Honeybee Shortage in California

You're listening to KFI Am six forty wake Up Call with me Amy King on demand on the iHeartRadio app. Good morning, I'm Amy King. This is your wake up call for Tuesday, February twenty fifth. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app and happy to have you along. Thanks to Michael Monks filled in for me yesterday, did a great job and brought ice cream and brought ice cream. Oh sure, he's just trying to earn favor with you guys. So I went on a quick trip up to Oregon

I was just.

Really disappointed that those words were even uttered to suggest that she wasn't keeping Angelino safe, and I didn't believe that she deserved to be treated in this manner.

If Crowley does appeal, she will need ten of the fifteen city council members to back her. LA City Council President Mark CUIs. Harris Dawson says he encouraged Mayor Bass to, as he put it, separate from ousted fire chief Crowley weeks ago. Bess fired the chief on Friday, citing failures in leadership before the fires last month. Councilwoman Tracy Park says it was disappointing and that everyone in La knew

The defense says that their client, Jeffrey Ferguson, was in the middle of a pretty heated argument with his wife after dinner in August twenty three. Ferguson allegedly was attempting to remove his gun from his ankle holster at his wife's request when the gun accidentally went off. The prosecution says that his wife, Cheryl Ferguson, scolded her husband to point a real gun at her, and that's when he

An La City Council committee is considering proposal to require all pets to be microchipped. The goal is to reduce the number of lost animals entering the city's shelters and to reduce overcrowding. The Department of Analtmal Services charges fifteen dollars to microchip a pet and use his grant money to help cover the fee for people who can't afford it. Let's say good morning now to ABC's and Es de la Kata. Good morning in as.

Good morning.

So President Zelenski and his country have been in a vicious war with Russia for three years since the country was invaded. How does Zelenski say he's feeling on the three year anniversary of the war.

Yes, I mean he is paying tribute to what he is calling the absolute heroism of Ukrainians over the last three years defending against Russia's invasion. We saw sorts of ceremonies being held yesterday throughout Ukraine, physically in Kiev, people reflecting on the three horrific.

Last three years and all the lives that have been lost. Is Zelenski saying that.

He is proud of Ukraine, that he wants to thank everyone who defends and supports it. There were a number of foreign leaders who traveled to Ukraine to be there on Monday to meet with Zelenski and.

To show their support for Ukraine.

And it was a bit of a split screen moment because at the same time you had President Trump meeting with the French President's Manuel mccran. The focus of that made a meeting, of course, was also.

Ukraine, okay, And who were some of the leaders that visited.

So interestingly, you had the Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, who's also been you know, we know Zelenski has been kind of going at it with Trump, with Trump college Vilenski and Dictator and Vilenski kind of pushing back, and then Trudeau has also been going.

At it with Trump, recently calling Trudeau the governor of the fifty first estate.

There were also representatives from France, so that France sent to European Minister while Macron.

Was over in Washington to you know, still show that France stands with Ukraine.

You had the British as well, former the British Prime Minister Bors Johnson was there. So a number of kind of big names from across Europe. You know, lots of concerns in Europe about what the US's new policy towards Ukraine is going to mean for them and for security on the continent.

Okay, And as are are any of the other countries that were showing strong support for Ukraine kind of backing away from that as the US appears to be doing.

Not no, I think quite the opposite actually, as you're seeing the Americans kind of you know, changing their policy. You're seeing the Europeans really trying to step up, and it really is talking about it.

They're talking about how Europe needs to play a bigger role here. We've heard that from the French, from the British.

The Germany just held elections over the weekend and it was the Conservatives that won. The leader of the Conservative Party, Frederick mess he has been critical of Trump and specifically Trump's outreach to Russia. He is pro Ukraine pronado and just after being you know, after his party one, he told German TV that he thinks Europe essentially needs to play more of a leading role here in that Europe

Okay, and then as the war continues and discussions are going about how to end it, are are there plans for the US to send any more aid to Ukraine or is that kind of on hold for right now?

You know, I think the focus in the US right now is going to be this deal. We've seen President Trump just pushing for this deal. We know he loves you know the art of the deal, and so I think that's where the focus is. And until that gets done, I'm not sure that a whole lot, a whole lot of other aid is going to.

Get through, or that much more is going to be done.

The Europeans are trying to kind of step in here, but there's also, you know, just so much they can do.

So, yeah, the focus is going to be on this deal.

President Trumps trying to push a Galenski to sign this agreement that would hand the US hundreds of billion of dollars worth of Ukrainian resources. We saw Maccron yesterday, so I think Maccran is there to try and kind of smooth things out between everyone. He said that everyone is seeking the same outcome, which is peace. But he also tried to warn Trump that, you know, a week deal would be would be would be.

