosis then?
It is better to take a small slice but enlarge the cake.
Anyways it seems to be working for a lot of lifeforms.
Now that I think about it, the Kakapo comes to mind. It's a bird in New Zealand. Since it had never to worry about predators or other dangers, its evolutionary path lead it to a very slow reproduction cycle. The idea is that if you are sitting on a small island all day, you cannot grow population too much. To conserve and share is an advantage over other species.
Since I always liked Douglas Adams and his descrption about them is just great, I take the freedom to quote a huge chunk about it
Taken from Science Blogs
Thanks for the link to "Last Chance to See". As a die-hard fan of Douglas Adams, I couldn't overcome the urge to place an order online. Some couple hundred gallons will be burnt in shipping this book to me in this remote corner of India. But hey...
It is a great book. So for my part, I can understand the urge.
As for the shipping cost, you could get it as e-book, which should reduce the amount of burned oil somewhat.
That would be very "green", which is the new "cool" in the exciting transformation to a post-carbon world!
Regards from Germany
AnotherGerman,
In symbiosis two species cooperate to exploit resources in a way that they can't do individually. When they do so, they occupy a niche and that prevents other species from exploiting the same resources. They are cooperating to compete with other species.
Cooperation does happen in nature, but competition is much more important as the driving force in evolution.
And thanks for the Douglas Adams. I'm a big fan. But I'm not sure the Kakapo is an example of a species that conserves and shares.
"Since it had never to worry about predators or other dangers, its evolutionary path lead it to a very slow reproduction cycle. The idea is that if you are sitting on a small island all day, you cannot grow population too much."
This is not true. It did not evolve in the absence of predators. It currently has a small population because of recently introduced mammalian predators. In pre-human times the population was larger and it was hunted by raptor birds.
I remember reading about fish that care for coral reefs, which provide them with shelter. Is that exploting ressources?
As for two species in symbiosis occuping a new nice and thus preventing others from exploting it. That may be true.
But that is the benefit. By acting together they are more successful. It is true that simply being more successful is in the grand scheme of things still in competition with each other.
That takes us far away from the original point. It can and it often is logical for "lifeforms" to share ressources.
I'd say that is true for higher-order systems too. Lifeforms, Humans and Nations of Humans can do so. It is logical both from a Darwanian sense ( more fit) and Neo-Cortex ( more profit) sense.
The problem for us, just like for the Kakapo, might be that the time-frame for adaptation is too short.
Show me.
Depends how you define it I guess.
It could originaly fly. That it is how it came to the damn island in the first place.
In the new environment, flying became useless, that is, natural selection didn't punish those individuals unable to fly. In their original environment, on a continent full of predators, a bird that can't fly is a dead bird.
However, the new environment introduces a new danger for them. Die-off by overpopulation. Presumably, they went through a lot of boom and bust cycles in their population until they got the reproduction cycle they now have.
I think an important point to note is their dependency on a certain fruit. They are tied to a certain ressource in their environment.
I guess what confuses me is your notion of pre-human times. My thinking is that the Kakapo, as it exists now, didn't live in those time. Its ancestor was probably some sort of flying parrot. A bunch of them managed to isolate themselves on a remote place for a few thousand years. It became to fat and lazy to fly and somewhat touchy about sex, but the timeframe for those changes is way smaller than you seem to think.
On the other hand, this is not my area of expertise, so I'm guessing here.
AnotherGerman,
"I remember reading about fish that care for coral reefs, which provide them with shelter. Is that exploting ressources?"
Yes.
"By acting together they are more successful."
And in being sucessful more resources are used.
"It can and it often is logical for "lifeforms" to share ressources."
This is true and humans are a great example. By sharing resources, we humans create the stability necessary for advanced civilization and thus use ever greater amounts of resources overall. This is good for our immediate gain and not so good for our future viability on this planet. In any case, humans evolved to share with each other in small local social groups. These groups then COMPETE with other groups for access to resources.
"I guess what confuses me is your notion of pre-human times."
By pre-human times I mean before the arrival of humans to New Zealand. You have suggested that the Kakapo's current low population is a positive adaptation to living on a small island. This simply not true.
From the Wikipedea entry: "The Kakapo was a very successful species in pre-human New Zealand[32] and one of the reasons for this was their set of adaptations to effectively avoid predation from native birds of prey, which were their only predators in the past. However, these same behaviours have been of no use to them when faced with the mammalian predators which were introduced to New Zealand after human settlement, because these hunt in different ways."
Thus we can see that Kakapos have not SUCCEEDED in figuring out the "logic" of how to live long term on a small island. They have FAILED to respond to competition and predation and thus they currently endangered and near extinction.
"And in being sucessful more resources are used."
Always? In any case, sharing and symbiosis is an effective solution and a working strategy.
Of course, in the long run, the survival rate of any system is zero. Entropy will get us all, with big nasty teeth.
However, it appears as the goalposts have been moved. At first, it was all going to hell, since no lifeform can share and conserve. Now, its all going to hell since lifeforms increases their exploitation by working together.
As long as all is going to hell...
Ah, I get you. I misunderstood your use of the term "pre-human times". But I did not suggest that the low population is an adaption. I claimed the slow reproduction cycle is. There is a difference.
The loss of flight may have been a reaction to an environment with flying predators only.
Their reproduction is slow, which is not a good idea for a species surrounded by hunters.
Having a slow replacment rate is a good strategy in a small habitat with strong limits on population growth.
This makes their behaviour more than mere coincedence, it makes sense to suspect a corelation.
If you disagree I would very much like you to explain which selective pressure caused this. Or will you argue that it's just random occurence? I don't buy that.
They did succeed in a long-term solution on an isolated island. Their problem is that the island is not isolated anymore. Humans came and brought along cats and rats.
It used to be effective, it ceased to be. I guess they (or evolution) had to anticipate the arrival of humans to be successful?
In any case, if we leave the island now, all those slow birds will probably get wiped out. That leaves an island full of rat and cats. Look again in a few thousand years and the surving descendants of the rats will too have become adapted to the population limits of their habitat and show a slow replacment rate. At least, it would be a plausible scenario.
