As bees go missing, a $9.3B crisis lurks

[unhappycamper]

Pennsylvania apiarist Dennis vanEngelsdorp helped form a group trying to crack the case of the vanishing insects.

The mysterious disappearance of millions of bees is fueling fears of an agricultural disaster, writes Fortune's David Stipp.

As bees go missing, a $9.3B crisis lurks
By David Stipp, Fortune
August 28 2007: 7:26 AM EDT


(Fortune Magazine) -- It's a sweet time for honeybees in the rolling hills of eastern Pennsylvania, and the ones humming around Dennis vanEngelsdorp seem too preoccupied by the blooming knapweed nearby to sting him as he carefully lifts the top off their hive.
But something has gone terribly wrong in this little utopia in a box. "There should be a lot more workers than there are," he says. "This

That pattern -- worker bees playing Amelia Earhart -- has become dismayingly familiar to the nation's beekeepers over the past year, as well as to growers whose crops are pollinated by honeybees. A third of our food, from apples to zucchinis, begins with floral sex acts abetted by honeybees trucked around the country on 18-wheelers.
The mysterious deaths of the honeybees

We wouldn't starve if the mysterious disappearance of bees, dubbed colony collapse disorder, or CCD, decimated hives worldwide. For one thing, wheat, corn, and other grains don't depend on insect pollination.

But in a honeybee-less world, almonds, blueberries, melons, cranberries, peaches, pumpkins, onions, squash, cucumbers, and scores of other fruits and vegetables would become as pricey as sumptuous old wine. Honeybees also pollinate alfalfa used to feed livestock, so meat and milk would get dearer as well. Ditto for farmed catfish, which are fed alfalfa too.

And jars of honey, of course, would become golden heirlooms to pass along to the grandkids. (Used for millennia as a wound dressing, honey contains potent antimicrobial compounds that enable it to last for decades in sealed containers.)


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[Lasher]

1. A neighbor just gave me a quart of honey.

His bees are doing fine. There are no big farms here in this area of West Virginia, so maybe that has something to do with his bees' prosperity.

Where I live it has been rare to see a honey bee. I raise a small garden every year and my cucumbers do just fine. I guess the bumble bees and other such creatures do the polinating.

[displacedtexan]

2. The bee problem here in DC is quite different.

Hors d'oeuvre sized bumble bees hovering around the flowers and plants.

[liberalmike27]

3. Could Be

Maybe they want us to all go on a diet?

Maybe they've joined the Sharks in realizing that the biggest danger to the planet is people, and are striking out against us. You've got to watch that "hive-mind".

No, more likely we've done it somehow, some sort of pesticide. Hopefully natural selection will work its way through this, and a new, stronger variety of bees will emerge.