Ryan Byrd’s Ramblings

Not too long ago, I was at lunch with a local Internet company executive, when he, awkwardly attempting to wipe barbecue sauce off his face, leaned forward and asked, his mouth full of food, “when’s the last time you saw a bee?”

“A bee,” I questioned?

“Yes, a bee. A bumble bee. A honey bee. Whatever. When’s the last time you saw one?”

“I donno,” I mumbled, trying to think.

“They’re gone. There’re basically no more left.”

Now he was wrong because the next week when I left Salt Lake City to stop by a friend’s house in the ‘burbs, I did notice a couple of bees buzzing around some wild flowers. (Yes, I checked to see that they were not yellow jackets, or wasps. They were good ol’ fashioned bees.)

The total number of bees in the United States, however, has fallen by about 1/3 over the last couple of years.

Since the beginning of the year, beekeepers from all over the country have been reporting unprecedented losses.

–Maryann Frazier (apiculture extension associate at Penn State University)

Some blame this “colony collapse” on global warming^* others cite cellphone tower radiation. Still others claim a lack of genetic diversity among bees is the culprit. Whatever the cause, a lack of bees means less cross pollination of crops and that has begun to affect prices of food at the supermarket. Just how important are bees to our ecosystem?

If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would have only four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.

–Albert Einstein

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* I’ve talked about global warming before

srcs: http://maarec.cas.psu.edu/index.html

http://waywardwaif.typepad.com/waywardwaif/2007/05/honey_bees_wher.html