You are now saying: "I did not suggest that the low population is an adaption. I claimed the slow reproduction cycle is. There is a difference." And: "Having a slow replacment rate is a good strategy in a small habitat with strong limits on population growth."
And in a previous post you said: "The idea is that if you are sitting on a small island all day, you cannot grow population too much."
You brought population size into the discussion.
As far as slow reproduction rate is concerned, check out http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/RKSELECT.html.
Yes, slow reproduction/replacment rate.
I guess it would have been better to use "you cannot grow population too fast".
But yeah, obviously population size is related to reproduction rate.
The result of slow reproduction is a population that stays within the carrying capacity of the habitat. Otherwise, you get boom and bust cycles.
I did not refer to their actual population size right now. The low population of today is more likely a result of the new predators.
We have, as far as I know, no idea how big their population used to be.
It might have been close to the carring limit anyway, despite these adaptions.
I did glance over it, but Im not sure what your point is?
But I note the following:
Island = long age / slow reproduction
Mainland = short age / quick reproduction
So, I stand by my original point. Lifeforms can and will "conserve their ressources" when it is "logical" to do so. And the Kakapo is an example of this.
I hope I could explain my thought processes. I am not saying that Im preaching absolute truth here, only that it does make sense. I ask you again how you would explain their behaviour. No other solution I can think of explains the observed effects, which only leaves random chance.
Loren,
I have to say that this statement even misrepresents 'competition', which can very often be itself a very cooperative process, both with Humans and other Creatures. Even if it is creating a heirarchy, it is not simply a matter of 'Winner Survives, Loser Dies'
It sounds like the understandings of nature as described by the offspring of Industrial Capitalism, which has taken the parts of 'Competition and Self-interest' from nature that it finds immediately convenient, and disregards the more long-sighted or subtle aspects as being Too Costly. Ultimately, attitudes that have derived from the spoiled behaviour of a species that has been given and gotten addicted to Too much Easy Power.
jokuhl,
"It sounds like the understandings of nature as described by the offspring of Industrial Capitalism, which has taken the parts of 'Competition and Self-interest' from nature that it finds immediately convenient, and disregards the more long-sighted or subtle aspects as being Too Costly. Ultimately, attitudes that have derived from the spoiled behaviour of a species that has been given and gotten addicted to Too much Easy Power."
I am not advocating some ignorant, hyper-Capitalist "survival of the fittest" perspective. I am espousing a futilitist point of view that accounts realistically for the Darwinian dilemma in which our species is trapped. Our better angels desire there to be an outcome that is just not possible for us because of the way evolution works. Thus we are deluding ourselves if we think that we can cooperate our way out this mess. Our amazing and laudable cooperative ability is what got us here in the first place! Don't blame me. Blame Mother Nature.
The biggest problem with us is that we are not harvesting renewable sources of energy (nectar), but merely draining the equivalent of a bucket of sugar water.
just a slight quibble, the oil is renewable in the same way nectar is. The solar fusion both require is probably not renewable (the right circumstances might allow burnt up stars from out toward the edge of a spiral galaxy to recycle but that is likely a very rare occurrence). I am guessing the losses in each step of the oil cycle would be a tad more significant than the losses at each step of the nectar cycle.... and of course there is a bit of disconnect be between the oil production and consumptions time frames to say the least ?- )
After all that it must be time to walk about a bit with Mrs. Brown
One often thinks of honey as one of the purest energy sources there is. However, as with everything else, it has fallen victim to contamination and adulteration on a vast scale.
Honey can be contaminated with antibiotics such as oxytetracycline, or adulterated with lead from poor storage, or GMO's, or mixed with sugar syrup of various kinds, such as high fructose corn syrup, to dilute the honey.
Here is a random sample of news :-
Asian Honey, Banned in Europe, Is Flooding U.S. Grocery
"A third or more of all the honey consumed in the U.S. is likely to have been smuggled in from China and may be tainted with illegal antibiotics and heavy metals. A Food Safety News investigation has documented that millions of pounds of honey banned as unsafe in dozens of countries are being imported and sold here in record quantities."
EU bans GM-contaminated honey from general sale
"Bavarian beekeepers forced to declare their honey as genetically modified because of contamination from nearby Monsanto crops"
Honey Laundering: How To Avoid Buying Contaminated Honey
Corn syrup, antibiotics may taint U.S. honey supply as bees decline
Honey cannot be a product of industrial agriculture and still remain pure honey.
It's a pretty sad state of affairs - I am a beekeeper and sell honey in the neighborhood. One person actually asked if I add water to it. Horrible that people actually need to do that.
*sound of nearly spitting out his cereal at this statement. [edit]
you do know that honey it's self is mildly antibiotic? that's the reason it was used in ancient egypt as a medicine as well as a food along with other cultures that had bees.
Yes, I know that. Perhaps I should have said "synthetic antibiotics with toxic side effects".
"Side effects are mainly gastrointestinal and photosensitive allergic reactions common to the tetracycline antibiotics group.
Can also damage calcium rich organs such as teeth and bones although this is very rare, sometimes causes nasal cavities to erode, quite common, the BNF suggests that because of this Tetracyclines should not be used to treat pregnant or lactating women and children under 12 except in certain conditions where it has been approved by a specialist because there are no obvious substitutes. Candidiasis (Thrush) is not uncommon following treatment with broad spectrum antibiotics."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxytetracycline
I might also point out that Tetracycline is typically not given to children unless no other option exists, because it is absorbed by growing teeth, and causes discoloration (yellowing) of the teeth.
Also, small, sub-optimal doses of antibiotics in healthy individuals can result in the growth of resistance of organisms to that antibiotic, thereby rendering them ineffective. Not to mention the effects these chemicals have on the immune systems of the bees themselves.
Well, that certainly helps me justify the awesome costs of our Local Honey, Butter and 'Precious Tree Hugging' Sprouted Grain bread that combined to create Loreley's and my breakfasts this morning.
But Youch! That is some intimidating news.. you just get to feeling surrounded by all this crap. We're still working with the PTO and School to improve the 'education' our kids are getting with the Generic Corporate Food Products that get mechanically dispensed to them every day.