A bad thing.

And he tried to remind Trump of Russia's poor track record in keeping its international commitments.

And we will see if he listens to Macrome. They seem to have a decent relationship, seemed to be getting along yesterday, so we'll see. Ab season is a bit of a romance there, Yeah, a romance that's a good word for ab season is de la kata. Thanks so much for the information. We appreciate it as always.

Thank you.

All right, let's get back to some of the stories coming out of the KFI twenty four hour news room. Did you know there was that little bit of a leg she's impatis, she's in Paris, so I think we had a little a little delay. The FAA and Delta are investigating the source of a smoky haze that filled a plane headed from Georgia to South Carolina. NBC News's Emily Ikeda says the plane had to return to Atlanta's Hartsfield Jackson International Airport yesterday.

The Boeing seven one seven was only in the air for a few minutes, looping back arounds for an emergency landing at the world's busiest airport around nine am. Slides were deployed and first responders helped people deplane.

There were ninety four passengers and five crew members on board. Two people had to be treated by medics. Delta put out a statement apologizing to passengers, saying nothing is more important than the safety of our customers and people. Defense Secretary Pete Hegsas says he is replacing the top lawyers for the military services because he doesn't think they're well

The tariffs are going forward.

President Trump says his tariffs on Canada and Mexico will start next month. He said it during a news conference at the White House yesterday with French President and Manuel Macron.

We're on time with the tariffs, and it seems like that's moving along very rapidly.

We've been mistreated very badly by many countries.

Trump also stressed that his intended reciprocal tariffs were on schedule to begin as soon as April. Joanne Fabric has announced it is closing all of its fabric in craft stores.

Eighty two year old company May. The announcement Monday, a liquidator has agreed to buy all of Joanne's assets and going out of business sales will be held at stores. This comes after Joanne had announced plans earlier this month to close around five hundred to eight hundred of its stores.

Joanne filed for Chapter eleven bankruptcy protection last month, citing sluggish consumer demand and inventory shortages. But Francis is showing a slight improvement in his condition and is resuming some of his activities. The Vatican says the eighty eight year old remains in critical condition with pneumonia in both lungs. The update said early signs of mild kidney failure that were reported on Sunday have shown no cause for concerns. More people are falling behind on their debt, that's a

When first discovered, it was estimated that the asteroid, which could be three hundred feet across, had a slight chance of hitting the Earth and doing significant damage, but upon further review, NASA now says the odds are nearly zero.

But astronomers say there's an almost two percent chance the asteroid will hit the Moon when it buzzes by the Earth. In December of twenty thirty two, police are looking for a group of teens who beat up a driver in the mid Wilshire area. The LAPD says there's some sort of argument between the driver and a group of about twenty to thirty people. Video shows the group pummeling the driver when he got out of his car to confront

Yes, thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to talk about this crisis. So very unfortunately, because of what's going on in Washington, the oxygen has been sucked out of the room and not a whole lot of media is talking about this. But across the nation we're facing a record high loss of colonies. We're talking about sixty two percent of hives across the country have collapsed, and some operations are reporting between eighty to one hundred percent.

They've lost all of their.

Hives and they're not going to be able to recover. This has been absolutely devastating, and what is particularly frightening about it is that we still don't know for sure what has occurred to push these numbers into this region. So we went from an average, so a little bit of backstory back in seven we were having about a fifteen percent loss of hives, and then because of the four p's, the pests, the pathogens, the pesticide, and the poor nutrition, the numbers went up to about forty percent.

About it, Okay, and Keith, I mean, is there any substitute? I mean, you need the bees. That's what they do, They pollinate. I mean, but if there are no bees, the pollination just can't happen, or there's no other way to do it.

Right, there's not going to be unlike places in China where they have to do a pollination by hand, that's not going to be feasible here at scale at all. Honey Bees are too important to our way of getting food on the table. And bee keepers, quite frankly, are the red headed stepchild of the agricultural industry. And they don't get the attention that they deserve because it's such a niche industry. But they need help and they need support and this and this is crippling to not only

Because if the bees aren't pollinating that like one of the big ones right now that we're talking about is that for the almond crop, which is a multi billion dollar business in California, they need those bees because bloom season is right around the corners.

Now, it's right now, Okay, and you're out, and you're absolutely right. They haven't gotten enough bees. And if you're an almond grower, you can't even get crop insurance unless you can prove you have so many highs per a here. And so yeah, this is devastating. And just in the bees alone, just the beekeeping alone, just a little bit of scale, this represents about two hundred and twenty four million dollars of.

Loss, and the economic impact across agriculture is going to be around six hundred and thirty four point seven million dollars.

