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You Know Honeybees are Disappearing Worldwide, Right?

What we’re describing as colony collapse disorder is the rapid loss of adult worker bees from the colony over a very short period of time, at a time in the season when we wouldn’t expect a rapid die-off of workers: late fall and early spring

Honeybee colonies are disappearing worldwide. What should be thriving hives are only queens and handfuls of whizzened worker drones. It is said that billions of bees are simply gone. Though there have been historical experiences of mass bee disappearances, never has it occurred on record at this magnitude.

This CNN article can catch you up quickly.

There is no technology that can come close the massive pollination service that bees provide to our ecosystem.

How long can this go on for before fruits, vegetable and nuts supplies and drastically reduced? Hopefully this part of some long-standing earthly ballet we do not understand yet and not a canary in coal mine of our own making.

2 Responses to “You Know Honeybees are Disappearing Worldwide, Right?” »»

  1. Comment by AndieGrace | 04/24/07 at 12:26 pm

    While it’s uncertain if Albert Einstein really said that when the bees disappear we’ve all got four years left (http://www.snopes.com/quotes/einstein/bees.asp), it doesn’t sound too far off the mark to imagine that without them we’re sorta kerfucted.

  2. Comment by Juditha williams | 05/24/07 at 7:46 pm

    In the summer of 2006, in northwestern New Jersey, on three occasions I came upon dead and nearly dead honeybees, lying prone in the centers of flowers. This happened in a strictly organic, pesticide-free garden. I’d never seen bees die that way before, and now wonder if it was related to this debacle.

    Another question. Can it be that our genetically engineered food crops are proving worthless or harmful to the honeybees?

    Please, someone enlighten me.

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