I get honey AND pollen from local beekeepers who keep "local bees." Very good food.
http://www.envirobee.com/beepollen2.htm
I remember how the 'Africanization' of our domestic beehives would spell doom for us all. I remember one particular TV movie that was based in New Orleans and the protagonist had to take the bees to the Superdome and freeze them with the Dome's powerful air conditioning system.
Seems lemonade can be made from lemons.
It is possible to modify the behavior of just about any kind of animal by selective breeding, but this is not a practice that is commonly pursued on an organized basis.Beekeepers are an exception, as to the best of my knowledge, there are several ongoing organized efforts to interbreed African bees with other strains.
Farmers and other breeders of livestock do a lot of selective behavioral breeding by culling out animals that are overly aggressive or lacking in certain desired behaviors.A beagle that doesn't chase rabbits is not likely to reproduce in a hunters kennel.
My biggest worry in respect to biofuels is that the industry might succeed in getting costs down to a point that the general public gets the idea that everybody can keep on flying and driving bau style.
Producing enough biodiesel or synthetic gasoline-probably alcohol based of course-to keep critical industries such as production farming, and critical services, such as water and sewer , running is one thing, and perhaps a reasonable long term goal;eventually oil is going to be in very short supply and we may actually NEED biofuels.
But if we ever get the idea as a society firmly fixed in opur monkey brains that we can continue bau based on biofuel, there is simply no way we will avoid an outright ecological collapse as a result.There will be no stopping the conversion of farm land and forest to fuel production in the face of the pressure for fuel.
This has as much or more to do with politics as it does with technology of course.
Spot on OFM, INMHO.
It's called 'trashing the planet on our way out', and taking the non-motoring majority with us.
My wife and I started beekeeping this year.It is not for the faint hearted and requires time and money to do it well. We have two hives at present and the colonies are getting ready for winter. Our strain of bee is based on queens with a buckfast strain, supposedly one of the better strains. However there is much interbreeding of the Europea n bees for obvious reasons and pure strains are rare. The most commom honeybee is the strain Apis Mellifera.Other common strinas are Apis Carnica, Apis Ligusticaand Apis Caucasica
The honeybee does a great deal of the pollination work, but so do other bees (bumble bee) and other insects such as the hover fly.
A good hive will contain about 35-50 thousand bees when going well in summer. A bee weighs about 125 mg or 8000 to the Kg. The honey stomach can hold 30-40 mg of nectar and bees will forage up to 5 kms from the hive.
The nectar is dehydrated in the hive to get the sugar content over 80% and to use the hoeny the bess have to dilute is with water. Honey is a mixture of sugars, fructose, dextrose and sucrose and can vary widely dependendent on the nectar source. The nectar flow is in 3 distinct phases depending on the area being foraged. Going into winter the bees need about 25 kg of stores -honey or equivalent. We have fed our bees prior to going into winter with a sucrose syrup to give them the best chance of survival.
AS well as nectar the bees return with pollen which is the protein source. In the winter bees may need to be fed with a pollen substitute.
There are many bees diseases, the worst being the Varroa mite. Much of the die back of the bee population can be traced back to poor management.Many commercial operations where bees are rented out to pollinate crops have high mortality rates; witness the recent news event when a whole truckload of bees in the US overturned which reulted in a total loss of the bees.
For each hive you ideally need a spare hive in case of swarms and in case the hive needs to be split. Single hives are not a good idea. If you are interested in bees then please seek some advice and help. We were lucky as our local beekeeping association ran a training course through the winter run by a Master Beekeeper. Well worth the effort.
Do not expect to make any money from beekeeping. The cost is high which is why honey is frquently adulterated. Note that runny honey is not the norm. Pure honey will normally crystallise on storage. Rapeseed honey will readily crystallise.
IMO it is a bit of a stretch to make an analogy between honey and ethanol. These videos tell the stories of both. Judge for yourself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7cX2cjFunw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsCmSWoF8PY&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poTGr8ONgl0
I agree.. My neighbor with one combine just finished harvesting a little over 4,000 acres of corn at 185 bushels per acre. That's a little over 825 semi loads.. or just under 750,000 bushels of corn which would make about 2.1 Million gallons of ethanol.
He burnt a little over 4,000 gallons of diesel to run his combine.
4,000 gallons of diesel to bring in 2.1 Million gallons of ethanol source stock... as well as 6375 tons of animal feed as a by-product.
NOT ANYTHING CLOSE to the analogy above.
btw.. my other neighbor runs two combines.. but then again he brings in almost twice as much.
you guys on this site that bash ethanol don't have a clue.
thanks for the stats.. it is interesting to hear from people closer to this than i am.
how far is it to transport the 825 semi loads from the farm to the biofuel facility?
the other (big) part of the energy equation is the distillation of the ethanol..
Phil
We are 25 miles from the nearest ethanol facility.. meanwhile the Crude Oil pumped from a local oil well.. the closest refinery is about 60 miles. Both go by transport truck.
However, it took another 4,000 gallons of diesel to transport the 825 loads of corn to the ethanol plant.
They are expanding the local windfarm nearby which can generate electricity to run some of the pumps on our farm.. as well as meeting some of the energy requirements of the ethanol plant.
Also we could capture the oil out of the corn which would go into the byproduct to refine into biodiesel.. of course this reduces it's value as a feed source.
There are other things that could be done.. my corn breeder tells me that they are refining a Nitrogen efficiency gene which will stretch our applied fertilizer.. and maybe someday capture the free nitrogen in the atmosphere like a legume plant does.
NAOM
I believe the nitrogen efficiency stuff is due out in trials soon. There is some out there already... but not on a commercial scale... "yet."
but definitely coming.
That's okay.. I forgot the return trip.. I punched it out at 5 miles per gallon.. which is "close."
Knowing them.. they probably did it on only 730'ish loads though.. if you catch my drift. That shouldn't change things much.. but we are probably up to 7500 gallons for the transport fuel. Give or take a couple.
Also I said I am 25 miles from the plant.. most of the fields are between "here" and "there" some are right across the road from the plant... some are farther than me. The 4,000 acre farm stretchs across 60 miles from one end to the other. But it's not contiguous either.. there are a host of other farms within it's confines. Probably.. 30 or 40 of us altogether.
There's also another plant about 30 miles in the other direction..
