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Morgan Freeman Converts His 124-Acre Ranch into a Giant Bee Sanctuary

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Re: Morgan Freeman Converts His 124-Acre Ranch into a Giant Bee Sanctuary

#101
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hearing or smelling something from a neighbouring property is just something you have to live with. Just like leaves that fall off a neighbour's trees into your property, may be a pain to tidy up, but that's just life. Sound and smell travel, should I have pave over my garden because you have allergies or don't like the smell of my roses or the manure that I feed them?

In a number of states including Massachusetts, there are towns that have right-to-farm ordinances. They're not just anything goes obviously but the basic intent is to tell people that they really shouldn't move to a fairly rural old farm town and then complain that their neighbor is planting corn, raising goats, or generally doesn't have a neatly manicured lawn.

Having lived in MA and every New England state north of it MA is highly, highly variable when it comes to what happens on your property being your business and nobody else's.

Basically anywhere that was incorporated back when they were still burning witches is going to be downright terrible. Of the areas that were developed later some were not blind to the mistakes of the past and these tend to be pretty good. My own town's bylaws are pretty libertarian. They even enumerate the right of the self employed to run a business out of their own home (so long as you don't park too many commercial vehicles over 26k in a residential zone) and are sprinkled with all sorts of great language that limits the government's ability to control the individual. It's almost as good as not living in MA.

That said, while the legal and procedural side of things may be ok, the cultural side is not that great. MA (in my anecdotal experience) is light years behind northern New England when it comes to cultural respect for property rights. Being that busybody who calls the cops because the neighbor's kid won't stop yelling or reports your neighbor's non-permitted driveway repaving to the town is far more tolerated in MA. That kind of stuff is not considered socially acceptable in northern New England for the most part.

Re: Morgan Freeman Converts His 124-Acre Ranch into a Giant Bee Sanctuary

#102
post #40

🇺🇸 I met Morgan Freeman at a screening of Bucket List in DC. I asked him if we could play Rock Paper Scissors. He said he didn’t know how. So I taught him. He then told me what he was going to throw. I told him he shouldn’t do that. Then I beat him. So I both taught and beat Morgan Freeman at Rock Paper Sissors.

First time seeing an emoji here. Nice.

Re: Morgan Freeman Converts His 124-Acre Ranch into a Giant Bee Sanctuary

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something I have never really understood. If your neighbors can hear or smell your hobby, then you are not really staying contained on your own property and neighbors who complain are not trampling your liberties, just asserting their own.

Not whining over the slightest inconvenience is part of existing in civil society. Complaining about your neighbor using an air hammer on steel at 11pm, ok. Complaining about your neighbor using an air hammer on steel at normal hours = not ok. It all comes down to being reasonable and in middle upper class suburbia the Overton window of what is reasonable has moved to favor the complainers over the people who want to…

Got a kick out of your air hammer example because I happen to be working on a project that involves me using an air hammer (among other loud pneumatic tools) on many weeknights. The key was I actually took the time before starting to gasp sit down and talk to my neighbors and agree on things like noise level, hours I’d be working, keeping the garage door shut, etc. Lucked out by having reasonable neighbors, but you can usually head off trouble by talking with people as if they were grown adults. Ended up costing me nothing but a new quieter air compressor, and no visits from the city yet.

Re: Morgan Freeman Converts His 124-Acre Ranch into a Giant Bee Sanctuary

#104
post #83
post #71

A number of people have mentioned varroa mites and the problems they cause for domestic and wild bee populations. For those interested mycologist Paul Stamets has been trialing the addition of polypore extract to bee food (water / sugar water) to boost their immune system. Results on smaller sample set (~100 hives) was near total eradication of the mites (I think broken wing disorder was diminished too). Next trial i…

Ha, I could have sworn this was a carefully worded joke -- Paul Stamets is the name of the mycologist on the new Star Trek series. Coincidence?

In this case art imitates life, not the other way around. I heard of Paul Stamets through Michael Pollen's book "how to change your mind" - Paul gave Michael his first psilocybin trip.

Re: Morgan Freeman Converts His 124-Acre Ranch into a Giant Bee Sanctuary

#105
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought so too, but for some reason a few aren’t. I posted about it yesterday. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19482991

Ok, looks like some unicode blocks such as flags are not stripped.

