You probably heard or saw the coverage a few months ago about how honeybees are mysteriously dying off in such large numbers. Since there hasn’t been much, if any talk about it in the mainstream media lately, you could be excused for thinking that the bees are on the comeback trail. However, you’d be wrong. Unfortunately, the problem continues.

If somehow you missed the original stories about the problem, which has been named colony collapse disorder (CCD), you might be wondering why we care. Less bees, fewer stings, right? Well, maybe, but the honeybee does more than poke us with that stinger. A quote from no less than Albert Einstein might explain the gravity of the situation “”If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.”

There have been a number of reasons postulated for the decline, but no firm conclusions. People have theorized that it could be cell phone radiation, genetically modified crops, pesticides, Varroa mites, and the feeding of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) to the bees, among other things. Additionally, the practice of beekeepers trucking their bees thousands of miles around the country to pollinate crops has been implicated by some as a source of stress that could eventually result in this problem.

Note that all these possible reasons, with the exception of the mites, are things that have been introduced by man. It’s beginning to look like our incessant need to mess around with the natural world is finally coming back to bite us. I’m not sure what it will take before we can step back and realize that things like large-scale industrial livestock production, genetically modified crops, excessive use of HFCS, all kinds of radiation bouncing around, and so many of the other things we do without ever thinking about the ramifications are messing up the balance of our environment. Add global warming to the mix and it doesn’t look good. Since we can’t seem to do something as simple as pass a law to stop routine feeding of antibiotics to livestock, even after we’ve seen the advent of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections such as MRSA, I’m not real hopeful that we’ll get our act together in time to make a difference.

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