Some of the corn was stored on site (in fact most of it..) will be delivered later.. in some cases.. a backhaul could be routed bringing the by-product back to be fed.
Some of us on this site that "bash" ethanol are/were farmers too, and (in my case) also an engineer that does renewable energy.
If you want to be taken seriously, then take a serious look at all the energy use in growing your corn. For the bees, they do not expend any fuel/energy in growing, or fertilising or irrigating the plants that provide their nectar - can you say the same about corn?
The fuel used in harvesting is only a small part - you have the fuel used in hauling the grain (addressed below), and in planting it, and, if you are doing these, irrigating, spraying. There is also the NG used to make your nitrogen fertiliser, and transport it (much of it imported).
The bees don;t cause groundwater and riverwater pollution either...
Now, if that was all the energy used, I would would agree that the EROEI of corn was very good - but that's not all the energy used. Just like the bees, to turn the raw material into liquid fuel, takes lots of energy. For almost all corn distilleries, it is the NG used to distill the corn, and dry the residuals to DDG's - that is by far the greatest energy consumer.
Now, even then, corn ethanol still contains 2x the total energy (diesel +NG) used to produce it, and there is still 1/3 of the original feed value as DDG's so there is a net energy gain.
But the ethanol industry *could* do so much better. Distillation of ethanol occurs at 80C - this is very low grade heat - an ideal use for waste heat from almost any industrial process. but how many distilleries run an NG cogen plant? Us the high quality fuel to generate electricity, and then the waste heat from the engine coolant+exhaust can run the distillation and DDG drying - effectively "free" heat. but how many distilleries do this? Or locate themselves next to a heat source, like a power station?
And then there is the fuel itself. The real question is, can ethanol cut it in the real world, if it is *not* subsidised, and, more importantly, *not* mandated. The low popularity of E85, despite there being millions of cars that can use it, suggests not.
The ethanol industry has made very little effort to develop markets for ethanol as a fuel in its own right, instead going the sneaky route of having it blended into gasoline in higher amounts, being used in cars that were never designed to use it.
Ethanol, as a fuel, can be as efficient as diesel - it can even be used in diesel engines. If the ethanol industry was serious about reducing oil usage, they could start by reducing their own oil usage by using ethanol for the tractors, trucks and combines. instead, ethanol is trucked from the midwest to California to fulfill "mandates" while many cars in Iowa are still running on gasoline. Once the industry is powering itself on its own renewable fuel, and doesn't use another fossil fuel for the distillation, and shows a significant local displacement of gasoline/diesel, then we can take it seriously when it talks about replacing fossil fuels.
You make some very good points.
I am a REAL farmer.. I put the combine in the shed today.. and I buy ETHANOL because it is the cheapest source of energy despite the drag in performance. I bought some today.. so YES I believe in the product.
You can produce Nitrogen fertilizer without Natural Gas... If not have the corn plant actually fix it itself.. You can feed the co-products WET.. WHY DRY IT? As you note.. you can utilize waste heat in the production process.
All of these things can come to pass.. as we continue to build the infrastructure around the plants.
It took awhile to get the WDGS going.. but you couldn't until enough plants came online to make the feeding industry take a look at it.. are all the problems solved? No.. but that doesn't mean that we can not continue to improve.
In my lifetime we have doubled grain yields.. they continue to increase on about a 2 to 3% per year trend. There are similar gains ongoing on the production side at the plants.
As you note.. "other factors" such as accessibility to markets and such impact things.. Which came first the ethanol or the ethanol market? Same thing for Crude.. which came first.. the 200,000 b/d refinery or the 5,000 oil wells needed to supply it.. (at $400,000 per pop..) speaking of bees hauling nectar to the honey comb.. It's all the same.. whether you are talking about Honey.. or ethanol.. or Crude.. only difference is the scale.
Why isn't anyone asking the relevant questions to ethanol's competitors.. can THEY survive without THEIR subsidies...???
Or is the decision of which fuel used made in the boardroom with the biggest balance sheet....???
As long as we are asking the "tough" questions...
As a farmer all I can say is give us a chance.. we are good at what we do.. and we're NOT trashing the planet.. if anything.. we're making it better. I honestly believe that. A prof in college said that the best soils are those that have been farmed with stewardship in Europe since the 1300's.. they improve over time as we build the organic matter and the carbon content. I noticed that this fall as the soil color improved from an unfarmed low spot vs the rest of the field.
I'm a 4th generation farmer.. the land and it's "environment" has improved over time.. between the pheasants.. the deer.. even the fox that I chased out of the field with the machine today.. never better than today.
I am a REAL farmer
What makes you "REAL"? That I put the combine in the shed today? Was it the having a shed? A combine? A shed + combine? Placing the two together today?
I'm a 4th generation farmer.. the land and it's "environment" has improved over time.. between the pheasants.. the deer.. even the fox that I chased out of the field with the machine today.. never better than today.
So you are claiming the land (aka soil) is better now over what time frame?
Do you have data on the soil from when the 1st plow hit it until today?
"So you are claiming the land (aka soil) is better now over what time frame?
Do you have data on the soil from when the 1st plow hit it until today?"
Yes I do.. and YES I AM!!
My great grandfather settled this land.. worked his butt off to establish trees.. shelterbelts and a farmstead and such.. which is still here today. I believe they raised something like 8 or 10 to 12 bu wheat "back in the day."
I have records of our dryland wheat production back to 1980.. which CLEARLY SHOWS a definite UPTREND... the mean back then would be a little over 30.. we are up to about 40 bu per acre now.. I could go get the records if you want to push this...
In fact.. might as well.. in the early 80's we averaged in the low 30's for dryland wheat.. today that trendline on this farm crosses at 41.. so in 30 years we've added 33% to expected yields.. the highest was 68 bushels in 03 and the lowest was 11 in 89.. ditto dryland corn.. irrigated corn.. beans.. etc. The irrigated corn has improved by about 50 bu per acre over the same time period.. with top yields approaching 250 bushels.
The soil improves as we add organic matter and carbon.. that is one reason why the cornbelt has such dark soils.. and yes over time we are improving them here also. I could go on.. even add photos if you want.. (can you do that here?) or whatever..