Okay, And then Keith, the other thing that I mentioned that the problem there are two problems. One is that the bee population is god who knew was sixty two percent of the hives of colps. That's just crazy numbers. But that has led to another problem, and that's the shortage of bees, which is leading to people stealing bee hives.

Yes, absolutely disgusting. I think we've all seen the westerns of cattle wrestlers, right, yeah, and today twenty twenty five, what is it. It's be wrestling. And what's really sick about it is that it's where it's basically people who are already beekeepers obviously, because you need to have infrastructure to be able to pick up these palettes of bees

And then keith. So then the people who are stealing the hives are going and selling them like or renting them to the farmers or something, because the farmers desperately need them for their crops.

So they're going to either take them back to their operation. They're going to take the bees out and put them in their boxes. Or they're going to paint over all of the branding and the markings of the rightful owner and then put them back out as of they're that they were their hives to begin with. And it's just an absolute tragedy.

Yeah, so, Keith, I know, I mean, it just sounds I didn't realize that the problem was this bad. Is there anything that we can do aside from setting up a little high in our backyard?

Really, if you want to be more effective, And this kind of sounds corny and cliche, but it's truth. Buy American honey. Make sure that when you go to the store, you're buying honey that is made in the USA, and that is going to directly help beekeepers. It's just going to put money directly in the hands of beekeepers. Another thing that you can do is doing what you're doing right now. Talk about it because, like I said at the very beginning, this is not getting the media attention

Absolutely, Keith Roberts with the Valley Hive and Chatsworth, it's really a cool place if you want to go and check out the bees and their nursery. It's a beautiful place to go. And thanks so much for all that information, Keith. Well we'll keep it in the spotlight. Bees bees are friends. We need them.

Thank you so much for this opportunity.

Amy, You take care, all right, you got it. It's just that is just so freaky, and you know, it's that whole circle of life thing that one thing is dependent on the next, and the next thing is dependent on the next, And what's going to happen if they're all gone with our food supply. I mean that's really scary. Yeah, no kidding. Police are looking for a group of teens who made up a driver in the mid Wilshire area.

It is a short term victory for the Trump White House as it aims to, as you say, exclude the Associated Press from the tight pool of reporters that cover the president in the close in spaces of the White House, like the Oval Office, the Roosevelt Room, a couple of other spaces. But you know, what you have to understand and why the judge is also kind of sort of looking at this sideways, is the fact that the AP has also been excluded from the largest room in the executive mansion.

That's the East Room of the.

White House, where they're now two press conferences that the world's one of the world's largest and oldest news organizations has been excluded from covering. And those are joint press conferences with other world leaders with foreign press alongside the American press, hundreds of people in the room and no

So if the judge makes that ruling but says it's probably going to lose, is does that mean? I don't get how that that seems incongruous to.

Why would the judge not have issued his order yesterday restoring the AP's access Because of the way that it works in the federal court when you go to court and you initiate a you know, when you ask a judge for a temporary restraining order, you have to meet a number of requirements, including you have to you have to demonstrate that irreparable harm is being done to you

That's not how the courts have viewed.

This here, and it's why the judge essentially gave two pieces of advice to the White House yesterday. One to change course and readmit the White House readmit the AP to the pool, or two scrap the pool all together, because if the arrangement is no longer being adhered to or the WHCA, that's the White House correspond Association, which in full disclosure, I once led. If the WHCA is not the arbiter of who decides who's in the pool and who's not, and the White House decides for itself,

Yeah, okay, Well, we'll be following it, and we appreciate all the information. Steven Bortnoy, thank you so much. You bet all right time to get in your business with Bloomberg's Courtney Donaho. Good morning, Courtney. So Eli Lilly ramping up the fight against cheaper copycat versions of zepp Bound because there's no longer a shortage dream exactly.

Good morning. Well, it's lowering the price of the blockbuster obesity drug that everybody's been looking for. It seems the company is cutting the costs by about fifty bucks. But you have to remember this is still super expensive for a lot of folks.

It's like a thousand dollars a month, isn't it.

Yeah, five yeah, five hundred bucks for a five milligram bile So depending on how many times you have to you have to do it. But so many, hundreds of thousands of Americans have turned to the these compounded versions, which are typically cheaper. They were more readily available, but they don't go through the same rigorous approval process as

Okay, So with the supply chain being beefed up where they don't have the shortage of those now there could be a shortage of the less expensive ones if Eli Lily gets their.

Way, Well you can see a lot of well a lot of people are probably going to say, well, you know what, I was afraid to do a compounded version for a while because of these threats and what they've been seeing from what Eli Lilly has been saying, because they did have a campaign out there saying this is not what you want to use. You want to use

Yeah, it's still very expensive. Okay, we just got word that Joeanne Fabric is closing all of its stores. But not all retailers are doing bad. Home Depots bounce them back a little bit.