🇯🇵 Cool

Re: Morgan Freeman Converts His 124-Acre Ranch into a Giant Bee Sanctuary

#106

I've seen people calling him out the use of the word "sanctuary" and suggesting that this is really just sanctuary for taxes, not bees. As a pre-emptive counterargument, there's nothing saying that all 124 acres of his ranch can or should host bees. There are tons of arguments for not wanting the hives near the house, other outbuildings, or anywhere animals are kept, for example. It may be that only 26 acres or so (a…

I remember a similar item about Bruce Springsteen calling his mansion a farm (to get lower tax rates.) The stories about Springsteen seemed credible. I hope Morgan Freeman is on the level, though.

Michael Dell has a 'nature preserve' for deer that just so happens to be the few hundred acres surrounding his house.

This of course qualifies for the agriculture exemption on Texas property taxes, so a piece of property that he spent $70M purchasing is paying taxes as if it's worth $290,000. Quite the system we have when the public subsidizes people like Michael Dell for $1m/year on this property alone:

https://www.thenation.com/article/tax-day-farms-owned-rich-p...

Re: Morgan Freeman Converts His 124-Acre Ranch into a Giant Bee Sanctuary

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be careful of your city bylaws. I grew a wildflower garden in my backyard in Canada and got a complaint once. Given that the neighbour to one side asked be to do it makes me think it might have been the neighbour on the other side :-) I actually didn't mind cutting it down because I was moving that year anyway, but it pays to talk with your neighbours and find out what the city requires. It is especially important to…

Actually, there is a pro-organic, pollinator and wildlife friendly program in my city whose lead I am following. Another reason I don't move.... My only plan for the summer is to seed the lawn with clover, water weekly, and keep it cut at the top height of my mower. How big was your garden, and how visible from the neighbors? In the front I can see that, but who cares in the back, at least in my area.

On my lawn I have clover, daisies, dandelions, and fescue. Fescue is the only one I planted.

The bees are quite pleased

We have a lot of rain in Waitati and I do not water it. Three years ago it dried out and large parts went brown. Came back happily when the rains came back

Re: Morgan Freeman Converts His 124-Acre Ranch into a Giant Bee Sanctuary

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be careful of your city bylaws. I grew a wildflower garden in my backyard in Canada and got a complaint once. Given that the neighbour to one side asked be to do it makes me think it might have been the neighbour on the other side :-) I actually didn't mind cutting it down because I was moving that year anyway, but it pays to talk with your neighbours and find out what the city requires. It is especially important to…

Actually, there is a pro-organic, pollinator and wildlife friendly program in my city whose lead I am following. Another reason I don't move.... My only plan for the summer is to seed the lawn with clover, water weekly, and keep it cut at the top height of my mower. How big was your garden, and how visible from the neighbors? In the front I can see that, but who cares in the back, at least in my area.

Ah in that case I don't think you'll have a problem. I had white clover, camomile and timothy hay (the latter I don't recommend, but it's an annual, so easy to recover from ;-) ) in the front and didn't get any complaints about it.

The back yard was HUGE. I had wild daisies, black eyed susans, and a variety of other wild flowers. The previous year I'd grown it in order to bring in butterflies, etc and my one neighbour really liked it because they could see it from their second floor windows. The way I did it was to grow it into about the middle of July and after most of the flowering was finished to mow it down.

I think the other neighbour was trying to sell their house that year and instead of just telling me they made a complaint to the city. In fact, I'm willing to bet that it wasn't my neighbours (who I was friendly with) but their real estate agent. Like I said, I was not worried about it at all, but having the city inspector to come to your house and demand that you cut your garden is somewhat stressful (especially if you were planning to grow it out).

You may get some push back from neighbours about the white clover because it is fairly invasive, but probably there isn't anything they can do about it. Anyway, good luck with your lawn! I really enjoyed mine. If you feel like it, mix in some camomile when you overseed. I think you won't regret it (low growing, super soft, smells nice and pretty yellow flowers if you let it grow long enough).

Re: Morgan Freeman Converts His 124-Acre Ranch into a Giant Bee Sanctuary

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About number 3, according to wikipedia [1] > the total U.S. crop value that was wholly dependent on honey bee pollination was estimated to exceed $15 billion. and > honeybees perform some level of pollination of nearly 75% of all plant species directly used for human food worldwide. Which sounds like a bit more than just beekeeping. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder#Econo...

Is there some real figure which would give truth to the amount other insects would pollinate, if not honey bees? It seems like we have way too many insects in the world for the honey bee to be the only reliable pollinator. Besides, aren't solitary bees supposed to be better pollinators? As much as I like honey, I can't help but thinking there is a huge gap in logic with all of these people waving and screaming we are…

Solitary bees are specialized in small flowers like clover, and are territorial and well, solitary. In their niche are unbeatable, but can't compete with a healthy beehive if we talk about apples, pears, peaches, plums or cherries.
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