from AlterNet:
Colony Collapse: Do Massive Bee Die-Offs Mean an End to Our Food System as We Know it?
By Scott Thill, AlterNet. Posted June 11, 2007.
It may sound like urban legend but it's not. A frightening trend of bee colony collapses could lead to everything from a radically transformed diet to an overall wipeout of the world's food supply. The joke may have fallen flat, but this time no one could blame Bill Maher. Sure, it happened on the May 4, 2007 installment of his show Real Time With Bill Maher, but CNN personality and senior medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta was the one delivering the punch line, and it seems he was the only one in the room who believed the issue of Earth's mysteriously vanishing honeybees was a joke. And while some may argue that he stayed on message, promoting his May 19 documentary called Danger: Poison Food, he nevertheless fumbled for answers when Maher asked him about what could be killing a major component of the nation's food supply.
"Gosh, I don't know," Gupta answered, searching for context. "The -- you know, with regards to bees in particular, I'm not sure what's killing the bees. I'm not sure what's killing the birds or the bees."
Cue the laugh track.
In Gupta's defense, a few weeks or months ago, the increasing disappearance of the honeybees, known now by the technical term Colony Collapse Disorder, had that feel of an urban legend, a phenomenon so esoteric and strange that it sounded like something out of science fiction. Except it's not: It's a frightening trend that, according to those hard at work at solving the problem at universities and organizations worldwide, could lead to everything from a radically transformed diet to an overall wipeout of the world's food supply.
"It is real," argued Dewey M. Caron, professor of entomology at the University of Delaware and one of several authorities investigating the issue with the Mid-Atlantic Apiculture Research and Extension Consortium's Colony Collapse Disorder Working Group (MAAREC). "We surveyed a few states and figured out that half to three-fourths of a million bee colonies have died. This is no urban legend. It is serious."
What is so serious is not only that the bees themselves are dying off without a smoking gun present, but that most people have no idea of the role they play in the food supply at large. Commercial beehives pollinate over a third of America's crops, and that web of nourishment encompasses everything from fruits like peaches, apples, cherries, strawberries and more, to nuts like California almonds, 90 percent of which are helped along by the honeybees. Without this annual pollination, you could conceivably kiss those crops goodbye, to say nothing of the honey bees produce or the flowers they also fertilize. .....(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.alternet.org/environment/53491/