The Nature of Things

For years we've been hearing about problems facing bees, especially honeybees. There is colony collapse disorder, mites, pesticides, in addition to all the predators and disease which the little insects have to face. It is daunting to say the least and bee populations have been declining drastically year after year. Well, now I have some anecdotal evidence to add to that sad litany. My garden has always been visited by lots of bees, both native bees and honeybees. In past years, there have been hundreds, thousands even, of honeybees buzzing around the yard on a hot summer day, sipping from flowers, lining up around the edges of the birdbaths to get water, or crowding onto my inefficient hummingbird feeder to gather the drips of sugar water that leak out. I don't know where they came from; perhaps there was a neighbor who was a beekeeper or they may have been bees that had gone feral, but they were present in great numbers. This is a picture from last year when there were plenty...

Honeybees have been dying off in unusual numbers for years now. Conservationists have raised the alarm repeatedly about what this could mean, that it could be a harbinger of an even larger problem for the environment as a whole.  Some who work in agriculture have been dismayed also, because many of the crops they raise depend largely upon honeybees for their pollination and production. Typically, others have pooh-poohed the whole idea that there is anything unusual or out of the ordinary going on. Now comes word that in the past year alone  40 to 50 percent of the hives needed to pollinate many of the nation’s fruits and vegetables have been wiped out by the mysterious malady that has ravaged the honeybee population. This finally seems to have gotten the attention of some people who had ignored the story before. For example, there is this instance cited in The New York Times' story about the plight of the honeybees: But Mr. Adee [the South Dakota owner of the nation's larges...