Bees, Cow Chips, Garbage

24 Jun 2023

On one of my YouTube binges, I wound on a YouTube video, “Why beekeepers usually don’t plant flowers next to the hive”. The creator explains why bees don’t usually forage near their hive, by using cow chips as an example. He takes a bucket and picks up cow chips as the moves away from the hive. The bucket gets heavier and he winds up having to take a full bucket of cow chips back to his truck. He compares this walking some distance from the truck before picking up cow chips and he bucket only gets full as he is close to the truck.

If we consider the case where picking all the nectar at the hive, flying to the farthest flower and coming back being equal to 1 unit of energy. The case of picking up nectar as you fly away from the hive, reaching the farthest flower, then flying back without stopping for more nectar is 0.75 units of energy. The case where you fly to the farthest flower and pick up nectar as you are flying back is 0.25 units of energy. If you pick up nectar coming back instead of going out, you only spend 1/3 of the energy. You can visualize this yourself by making a plot of distance and weight for the various scenarios.

I applied this principle the last time I went garbage picking. One of the most common pieces of trash on the street are cigarette butts. So many. These filters are actually made out of plastic, so you can fashion a cigarette butt into a blade. They aren’t something you want hanging out in nature. At least in downtown San Francisco, they have TerraCycle Cigarette Recycling Containers. I hope people are using them.

This can also be applied to fruit picking. Go to the farthest trees, then start picking fruit. These trees will have more untouched fruit, so you can pick the biggest and ripest fruit. Other people will have likely filled up their baskets before reaching these trees.