Well, my friend the bee inspector has just returned from a conference on the Bee disappearance problem. As we have discussed before on this forum, they are disappearing at an alarming rate, especially in the states, some places up to 80% of them went missing last year.
It seems our race to get first prize in the "greed" catagory might have done us in when it comes to efficient food production. The concensus on "why" the bees have been vanishing is that their ability to resist disease has been compromised. Much like AIDS has done to humans, the bees have lost most of their immune systems. Unlike aids, it appears it's genetically fixed and future generations (if there are any) will be likewise compromised.
The reasons are more complicated but center on the practice of trucking hundreds of thousands of colonies of bees to orchards and other agricultural areas around the country has resulted in them feeding on a single type of pollen for generations. This combined with the stress of trucking them around has doomed them. Even the bees that have been in ideal locations and not been trucked around, have interbred with the damaged bees and have been similarily compromised.
Someone here on the site commented awhile ago that it has been said of all the bees on earth die, the last human will only last 4 years. I think I commented that we are sitting around worrying about peak oil, global warming or maybe even total extinction asteroid events, but what will most likely happen is something entirely unexpected will rise up and bite us on the ass. Like the lowly honeybee.
Hopefully we haven't truly f%$ked ourselves this time. I suppose we might be able to all survive eating algae.
Everyone have a nice day!
Stan