Oh yeah, and Joe Anne, we're going to know about the stores coming up soon. How many of them, Well, not all of them are going to close, but when they're going to close. But home Depot had their latest quarterly earnings report in showing a bit of improvement there. But retailers overall, they're seeing a lot of uns andy. Consumers are still pretty selective and very cautious. But home Depot was one of the big winners of the pandemic. Americans were splurging on sprucing up their homes. I know

Okay, Bloomberg's Courtney Donahoe getting in your business. Thank you so much. We'll talk to you again tomorrow, see you later, all right, bye. La City Council woldman Monica Rodriguez has criticized Mayor Bass for firing La Fire Chief Kristin Crowley. Rodriguez says Mass is using Crowley as a scapegoat. The disaster recovery centers in West LA and Altadena cutting back operations a bit. They're going to be closed on Sundays starting next week, but we'll still be open Monday through Saturday.

Yes, yes we do, and yet that is that's been one of those one of those things that's always true is that every individual you could be laid off, especially like if you're working for the man, right if you don't run your own business, like you work at the pleasure of the business that you work for. And we're seeing this in particular with like what doges do with the federal government.

This.

I'm really sad about what's happening for a lot of individuals who are on the federal payroll and DOGE seems

Okay, three to six months, and you want that sitting in a savings account, not in a place where you can't get to it right or.

It got Yeah, it's got to be liquid, it's got to be accessible if you're sticking. I literally had a question from a listener recently. She's crushing it on the investing side, maxing out like a four to oh one k, which is a ton of money to be investing every month. But then on the flip side, she's like, I don't have any money in savings, and I don't want that

Right?

Like, if I did lose my job, how much could I cut back on my monthly spending. I'm not asking people to go bear bones budget while they've still got money flowing in, but it's a good idea to at least be prepared for that and to say, listen, I've thought through this. If I were to lose my job, I can cut back my monthly spending from forty eight hundred dollars a month down to thirty three hundred dollars a month, and that would give my emergency fund an extra month and a half or two months to to

Yeah it now, and then set it aside for in case you need it so you don't have to exactly, we don't have to do it now. So I can keep my Burke Williams membership for another couple of months at least, right.

But it's nice to know, oh, hey, if I lose my that's that's gone, right, Or the eating out is gone for the time being, or some of these subscriptions that they're gone. Like you can't necessarily get rid of a car payment overnight, right, but that's something you can you can kind of have you your eyes looking forward

Yeah. Such great advice from our buddy Joel Larsgard, who you can listen to every Sunday on how to Money noon to two right here on KFI. You can also follow Joel at how to Money. Joel and I want to check out your bare bones budget at howtomoney dot com. Thank you, Joel.

Thanks Amy.

All right, a person has been robbed at gunpoint outside the Hilton at lax Pilly say. The robbers took trash bags and luggage last night and drove off in a gray Mercedes Benz. Police put out descriptions of what the guys were wearing, hoodies and dark pants, but not of what they actually look like. The state's Department of Fish and Wildlife says chinook salmon have returned to the North Yuba River in northern California for the first time in

If you're going steadily downward, cough isn't getting better, it's getting worse. You're getting a little short of breath, you're getting really high fevers. Time to call somebody, because that means your life is threatened.

Health officials say the large majority of the deaths have come from people over the age of sixty five, but they also say fifteen children have died from flu. The avalanche danger in Colorado is high. ABC's Alex Stones as fourteen people in the state have been caught at avalanches just this month.

In the last ten days in Colorado, there have been over five hundred avalanches, most of them small but with a lot of snowfall. The Colorado Avalanche Information Center says there has been a recent spike in avalanches since Valentine's Day.

He says So far this season, three people in Colorado have been killed in avalanches. Two powerhouse singers may just defy gravity for Hollywood's biggest night.

Wicked stars Cynthia Aarrevo and Ariana Grande will perform at the Academy Awards this weekend. No songs from Wicked are actually eligible to be nominated because no new music was composed specifically for the movie, but the Broadway musical adaptation is up for ten Oscars, including Best Picture. Some other record artists scheduled to perform include Doja Cat and Queen Latifah. The ninety seventh Academy Awards can be streamed on Hulu this Sunday starting at four pm. Andrew Caravella KFI News.

This is KFI and KOST HD two Los Angeles, Orange County Southland. Weather from KFI morning fog and low clouds, becoming sunny with highs in the mid seventies at the beaches, seventies to low eighties for Metro La Inland O c and the Valley's low to mid eighties for the Inland Empire, sixties and seventies in the Annealo Valley. Sunny and warmer. Wednesday and Thursday withhis in the eighties to near ninety