Sanding Is Complete. Any Suggestions For A Design To Paint On The Handle?

Reblog this if you support LGBTQIA+ rights, unfollow/dni if you can't do it

Edit: I'm sorry for not putting a flash warning before, and not reblogging doesn't necessarily make you a bad person. What I'm saying is to dni/unfollow if you don't support LGBT+ rights

goodgoodgood.co

First-of-its-kind lab breeds bumble bee babies to save species from extinction

A lab in Ontario, Canada is revolutionizing the “save the bees” campaign by being the first lab to successfully raise yellow-banded bumble b

"In 2021, scientists in Guelph, Ontario set out to accomplish something that had never been done before: open a lab specifically designed for raising bumble bees in captivity. 

Now, three years later, the scientists at the Bumble Bee Conservation Lab are celebrating a huge milestone. Over the course of 2024, they successfully pulled off what was once deemed impossible and raised a generation of yellow-banded bumble bees. 

The Bumble Bee Conservation Lab, which operates under the nonprofit Wildlife Preservation Canada, is the culmination of a decade-long mission to save the bee species, which is listed as endangered under the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation...

Although the efforts have been in motion for over a decade, the lab itself is a recent development that has rapidly accelerated conservation efforts. 

For bee scientists, the urgency was necessary. 

“We could see the major declines happening rapidly in Canada’s native bumble bees and knew we had to act, not just talk about the problem, but do something practical and immediate,” Woolaver said. 

Yellow-banded bumble bees, which live in southern Canada and across a huge swatch of the United States, were once a common species.

However, like many other bee species, their populations declined sharply in the mid-1990s from a litany of threats, including pathogens, pesticides, and dramatic habitat loss. 

Since the turn of the century, scientists have plunged in to give bees a helping hand. But it was only in the last decade that Woolaver and his team “identified a major gap” in bumble bee conservation and set out to solve it. 

“No one knew how to breed threatened species in captivity,” he explained. “This is critically important if assurance populations are needed to keep a species from going extinct and to assist with future reintroductions.”

To start their experiment, scientists hand-selected wild queen bees throughout Ontario and brought them to the temperature-controlled lab, where they were “treated like queens” and fed tiny balls of nectar and pollen. 

Then, with the help of Ontario’s African Lion Safari theme park, the queens were brought out to small, outdoor enclosures and paired with other bees with the hope that mating would occur. 

For some pairs, they had to play around with different environments to “set the mood,” swapping out spacious flight cages for cozier colony boxes. 

And it worked. 

“The two biggest success stories of 2024 were that we successfully bred our focal species, yellow-banded bumble bees, through their entire lifecycle for the first time,” Woolaver said. 

“[And] the first successful overwintering of yellow-banded bumble bees last winter allowed us to establish our first lab generation, doubling our mating successes and significantly increasing the number of young queens for overwintering to wake early spring and start their own colonies for future generations and future reintroductions.”

Although the first-of-its-kind experiment required careful planning, consideration, resources, and a decade of research, Woolaver hopes that their efforts inspire others to help bees in backyards across North America. 

“Be aware that our native bumble bees really are in serious decline,” Woolaver noted, “so when cottagers see bumble bees pollinating plants in their gardens, they really are seeing something special.”"

-via GoodGoodGood, December 9, 2024

"Solarpunk will never happen!"

As if it's not already coming, already here and starting to bloom before our eyes.

Neighborhood cooking clubs and libraries lending out more then just books, it's the art club that the community garden started, it's the funky gardens my neighbors have.

It's the DIY projects ppl wear with pride and ones that hide in the back of their dresser drawer. It's in the magazines and podcasts and in passing hope forward.

Like gruella gardening alone is enough for proof of concept for me, but the rise in community events and potlucks and fighting for rent caps and UBI and decentalizing energy and gardening is happening now.

And yea I gotta fight nazis and dickwards daily for it, and I gotta spend the time to educate and build up as I take down, but they can't say this future isn't coming. I'm here with you right now in it.

my sweet baby <3

i don’t have anything to say today but still felt like posting. anyway here’s my cat

her name is abigail (my grandpa named her) i have no clue what breed she is

anybody else deeply hate spotify rn. like i used to use it all the time, i have around 50 playlists. but now it sucks ass. like 2 minutes of unskippable ads for like 5 songs. and now you cant even play individual songs! you can’t shuffle playlists. if you had your playlist on shuffle before the update, now it’s stuck that way.

it’s become more convenient to use basic youtube for music now. only 10 seconds of unskippable ads per song, plus you can play individual songs, make playlists, and shuffle/loop playlists!

i never thought we’d see the day where youtube became a better music platform than spotify. but here we are. corporate greed ruins everything.

have you ever been sexually attracted to a voice

The tags are everything I know. I am sharing this with every single one to try and spread the word.

my favorite distraction <3

Reblog if

Trans ftm are valid

Trans mtf are valid

Enby peeps are valid

Intersex peeps are valid

Feminine enbys are valid

Masculine enbys are valid

Androgynous enbys are valid

Feminine trans men are valid

Feminine trans women are valid

Masculine trans men are valid

Masculine trans women are valid

Lesbians are valid

Gay people are valid

Bisexuals are valid

Trans people are valid

Queer people are valid

Asexual people are valid

Aromantic people are valid

Aroace people are valid

Pansexuals are valid

Omni peeps are valid

Genderfluid peeps are valid

Agender peeps are valid

Genderqueer peeps are valid

Demisexuals are valid

Demi boys are valid

Demigirl are valid

Aceflux are valid

Aroflux are valid

Acchileans are valid

Neptunic peeps are valid

Bigender peeps are valid

Designer peeps are valid

Enbian peeps are valid

Fluid flux peeps are valid

Hypersexual peeps are valid

Peeps with autism are valid

Peeps with ADD/ADHD are valid

Neurodivergent peeps in general are valid

LGBT folks are valid

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MIGHT ADD MORE!

Please correct me on any wrong information or any flags you’d like to see in there

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