Things I Like - Sciences

I first read about the Honeybee problem in the August 6, 2007 issue of the New Yorker. Apparently, beekeepers had experienced much higher than normal die-offs over the winter of 2006-2007. But the bizarre part was the fact that the dead hives were basically empty - most of the bees in the affected hives had disappeared. Previously, dead hives had plenty of dead bees in them. Not this time, the bees were just gone. The condition came to be called CCD - Colony Collapse Disorder and scientists started to investigate.

Why should this concern anyone who does not make a living as a beekeeper? Basic biology. It turns out that the European Honeybee is key to the pollination of a number of American crops - apples, blueberries, cranberries, cherries, cucumbers, watermelons and almonds to name just a few. In an article posted on Daily Galaxy, the professor and chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology was quoted as saying “One-third of our nation’s food supply depends on bee pollination...” If that's not enough to concern you, consider the ice cream situation. Haagan-Dazs depends on natural food products pollinated by honeybees for almost 40% of their ice cream flavors. I don't even want to think about a world without strawberry ice cream.

The good news is that the hive die-offs over the winter of 2007-2008 were not any worse than the previous year and might even have decreased. Even better, a study done on an infected hive kept in a greenhouse found that the bees are not actually disappearing. They're just leaving the hive to die - so at least we don't have to worry about aliens abducting our honeybees.
btw - aliens will definitely be discussed here at some point down the road...

The following links have more info on the honeybee situation - the New Yorker article is great for background and history (the New Yorker is basically just great) and the other two provide a quick status on the current findings:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/08/06/070806fa_fact_kolbert

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/02/hagen-dazs-fund.html

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2823/why-are-the-bees-disappearing