My Grandmother before she passed usually would comment when she came to the field.. "If only your Great Grandfather could see this.. he would be amazed." She was born and raised here and saw a lot during her nearly 90 years her father probably raised.. say 80 acres of wheat... at maybe 12 bu or 960 bu total for a yearly output.
In good irrigated corn I can harvest in an hour about double what my forefather could raise in a year.. My neighbor said he averaged 3800 bushels per hour.. for about 8 to 10 hours per day.. for 26 days straight.. that is 2 unit trains of corn whereas the yearly production back in the day shortly after being settled could go to town in a couple of horse drawn wagons... and would maybe fill a third of one railroad car.
so uh.. "yes" we are making improvements over time. I take my job seriously.. we are very anal about conservation.. and husbandry of our soils.. our soils are our lifeblood.. it's where everything starts and finishes.. and ultimately determines the bottom line.
For example we core sample and correct for any deficiencies.. for instance this year we dumped.. probably 15 to 20 semi loads of lime back on a chunk of our dryland.. plus the regular fertility program.
I'm also adding a fair amount of mirco nutrients along with what our crop scouts are recommending. Farming is part science, part husbandry, but MOSTLY about doing the right thing.. the good ones live to raise big crops.. and are very focused on "taking care of the land."
"It's what we do."
Any other questions?
Using massive amounts of trucked in fertilizer and GM crops to produce huge yields is not evidence of improved soil.
Your great-grandparents killed the soil with all that overturning (plowing), and now you're using it as a substrate to hold irrigation water and fertilizer. You might as well be using Hydroton
http://www.croplife.com/article/12616
I've never read anything about soil quality improving, unless the land was left un-plowed for a few years. It seems that 'real' farming always degrades the soil.
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/march06/soil.erosion.threat.ssl.html
-All Along the Watchtower by Bob Dylan ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swbcFnkeMwE )
I believe they raised something like 8 or 10 to 12 bu wheat "back in the day."
I have records of our dryland wheat production back to 1980.. which CLEARLY SHOWS a definite UPTREND... the mean back then would be a little over 30.. we are up to about 40 bu per acre now..
So your evidence of increased soil quality is increased yield?
The seed type is exactly the same - so it can factored out for yield?
Same with the chemical inputs and water inputs - so, again, your soil claim backed by yield data is valid?
It is possible to raise plants without soil - such a method is called Aquaponics. Thus soil isn't needed.
I could go get the records if you want to push this...
You can if you wish - but I'm also interested in your claim "I am an REAL farmer". I note you did not respond to that question. I forgot to ask - are you able to pay insurance, taxes, and all the other things 'modern life' in the US of A wants a payment for without Government subsidies like crop payments or having other income not tied to the output from your land?
Or does getting a Government payout from the Ag department make one "a REAL farmer"? Because claiming yield increases as evidence of soil improvement while ignoring seed genetics doesn't strike me as something a "REAL farmer" would do.
I've been away and haven't had time to check in.. so I'll try to respond to all here. Yes I view yield is a generally good proxy for soil health as do most in the industry. I had a soils professor in college who stated.. "the best soils on the planet have been farmed for centuries such as in Europe and the Ukraine.. with good stewardship we improve the soil over time." It's something that struck me as true then.. as it still does today. You will NEVER convince me that the US farmer isn't a good steward of the land..NOR that we are not making improvements over time..
Asking my 80 year old father about his farm over the years.. "Yes we have improved the soil.. no question about it." He has been farming since 1951 full time.. but was born and raised here. "We are yielding more.. and yes I believe that is a good indicator of soil health." Pure no-tillers will talk about earth worms and how the soil is "alive".. I agree and view the bounty of life both wild and the targeted crop found on our lands to be a good indicator of "health."
"It's good."
It's something I firmly believe to be true. This chart of Kansas Wheat production since 1866 shows the story.. Please note that not much wheat is Genetically modified.. we've made strides in varietial selection.. also the increase in CO2 may play a role to increased yields but most of it is improved farming practices.. increased harvesting/legging/storage capacity and yes.. improved soils over time.
Our land grant universities have turned out a small army of crop scouts as well as invested heavily in extension and research.. the results speak for themselves...
http://www.ksre.ksu.edu/wheatpage/Links/whetprod.html
Yes we have made mistakes such as too much tillage exposing fragile soils to the elements during a drought in the 1930's etc.. However, most today practice no-till and reduced till and understand that the highest yields come from a healthy soil.. and erosion is not "healthy." So it's something everyone tries to avoid. Nobody knows the soils better than someone who has earned his life's income from taking care of it. Such as my father..
As I understand it government subsidies are going to take a big hit in the current budget negotiations.. so those may be going away. We have gradually reduced our dependency on subsidies over time.. today they account for probably less than 5% of our income.. Yield varability is a much larger concern.. aka.. SOIL HEALTH.. is a MUCH LARGER CONCERN.. then a check from the government.
I much prefer to raise for a market than the government anyway.
There is a place for smart government policies.. such as encouraging the construction and storage of grain.. A lot of our elevators.. (grain storage facilities) are built around a headhouse that may have been erected during the 1950's government storage programs.. Today those facilities are paid for and could have another 50 to 100 years of life in them. To me they stand as an example of smart investment.. encouraged by government policy but paid for by private enterprise.
If you want to continue this thread.. might as well take it over to this site..
http://talk.newagtalk.com/forums/forum-view.asp?fid=3
We face some challenges.. but it's generally accepted that yields will continue to improve over time.
Yes.. my soil claim IS backed by the data.
Denial: it's not just a river in Egypt.
Denial: it's not just a river in Egypt.
Funny you should bring up the Nile-I'm guessing the ancient farming methods around it must have depleted the soil a fair bit if they counted on the regular flooding to keep the valley fertile. Any idea of what sort of yields that acreage used to produce? It would be interesting to compare what Egypt produced over the course of a few millennia to what North America has produced over a century or two--just for fun maybe show Nile drainage total production up to 1860 and Mississippi drainage production since 1860. That would be an interesting graphic to say the least.
all that aside, I would be willing to bet dollars to donuts that jon is taking better care of his soil than many many farmers were when my grandfather ran his threshing operation.
