honeybees

No...I am not talking the imported gluten fiasco that is a predictable consequence of the irresponsible Republican attack on government. I am talking about the massive and rapid die off of honeybees, the critter responsible for pollinating about 1/3 of our food supply.

Most of you won't pay much attention to this, unless you are a farmer and then you probably know how important honeybees are to crops. But most people will ignore this crisis until that 1/3 of our food supply fails.

I have been warning about this for over a year now, warning that the loss of the honeybee is a major threat to our food supply, most recently here. Each time I write about it the situation looks worse.

For awhile now honeybees have been declining alarmingly. A mite infestation seemed to be the primary cause of this decline that has worried scientists and agricultural experts alike. But starting last fall, the decline took an alarming turn, with entire colonies suddenly dying en masse in what almost looked like a bee version of AIDS. The few living bees found in hives that had died off were found to have multiple infections as if their immune system had stopped working. According to a recent article in Science, beekeepers in 26 states have lost up to 50% of their colonies this winter to CCD. Again, this is on top of earlier die offs due to mites and other infections in past years. This more recent, more dramatic die off has been called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).

UPDATED with more links and info (NOTE: all links to Science magazine are subscription)

This is a topic I have meant to write about for months, but never got around to. But I have been seeing more and more about this recently and things are getting worse.

Roughly one third of our food supply depends on pollination by animals, mostly insects. The primary pollinator in our nation, as well as around the world, is the European honey bee. This single species is responsible for about 80% of pollination in America. Simply put, our food supply largely depends on the bee more than on any other single species...other than ourselves, I guess.

For some years now, the honeybee has been declining. So far there has not been a single clear cause identified for this decline, but the decline has been worrisome and as, of the end of last year, a mite infestation seemed to be one of the primary causes, as well as simple competition with "Africnaized" bees which are not quite as general of pollinators as the "European" variety. (As a side note, as with humans, all commercially important honeybees seem to have originated in Africa, and have spread across the world through three wave of migration out of Africa.)