I Like Bugs!

Hey my Etsy print shop is going to be open from now until 12/25ish.

Every print sold directly helps support me and my career as an artist. 

All prints come packaged with a special hanging kit, which will allow you to have the art hung on your wall in a manner of minutes. These would make great gifts for the coming holiday season.

the fourth(?) giveaway begins today ✨

1st place - a fullbody of a character of your choice (OC/canon)

2nd place - a bust of a character of your choice (OC/canon)

rules

you must be following me! (new followers very welcome, though dont unfollow after the giveaway is done lmao)

no giveaway blogs

each like and each reblog counts as one (1) entry, so more reblogs = more entries but don’t spam your followers or ill have to disqualify you

the giveaway ends two weeks from now (october 22nd); ill contact the winners so your ask/message must be open!

the fourth tale from the Haunted Road Side Diner. fresh from patreon.

“Managed honey bee colonies supplement the work of natural wild pollinators, not the other way around. In a study of 41 different crop systems worldwide, honeybees only increased yield in 14 percent of the crops. Who did all the pollination? Native bees and other insects.”

There is two species of bees beekeepers use to make honey. There is around 20.000 known species of bees.

Apis mellifera and apis cerana, the only two species kept by beekeepers for making honey, aren’t native to the American continent, but even where it is native like in Europe and Asia it’s not supposed to be everywhere and in such great numbers. Because of competition and diseases, the result of their introduction or increase is the decline of the pollinators already here (such as the other species of bees), which are often better pollinators and are able to pollinate every plants in the ecosystem they are in, which is not the case of apis mellifera or/and apis cerana.

From a study in Australia : “In contrast, native bees were more than three times more abundant at the few sites where honeybees were absent, compared to those where they were present.”

From a study in Israel : “The results provide partial evidence for behavioral competition between honeybees and native bees. For this reason, we recommend prohibiting introduction of beehives to all nature reserves in Israel, as a precaution aimed at protecting the native bee fauna. This may help conserve their contribution to biodiversity and pollination of common and rare native plants as well as crops.”

From a study in California : “This pattern suggests that B. occidentalis colonies exposed to competition with Apis experienced increased nectar scarcity and responded by reallocating foragers from pollen to nectar collection, resulting in lowered rates of larval production. These results provide evidence that Apis competitively suppresses a native social bee known to be an important pollinator, with the potential for cascading effects on native plant communities.”

The introduction of apis mellifera or apis cerana is also causing other species of pollinators to get diseases. While beekeepers try to protect their hives from it, the native pollinators aren’t protected at all.

“Diseases that are common in managed honeybee colonies are now widespread in the UK’s wild bumblebees […] Our results suggest that emerging diseases, spread from managed bees, may be an important cause of wild bee decline.”

Native species already suffer from pesticides and habitat loss and you’re only aggravating the situation by buying honey.

Apis mellifera and apis cerana aren’t endangered species of bee, and they shouldn’t even exist in a lot of places. Native pollinators, on the other hand, such as the thousands of other bee species, are the one in actual danger of extinction, and some of them are already believed to be extinct.

“The studies show conclusively that biodiversity has a direct measurable value for food production and that a few managed species cannot compensate for the biodiversity on which we depend.”

Lobster Effigy Vessel

South Coast, Peru. Nazca. 300-600 AD.

The coast of Peru is bathed in the Humboldt Current, which sweeps cold water from the Antarctic along the South American coast and northwards to Mexico and the Pacific Northwest. Rich in plankton and other marine animals, the Humboldt Current supports one of the world’s most fertile fishing grounds. Early Andean peoples harvested its bounty, with fish and shellfish being a primary source of protein not only for coastal peoples but also those in the highlands. This lobster effigy vessel, with its small bridge-spout handle typical of Nazca ceramics, is a masterful example of the ceramic effigy vessel form.

https://www.gofundme.com/get-my-butt-to-san-francisco