Yes I view yield is a generally good proxy for soil health as do most in the industry
Then the industry is foolish as yield has:
Water
Plant Genetics
UV amount from the Sun (this one may be a coming problem - the UV index used to only go to 10 - now goes higher)
Temperature
as factors for yield. To claim yield is a "good" proxy for soil health is the metrics of a fool.
Given the use of chemicals on fields - that style of Ag is nothing better than an open air hydroponics system.
it's generally accepted that yields will continue to improve over time.
They can not over time as there are limits to photon -> sugar conversions. At some point this limit will be reached.
Then there is the increase in things like UV light from the sun:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/17/sat-tracking-of-ultraviolet-light-...
And the waste from the humans in the space station have been offered as the reason for the collapse of the upper atmosphere:
http://www.physorg.com/news198429352.html
So when the Sun comes out of its solar minimum - will that be a downturn in yields due to more UV energy hitting the plants - thus 'confusing' these 'experts' who've generally accepted increasing yields?
And the waste from the humans in the space station have been offered as the reason for the collapse of the upper atmosphere:
Pray tell where did you get that cause? It certainly wasn't mentioned in the article which basically said the 'collapse is 28% more than expected and we aren't sure of the cause' (my wording). I skimmed the comments and some of the more science literate responders had a few extra insights but I sure missed the comment where the space station waste was blamed. I didn't even see that craft specifically mentioned.
It certainly wasn't mentioned in the article
What's a way to get CO2 directly into the thermosphere - the space station.
Please explain how the ISS puts CO2 into the upper atmosphere.
NAOM
The 1st part of getting CO2 into the upper atmosphere is being there and having CO2 about.
The 2nd part is the normal venting that happens. More recycling has been done so there is less venting - that recycling may be due to the 'oh sh*t - venting is causing a problem' observation.
At this time the collapse of the Troposphere may just be "normal" - if you are not measuring something, how does one know what normal is? It may be due to CO2 from the ground getting up that high. If what is being reported is true - no one "knows" why.
So what you are saying is that the, approximately, 2 tons of CO2 exhaled by the astronauts(assuming full time 6 man crew not the 6 then 3 they use) and not counting that which will escape directly to space, will affect the atmosphere more than the 29,888,121,000 tons emitted by the rest of the world?
NAOM
oh that was your own conclusion--that explains much. Watch the little video on your linked site. It doesn't' begin with a terrestrial traffic jam for no reason--they do expect the viewer to connect a few dots.
Over time more and more of the space station's vented waste products are being recycled. I don't know the full procedure that has been used for venting wastes into space thus far, or how wide a swath their orbits cut--it would seem they would want to vent some distance from the station though. Just for fun why don't you do a bit of math. Figure the volume of the thermosphere through which the space station passes each year--just use a one kilometer radius around the orbits for this (good luck on working out the overlaps for all of the one kilometer orbit radii, you might want to simplify this just a tad). Next figure the mass of all wastes the space station vented into space in a given year. This will at least give you some sense of the scale involved.
Someone a bit sharper than I might elaborate on how gas wastes and solid wastes will each act when vented into those orbits and what type of vented waste will suffer what sort of orbit degradation--but the homework I gave you should keep you out of trouble for a little while without anyone going into all the rest of that ?- )
oh that was your own conclusion--that explains much.
Nope, just repeating what other sources had claimed.
Its so flattering that you think so highly of me that you think I came up with that all by my lonesome however, bless your heart.
just repeating what other sources had claimed
Please give the sources. Your initial comment can be considered a source by any who read it. There are sources and there are sources, and I've no idea if the sources you are referring to are worth a lick.
By the way do you have those calculations yet ?- )
I'd really like to see the sources explain how that very small mass of space station waste CO2 released to the huge volume space in close proximity to the station's earth orbit which itself comprises only very small part of the whole thermosphere can be responsible for a 28% shrinkage or for that matter for any significant measurable shrinkage of the thermosphere. A credible source will have a very good handle on those numbers and will be able to explain why the numbers indicate the space station waste may be a smoking gun. So if you have access to such sources please link the way.
Neither do you, based on your faulty logic and poor grasp of physics and basic math!
Hint, how much energy do you think it takes to transform 750,000 bushels of corn into 2.1 million gallons of ethanol?
Or do you also believe in magic, perpetual motion machines and pixie dust?!
Sigh! >:^(
This report
http://www.ethanolrfa.org/page/-/rfa-association-site/studies/2008USDA_e...
found that it took on average about 40,000 btu's to convert corn into a gallon of ethanol.
Furthermore, you could credit back about half of that energy to the co-product feed which is about a third of the ethanol output.
Therefore this study which is based on a survey of actual ethanol producing plants found that it took all totaled from growing the corn to transportation to the plant and conversion of about 53,785 btu's per gallon less the 20,409 credit netted about 33,375 btu's to produce something that contained 76,300 btu's.. or an EROEI of 2.29
There is still significant room for improvement in these values.. all the way through from the corn production process to tweaking the plants some more and increasing conversion factors.
For instance we could use excess wind energy production.. (what do you do with the power generated by wind at 2 am?) to produce nitrogen fertilizer.
http://www.agmrc.org/renewable_energy/ethanol/using_the_wind_to_fertiliz...
There's also efficiencies to be gained in fertility placement and conversion if not outright conversion of atmospheric nitrogen by the plant itself.. as well as increasing the starch content of the sourcestock.. or enhancing the value of the grain for alcohol production.. as well as all the conversions that go on at the plants... including the obvious one of increasing the amount of coproducts fed wet.
hmmm.. no.. I don't believe in perpetual motion machines.
However the wind farms by us have achieved efficiency's as high as 40%.. in fact they will more than quadruple the size of the closest one here by 2013 reaching 500 MW's.
If a significant amount of energy to produce the grain at the farm as well as convert that grain to ethanol at the plant comes from a windfarm.. how do you calculate it's EROEI?
http://www.kansasenergy.org/wind_projects.htm#flatter
If these windfarms continue to convert 40% or more of nameplate capacity into useable energy.. and this energy is FURTHER leveraged into a STORABLE LIQUID FUEL.. that ALSO PRODUCES FOOD as a by-product.. isn't this a good thing?
fire away..
jon - Not disputing the point you make but by comparison: I just completed a well that will produce 84 million gallons of oil. And that doesn't include the 140 million gallons equivalent in NG. And burned around 120,000 gallons of diesel doing it. Just one reason why ethanol needs a subsidy to compete against oil. But may not be that way for too long if we're sliding down that PO path faster than many project.
