Category Archives: Insects

Beautyberry as insect repellant

Beautyberry, Callicarpa americana, proven insect repellant!

Barbara Pleasant wrote for Mother Earth News April/May 2009, Beautyberry Banishes Bad Biting Bugs: Researches are finding evidence that beautyberry, long used as a folk remedy, really does deter bugs such as ants, ticks and others.

In 2006, researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Products Utilization Research Unit in Oxford, Miss., found that extracts from beautyberry leaves could match DEET for repelling mosquitoes. The next year, experiments showed that the active ingredients from the leaves (callicarpenal and intermedeol) provided 100-percent repellency of black-legged ticks for three hours. In 2008, the four-person research team, headed by chemist Charles Cantrell in Mississippi and entomologist Jerome Klun in Maryland, published research that added fire ants to the list of pests repelled by essential oil distilled from beautyberry leaves….

Fresh green leaves, crushed and rubbed on people or pets, often repel insects for a couple of hours.

Looks like Charles L. Cantrell of U. Miss. has published several papers about this:

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Bee in okra flower, Okra Paradise Farms, 19 July 2012

This is how we get new okra to eat:

This is how we get new okra to eat

This is how we get new okra to eat
Picture by John S. Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 19 July 2012.

I've seen on the okra blooms honeybees, bumblebees, and several kinds of wasps, all pollinating and making more okra.

-jsq

Garden size check

Picked 60 pounds of okra and more is flowering. There's a bee on one of those flowers:

Picked 60 pounds of okra and more is flowering

Picked 60 pounds of okra and more is flowering
Pictures by John S. Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 3 July 2012.

Pumpkins keep getting bigger:

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Pine beetles, Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 11 April 2012

Brown Dog and Yellow Dog in some red pine needles:


John S. Quarterman, Gretchen Quarterman, Brown Dog, Yellow Dog,
Lowndes County, Georgia, 11 April 2012.
Pictures by John S. Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms.

And the reason why they’re red:

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Insecticides are killing the honeybees

Is corporate profit worth wiping out honeybees?

Brian Wallheimer wrote in ScienceDaily 12 Jan 2012, Honeybee Deaths Linked to Seed Insecticide Exposure,

Analyses of bees found dead in and around hives from several apiaries over two years in Indiana showed the presence of neonicotinoid insecticides, which are commonly used to coat corn and soybean seeds before planting. The research showed that those insecticides were present at high concentrations in waste talc that is exhausted from farm machinery during planting.

The insecticides clothianidin and thiamethoxam were also consistently found at low levels in soil — up to two years after treated seed was planted — on nearby dandelion flowers and in corn pollen gathered by the bees, according to the findings released in the journal PLoS One this month.

“We know that these insecticides are highly toxic to bees; we found them in each sample of dead and dying bees,” said Christian Krupke, associate professor of entomology and a co-author of the findings.

The authors are careful to say they don’t claim to have found the only cause of honeybee deaths, because they can’t prove that. They do seem to have proved specific insecticides are one cause.

Is wiping out honebees worth the profits of a very few large agrobusinesses that sell these poisons?

Who sells this stuff, anyway? Bayer, Arysta, and Valent sell clothianidin, and Syngenta (SYT) sells thiamethoxam. What’s Syngenta’s excuse?

How do we feed a growing world population?
By poisoning honeybees, apparently.

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Skeeterhawk guarding the okra patch

Who keeps an eye on the okra patch while Gretchen’s selling okra at Downton Valdosta Farm Days?


Picture by John S. Quarterman at Okra Paradise Farms,
Lowndes County, Georgia, 28 July 2011.

Skeeterhawk, that’s who! Eat them skeeters, skeeterhawk!

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A Call for Skepticism

Camano Island is NW of Everett, Washington, and this article is from 2002, responding to an article in the local paper there. -jsq
Commentary
A Call for Skepticism
by Steven K. Roberts
Camano Island

If ever we needed a demonstration that the fundamental flaw in many arguments is a lack of discrimination regarding information sources, we have it in the Nels Konnerup article, “Toxicology 101 Defended,” in the March 26 issue of the S/C News.

The author makes a “plea for cogent thought, rather than a visceral reaction to the use of pesticides and herbicides,” and cites a number of references “authored by highly qualified and respected scientists.” So far, so good.

But just for fun, I spent a few minutes researching some of these sources to see if I could determine the affiliations and biases of their authors.

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EPA approved bee-killing pesticide despite warnings from its own scientsts

Susie Madrak writes in Crooks and Liars, Leaked Document: EPA Scientists Warned Of Bee-Toxic Pesticide. Agency Approved It Anyway.
Clothianidin has already been banned by Germany, France, Italy, and Slovenia for its toxic effects. So why won’t the EPA follow? It probably has something to do with Big Agra, who loves the stuff for treating the corn seed supply.
Ariel Schwartz in Fast Company a reminds us of why this matters
The world honey bee population has plunged in recent years, worrying beekeepers and farmers who know how critical bee pollination is for many crops.
She includes a quote from the study:
Clothianidin’s major risk concern is to nontarget insects (that is, honey bees). Clothianidin is a neonicotinoid insecticide that is both persistent and systemic. Acute toxicity studies to honey bees show that clothianidin is highly toxic on both a contact and an oral basis. Although EFED does not conduct RQ based risk assessments on non-target insects, information from standard tests and field studies, as well as incident reports involving other neonicotinoids insecticides (e.g., imidacloprid) suggest the potential for long-term toxic risk to honey bees and other beneficial insects.

Here’s the leaked document (PDF).

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