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I was watching a great documentary series “The Galapagos” on the National Geographic Channel, saw some Galapagos bees pollinating away, and realized I never found out what happened to those missing bees from this past winter so I did some googling.
As you’ve probably heard, this past winter, millions of honey bees mysteriously vanished without a trace in over 20 states, which has much more dire consequences than a shortage of honey. More than 90 crops in the U.S. depend on their pollination, worth about $14 billion a year to the economy. Bees directly & indirectly affect about 1/3 of the typical American’s diet – the healthier part, that is. Source: New York Times “Losing Their Buzz”>>)
Despite the sequence of the entire honey bee genome being published in October 2006 to better understand these insects, and a House Hearing called in March to pinpoint the cause of this disappearance, currently called “colony collapse disorder” or “CCD,” nobody has come up with a definite reason why this happened. There are of course, tons of theories from viruses, stress, pesticides causing disorientation, global warming to alien abduction.
Curious to see if there have been any developments on this phenomenon, I did a quick news search, and have so far only come up with an article about scientists in Ontario, Canada, getting funding in late May to solve the bee mystery. (read it on cbc news >>) And then I saw on The Daily Green that Beekeeper Kim Flottum, editor of Bee Culture Magazine, blogged that there’s no buzz on CCD, and that the summer hives are looking good (I’ll take his word for it, he seems like he’s a Jedi Master of Beekeepers). So I’ve gathered that as of yet, this issue is still unsolved. I’m very curious to see if and when they come up with an answer.
My theory? The pesticides were stressing out the bees, making them loopy and thus easier to herd and persuade. The aliens took this chance to abduct the bees because they are mad about global warming. (We’re wrecking the planet and there’s no point in invading earth and taking over it anymore and they have to look elsewhere.)
Learn more about Colony Collapse Disorder on Wikipedia >>
