"Silence of the Bees"

Bees are disappearing...



This evening while watching the PBS rebroadcast of NATURE episode "Silence of the Bees," I felt a deepest chill down my spine.

During the winter of 2006, the Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) strike literally overnight and over one-third of bee hives in the US were abandoned. Scientists scrambled to unravel the mystery but were not able to pinpoint to a single cause despite finding numerous disturbing clues. They thought the AIDS-like epidemic was the result of a perfect storm scenario where bees finally succumbed to an Australian virus following a long-term effect from malnutrition, pesticide toxins and other environmental factors. The bee population, as well as other pollinators like butterflies, has been on an alarming declining trend for years.

The massive disappearing of the bees has dire consequences on farming, food supplies, and world ecology as a whole. I learned just how essential these little buzzing insects have been besides pollinating flowers and producing honey - they are also the pollinator agents responsible for one-third of crops and fruits we consume, such as berries, pears, etc.

One farmer exclaimed "I am scared to death."

It propelled me to think further... Maybe, we have been doing just a bit too much to the environment more than we know, and it seems we do not come remotely close to realize just how much irreversible damage we may have already caused.