The Furious Spinner

By now, most of you have heard about the problem with the bees. I've been following this for some time. As regular readers know, I have an attachment to the little buggers. (And bees are a part of Blue Honey Clan, the novel I'm working.) Honeybees are disappearing. More accurately, they're dying before they can return to the hive, but they're so small they just drop into the grass and disappear. It's called Colony Collapse Disorder. I believe and have believed since I learned about this that they'll find out that the cause is pesticides—probably a particular type of insectide that weakens their immune systems if it doesn't kill them outright which then leaves them vulnerable to diseases and fungi. We'll see. Let's hope they find out soon and that it's something fixable. Because if the domestic bees are dying, most likely the wild bees are dying too. And we need the bees.

By the way, people keep quoting Einstein as saying that if the bees go, we'll be gone in four years. There is no real evidence (yet) that he actually said—people just keep saying he said it. Of course, just because Einstein didn't say this wouldn't mean that the loss of bees wouldn't be devastating.

Labels: bees, sustainability

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