Congratulations.. They drilled a well on us two years ago that was a dry hole.. No matter how you cut that one it's a negative EROEI.
Trying again as they just moved another rig in on us yesterday.. fingers crossed.
Hey I'm a realist.. I like ethanol but that doesn't mean I would turn down the Oil royalties should they come... anyway.. we just got the last drill site back in shape and planted to a crop.. HRW Wheat.. a couple of weeks ago. If the land won't produce crude.. I guess we'll have to give it a shot at something else.
The going rate here for a well is something like $85 per foot.. with about a 1 in 3 success rate... drilled to about 4200'.
I re-read the comments above.. I too am concerned about the environment and want sustainability.. we have a good mix of crops.. we do not practice a monoculture. Most of our ground is rotated between wheat.. to soybeans.. to corn and back to wheat. (with the occasional oil well thrown in there..;-) probably been 10 or 15 drilled on our farm over the past 100 years.. or so.. never amounted to much though for us. It's always been the crops that pays the bills.. "still waiting for that gusher to come in..."
Corn takes a lot of fertility.. Corn roots only go down about 36" to 48".. we follow that with wheat whereas wheat roots "can" go down as much as 2 or 3 times that of corn.. so we go after every drop of fertility.. we then follow that with Soybeans.. a legume which fixes nitrogen from the atmosphere and leaves about 30 to 50 units in the soil for the next crop.. which is corn.. and the cycle repeats.. this allows us to maximize our fertility.. break the pests cycles.. stretch out our planting/tillage/harvesting windows.. helps with erosion.. as well as cover for wildlife and such..
I chased a bunch of pheasants out of the sorghum patch yesterday.. the coyote that followed was "on the hunt."
Other than the occasional drill site and spills.. I don't have anything against Oil exploration.. as long as they pay for and clean up after themselves.. there's some money in the industry right now.. so most are pretty good operators. Man they are punching a bunch of holes right now.. kind of taking the carpet bombing approach to oil exploration.. drill a couple hundred and surely hit on some of them.
Although oil production in Kansas is up.. it's got a long ways to go to catch what we used to do.. Kind of seems like the easy to find stuff is gone.. now they have to do horizontal drilling and fracking to find it...??
I've got a much higher success rate at raising a crop.. even this year in a drought.. we did as well as a good year was 30 years ago.
we do not practice a monoculture. Most of our ground is rotated between wheat.. to soybeans.. to corn and back to wheat
As noted elsewhere:
Monoculture is the agricultural practice of producing or growing one single crop over a wide area.
As one doesn't have a good working definition of "wide area" along with the size of the field to be able to state if the claim is true/false.
Jon - Yep...nothing like that "mail box money". Dry holes happen. That's one of the points I've tried to get across. Companies can drill a lot of wells with good solid EROEI's. But on average the industrywide EROEI wil be lower. Besides the dry holes there's a good bit additional energies expended beside just drilling the successful wells.
I really have to disagree with your point of view. The whole reason why many of us bash ethanol is for good reason; the main being the lousy EROEI of corn ethanol.
Only 4000 gallons of diesel may have been used to harvest this crop but how much energy was invested in the tilling and seeding. How much fertiser was consummed? Then there are the processing steps that has to distill a relatively thin alochol solution (12%), roughly 6 kgs of steam for each gallon of ethanol (3 kgs).
Then what about the food or fuel debate. 90 ltrs of ethanol needs around 225 kgs of corn (maize)which is enough food calories(14.3 MJ/Kg) to sustain an adult person for 1 year. That is not a misprint. It takes about 3.4 Kg of maize to produce 1 Kg of ethanol. That is 48.0 MJ into 28 MJ, a thermodynamic efficiency of 58%, not including the value of the residue. This is actualy not that bad. But then add in just the steam cost and the steam energy alone is 13.8 MJ per Kg. The electrical energy requirement is of the order of 4.7 MJ. Suddenly the 28 MJ of ethanol energy has consumed 18.5 MJ of steam and electricity. These alone bring the EROEI down to 1.5. Need I go on. I have not included the diesel inputs, fertiliser, or the water costs. Ethanol for fuel is an environmental disaster.
What damage did the monoculture do to the soil? Soil erosion and loss is very real in the US. US farmers have been mining the soil for decades. Have you read the book Soil: the erosion of civilisations?
Then there is the nonsense of ethanol/ gasoline blends. If we are to use ethanol at all, then let us design and produce engines that are optimised for its use. Anhydrous or even 95% ethanol fuel in a purpose designed engine can raise the theromdynamics up to diesel like efficiency. But this requires very high compression ratios (20:1 ish) and port fuel injection systems. It can be done. The worst option is what is currently being done which produces more issues than it supposedly solves.
What has happened is that dumb politicians have pandered to the ag lobby.
So what is the minimum necessary EROEI of honey, as a fuel for the bees? I'd enjoy seeing people here comment on it. It might say more about EROEI than it says about bees, but it'd also say something about absolute limits.
Seems like all their energy goes into energy capture and reproduction - like all stably evolved species. But surely more energy is spent on foraging than on reproduction. Still, it would be a useful metric; if the average distance to and between flowers, and the average amount of nectar per flower, change, that will change the EROEI.
I think (per Nate's past articles) aboriginal human hunter-gatherers need an EROEI around 10; and most predators seem to eat around ten times their weight in prey if I recall correctly from trophic levels and bioaccumulation.
Social insects probably are the animals able to get by on the lowest EROEI. Nectar is a very concentrated and specialized food which is a fair metaphor for oil in our current system. (Termites are an interesting contrast in terms of foraging vs. other energy uses.)
