Honey Bees
It’s 35 degrees outside and here I am worrying about honey bees. It seems there is a strange phenomenon happening called “Colony Collapse Disorder.” When bee keepers inspect the hive, they may find that the honey bee colony has only a few bees remaining, the queen and a few others, but the worker bees that carry the nectar to the hive are missing. Not lying outside the hive dead, but just missing.
You may say, “Why should I care? That means less bees to sting me and my children.” That is true. Also less bees to pollinate your flowers. And less bees to pollinate the fruit trees, vegetables, and other food crops that you rely on to feed your family. Less pollination means less yield, and less yield means, you guessed it, higher prices for food.
Commercial bee keepers raise their bees for the sale of honey, as you know, but also to rent the hives to commercial farmers for pollination of crops. As colonies die off, it means less income for the bee keeper, as well as less pollination for the farmers. This may well be the agricultural crisis for 2007 and beyond.
Washington has become aware of the problem finally, and hearings are taking place to determine what, if anything, can be done to discover the cause and hopefully the solution to this potentially devastating problem. I’ll tell you more as I learn about it.
Written by Lynn on the slope of Teasel Hill where it is still 35 degrees and no end in sight.
