Accidental Blogger

The mysterious disappearance of colonies of honeybees across several nations has alarmed commercial beekeepers who rent their services to a variety of large farming operations, due to what has been termed the Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Entomologists and apiologists have been proposing and testing hypotheses ranging from radiation from cell phones (‘Turn off your cell phones and Save a Beehive’) to GM crops (courtesy the great Monsatan). We have purported quotes from the famed Einstein himself, credited with sobering utterances such as

"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."

Now that is something that even his biographer is
unaware of, though the media and blogs have pounced on it gleefully as
" Doom, doom to the hungry millions of the world who cannot be fed if
the bees die off!"  Or is it just a vast conspiracy to drive up the
prices of ordinary mass-produced fruits and veggies. My next nightmare
might run along these lines:

"-And why is a pound of tomatoes priced at $10.00, it was just $2.00 a few weeks back?"- me to the cashier.
"Sorry,
ma’am. The honeybees vanished, you know. The prices have jumped up
since then." (just like the increase in gas prices due to oil refinery
explosions, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc. etc.)

So when I wander around my garden, I am extra-relieved to see that
it’s business as usual for the bees and bumblebees hovering around my
cherry blossoms (even though I don’t care much for the sour cherries
they produce and leave them to the birds). Does that mean that there
are no widespread problems in the general bee population, if they are
surviving in my garden?

Interestingly, there might be a case for certain modes of beekeeping
being detrimental to the ability of bees to combat a variety of
possible environmental causes, as pointed out in the article at this link:

Prince Edward Island Green Party leader Sharon Labchuk, who keeps
organic "small cell" bees, says the big commercial beekeepers run their
operations like factory farms, which isn’t always beneficial to the
health of the bees. In order to ward off mites, diseases, and viruses,
insecticides and antibiotics have to be used, which, according to
experts, undermines the bees’ immune system and interferes with the
ability of the queen to spawn as many worker bees.

"You’ve got these guys with the varroa problems, they’re
putting pesticides in the hives, they’re whacking the antibiotics to
them, they’re hauling them around on trucks to pollinate crops that
have been sprayed with pesticides in industrial areas—the bees don’t
have a chance," says Labchuk.

Labchuk says she’s on an organic beekeeping list of about
1,000 people, mostly Americans—some of whom run big commercial
operations—and none have a problem with verroa mites or CCD. Organic
small cell beekeeping, she says, has an advantage because it mimics how
the bees live in nature, and while it produces smaller bees, they’re
healthy and can cope with the low levels of mite infestation that might
occur.

The main problem with "large cell" beekeeping, Labchuk says,
is that the bees are bred to be much bigger than they would "if left to
their own devices." The foundation wax used in the hives has larger
cells, which produces bigger bees. This means they spend longer in the
breeding process, which allows the varroa mites more time to
proliferate and undermine the young bees.

Could
it be that organic is the way to go in all animal/plant rearing
practices, relying on the natural ability of the species to help them
evolve and adapt to changing pests and conditions?

In any case, for all we know, the Rapture has already happened (Take that, Left-Behinders!) and God chose the bees over humans!