So what would the minimum nectar EROEI be for bee society to exist? 1.3? 2? 4? It's interesting to me because the social insects probably operate near the utter minimum EROEI to support foraging animals. (I suppose filter-feeders could edge them out, but that seems less comparable to us and to the metric. How would you figure the EROEI of an oyster?) Anyone have notions? Bees may require a high EROEI due to the energy requirements of flying, while leaf-cutter ants might be down nearer 1.1 (??) ... but I'm wildly speculating.
cheers.
(and speaking of flowers, nice to see an article like this blooming on the TOD landscape).
# How far does a hive of bees fly to bring you one pound of honey?
More than 55,000 miles.
Hi Greenish,
While I couldn't find a single scientific paper directly adressing your question, there seems to be plenty of pertinent research on topics which might indirectly give some insight.
Unfortunately most of it is behind various paywalls.
Here's a very short sample list.
http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.nutr.21.1.23
FAT METABOLISM IN INSECTS
http://www.springerlink.com/content/r825087417650063/
Mathematical modeling of the temperature field distribution in insect winter clusters
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1095643302001630
Environmental and genetic influences on flight metabolic rate in the honey bee, Apis mellifera☆
Cheers,
Fred
I did note that myself but thanks for share
It's very tricky applying EROEI to living systems in comparison with Artificial Technologies..
The 'Transportation Equipment' that Bees use is the same equipment that they use for everything in their lives. Their Fuel Storage Facility is also their home, their refinery and nursery.
I'm not saying we shouldn't try, and really understand the balance of energy in living systems.. but we have to remember when some of the expenses are simultaneously some of the income, ie, the very necessities of living one's life.
I just went and split some firewood. The exercise was a great relief after a stressful meeting this morning. What part of that was a cost to me, energy-wise, and what part was a benefit? Do they wash out in an EROEI sense? Also, some of that wood I split was a tree I hand-felled for an elderly neighbor, partly for the social bonds and just helping out, partly for the wood, partly to climb trees and play with ropes, partly to keep that tree from falling into a neighbor's roof and causing very expensive damage. A handful of other logs in there were tossed into my car at the Dump, which saved me some charges in vehicle weight, made double use of the trip, reduced a bit of solid waste from the city's piles.. gave me a few more stretches and reps for my healing lumbar vertebra.. What goes in what column?
Good comments, as I said, the question might tell us more about EROEI than about bees.
Still, there are probably absolute limits on foraging efficiency to capture and convert energy for metabolic use for a given energy source. Of course, plants requiring fertilization expend some energy in making themselves attractive to bees visually, and producing nectar in the first place, so what we're seeing are long-evolved systems which don't directly apply to our use of fossil fuels.
Bees may require a high EROEI due to the energy requirements of flying,
I would think temperature regulation would be more of an issue than actual flying. 20-30 days of life with the last 10 days being on the wing/working to death.
On a bookish note: someone should ask Neal Stephenson what were the EROEI of the "fuel trees" in his book Anathem... ;-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anathem
Cheers
Ervino
At long last, a post on this blog about biology! Besides making honey, bees are essential for pollinating many crops. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_crop_plants_pollinated_by_bees
well i'm no biologist but glad you like the article. nice list!
Phil offers a great example of the weak reasoning so many people bring to the topic of biofuels. That is pandemic among the hipster/trustafarians at our local college's "student farm." The faculty are even worse, since their incentive to promote silly ideas is a job for life, then a pension after. I.e, the only sustainability they are really about. I will definitely be sending Phil's meditation over there.
The subsequent readers' discussion of beekeeping strikes me as odd and interesting, given that what it boils down to is promoting the same kind of thinking that got us into the fossil energy mess.
Honey is a form of intensified solar/carbon energy. Honeybees are the laborers. We humans get ourselves addicted to intensified solar and carbon energy of all sorts, including but not limited to sweets. I think it's worth bearing in mind that /Apis mellifera/ is not native to the Western hemisphere. It has been introduced, with unknown but surely devastating effects on native bee populations. Particularly where monocrop/few-crop agriculture and beekeeping have been imposed on/replace native ecosystems. I'm of the view that a lot of the CCD in North America is simply nature batting last.
Also on the topic of intensified carbon:
Much of the history of indigenous boreal peoples in the Old World--particularly us Finno-Ugrians--revolved around empires wanting their native forests in order to fell and burn them, to turn them into charcoal, the intensive carbon energy form that ran the metals economy (and war) for centuries before fossil energy. (This was a huge conflict in the area that Sweden and Russia kept battling over, and the reason that the indigenous people there were expelled, with ancient swidden agriculture becoming a capital crime.)
We might do a lot better in our Peak Everything reasoning if we could systematically question our own addiction to intensified carbon economics and consumption.
Sorry if this is rough; I'm taking a break between bouts of (unmechanized) outdoor labor.
Greetings! As a beekeeper, i had repeated the meme that Colony Collapse Disorder was too complicated to be able to definitively state what could be the cause. Until i read the book "A Spring Without Bees". The French figured it out and took action which resulted in a significant reduction of the incidence of CCD. The smoking gun is the new neonicotinoid class of pesticides that have been used by industrial agriculture to pretreat seeds in storage. The same neonicotinoid pesticides are used to treat golf course lawns and residential lawns for grubs. FYI.
I just checked the EPA website.
They say that these pesticides have been associated with some definite instances of bee poisoning, but not with colony collapse disorder.
Most of the uses in Europe which were disallowed have since been restored, but there are some exceptions .
Google EPA, ccd, and Neonicotinoid pesticides.
Phil Hart,
Nice article but the drawn conclusion is completely flawed.
For starters, the massive algal blooms that created the Oil (honey)and fed off a higher CO2 content atmosphere ceased to be hundreds of millions of years ago. So the Oil Hive replenishment also ceased.
Our only hope for the future is that we renew that process, but consuming the biofuel daily as we produce it.
Don't you think that some of the millions of unemployed Americans would like to be gainfully employed as the new energy "bees" of today?
While the the US is paralysed by the stupidity of its greed driven economic system, other nations are forging ahead solving their energy problems in sustainable ways.
I suggest that you all go over here
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2011/11/06/climate-clippings-52/
and read up on what is in store for us all, but particularly the US. Look at the future precipitation map and contemplate how the US economy will survive in 30 to 50 years from now if this is a true prediction of Global Warmings impact.