The Plight of the Honeybee

One of my earliest memories of my father was seeing him covered with bees. He was moving the nests. I was terrified.

Back then, he raised bees. He loved to talk about them. Honeybees, he said, will travel to the same kind of flowers, harvesting the nectar. They will go back again and again to the same field of clover. They tell each other where the flowers are by dancing. Next to humans, he believed, bees have the most sophisticated language.

I used to ask if the bees slept, and if they slept, did they dream. I liked orange blossom honey best. There were bees in our house, climbing the screens. Wasps too. My father caught them in his handkerchief and shook them loose outside. Whenever I tried, I squeezed too tightly and broke off wings and legs. He always said I was too full of fear and grab.

Now the honey bees are dying off. No one knows why for sure. There's a great article in The August 6th issue of The New Yorker on the plight of the honeybees.

Some of the possible reasons for the die-offs:

1. The practice of moving the bees all over the country (and even the globe) spreads disease.
2. Pesticides. Especially a new class of them, neonecotinoids, which are preferred by farmers because even though they are neurotoxins, they are considered dangerous only to instects.
3. The bees are infected not with one pathogen but with so many, they are like people with AIDS. Their entire immune system has been compromised.
4. A new pathogen, yet to be diagnosed, is causing an epidemic.

dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/02/05/bees_ani_02.html?category=travel&guid=20070205144500
abfnet.org/news/honey-bee-die-off-alarms-beekeepers-crop-growers-researchers/