{"id":738,"date":"2011-02-24T17:46:57","date_gmt":"2011-02-24T17:46:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/janinajacobs.com\/?p=738"},"modified":"2011-02-24T17:46:57","modified_gmt":"2011-02-24T17:46:57","slug":"bees-on-the-tees-please","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/janinajacobs\/golf\/738\/bees-on-the-tees-please","title":{"rendered":"Bees on the Tees Please"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Despite an unpleasant encounter with a Mexican bee a couple weeks ago, there is still a great need for the proliferation of the species \u2013 though that particular one didn\u2019t make it.<\/p>\n

Taking a day-long sabbatical from playing the delightful El Camaleon Golf Club, which will play host to this weekend\u2019s PGA Mayakoba Golf Classic at the Fairmont Mayakoba, just south of Cancun, a group detoured to the unspoiled Sian Ka\u2019an Biosphere Reserve where a jungle walk through Mayan ruins ended at crystalline waters.\u00a0\u00a0 There, lunch was served not only to our tour, but to that bee who decided to take a bite out of my bootie.<\/p>\n

I have been stung by bees before, and come to think of it, the scene of the crime has always been on golf courses.\u00a0 Once while near a course Snack Shack, another while taking a drink from a can of lemonade on the golf cart, and yet another time while playing in a USGA Qualifying round for the Women\u2019s Amateur Public Links national championship in Charlottesville, Virginia.\u00a0 But getting stung while sitting down for a repast of freshly-made Ceviche, tortillas, and white wine, well now that was a first.<\/p>\n

Our Mayan guide, Alberto, had been amazing us all morning with his knowledge of jungle cures and remedies for every ailment under the Mexican sun.\u00a0 When I felt the jab, I immediately asked him to check out my behind, tactfully and professionally of course.<\/p>\n

\u201cYep, that\u2019s a bee sting\u2026\u2026.but do not have what I need to put on it here.\u201d\u00a0 Oh Alberto, of all the injuries in all the jungles in all the world, I have to be victim to the one cure you don\u2019t<\/em> have.\u00a0\u00a0 Fortunately, I\u2019d put a bee sting packet in my knapsack for the tour.\u00a0 Strange, in that I have never<\/em> done this before and I\u2019m not even sure why the ointment was in the carry-on golf pouch I always bring on golf trips.\u00a0 And, when leaving the Mayakoba that morning, I was already out the door, remembered I\u2019d seen it somewhere, and turned right back around to retrieve it.\u00a0 Clairsentience?\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019m told I have it.<\/p>\n

The sting calmed down and was pretty much a non-issue within 10 minutes.\u00a0 I ate Ceviche and crunched tortillas. \u00a0\u00a0 I drank wine.\u00a0\u00a0 All was well.\u00a0\u00a0 Until two days later.\u00a0 Back in Michigan now, I woke up and there, surrounding my sting was an angry red circle about the size of a baseball – puffed-up.\u00a0 Thoughts turned to the Killer Mexican Bees I\u2019d heard about a few years back and my mind went racing.\u00a0 \u00a0\u201cHmmm, I\u2019ve been stung before but never out of the country \u2013 and certainly not by Mexican Bees!\u201d\u00a0 I watched in dismay as the swollen area continued to spread.\u00a0 By nighttime, the baseball had transformed into a softball.\u00a0 I\u2019d also developed a nasal stuffiness and congestion associated with allergies.\u00a0 Could it be(e) trouble??<\/p>\n

An Internet diagnosis proved to be calming:\u00a0 24-48 hours can lapse before these symptoms normally appear, with the area healing in about 7 days.\u00a0\u00a0 Whew!\u00a0 It has been 9 days and finally, my \u2018strawberry\u2019 is gone.<\/p>\n

Bee-fore condemning them for the attack, it is interesting to note that I came across some good information about our friendly bee population, much of which should concern all golfers:<\/p>\n

Alarming collapses of bee colonies have hit the news in the last few years.\u00a0\u00a0 About 30-40% of all<\/em> bee colonies are dying.\u00a0 The top killers are disease, pesticides, and get this:\u00a0 not enough flowers.<\/p>\n

So why is that of interest to us?\u00a0 According to bee researcher and University of Minnesota Entomology Professor Marla Spivak, \u201cThere aren\u2019t enough flowers out there for bees anymore.\u00a0 Corn and soybean crops provide basically nothing for the bees.\u00a0 And we use a lot of herbicides to get rid of all those weedy plants on our roadsides and crop borders and golf courses, so there aren\u2019t enough flowers to provide nectar and pollen for bees.\u00a0 The flowers they do find are contaminated with pesticides, which can weaken bees and make them susceptible to disease.\u201d<\/p>\n

Besides my concern for the flowers, my other question is, \u2018if corn and soybean crops provide nothing for the bees\u2019 then what are these crops providing for us, the major consumers of soy and corn?\u00a0\u00a0 Genetically modified organism (GMO) technology introduced into these mega-crops is affecting bees already, in the form of non-nutrition.\u00a0 Are we next….or already there?<\/p>\n

Environmental concerns are all over the golf course map these days but rarely has anything been said or done about planting more flowers to aid pollination.\u00a0 In fact, sometimes architects are criticized for doing the ‘pretty flower’ thing with beds and plantings and are reminded that these are not in keeping with the natural course features.\u00a0 Perhaps they might<\/em> have been before the land was torn apart to build the golf course.\u00a0 The hard truth is, that without bees and what they do, life as we know it would cease to exist…..not to mention golf courses too.\u00a0 And for that, I’m a little bit sorry my bee is now history.<\/p>\n

Here’s a couple more gems about bees:\u00a0\u00a0 did you know that, just like golfing buddies, bees all have different personalities?\u00a0 Some are laissez-faire, some are busy, others are noisy, and some are cranky?\u00a0 The next time you face an offensive or disagreeable person, you may wish to recall one particular facet of bee-havior: \u00a0 when a Queen produces honeybees which can recognize a colony resident infected with hive-threatening diseases,\u00a0 they collectively throw out the infected bee.\u00a0 No trial.\u00a0 No civil rights.\u00a0 No medical advocate.\u00a0 No appeal.\u00a0 Not quite what we humans do…..but just think if we could settle the score this way with an offensive member of our golfing foursome?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite an unpleasant encounter with a Mexican bee a couple weeks ago, there is still a great need for the… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":743,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,2227,17],"tags":[1378,5306,5307],"class_list":["post-738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-golf","category-fairmont-hotels","category-courses-and-travel","tag-fairmont-mayakoba","tag-bees","tag-sian-ka-an"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/janinajacobs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/24\/2011\/02\/Bee-Angry.gif","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/janinajacobs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/janinajacobs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/janinajacobs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/janinajacobs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/janinajacobs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=738"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/janinajacobs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":755,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/janinajacobs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738\/revisions\/755"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/janinajacobs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/janinajacobs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/janinajacobs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/janinajacobs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}