Colony Collapse Disorder

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I'm posting tonight because I will be with the grandsons much of the day tomorrow. The boys are off school for a Professional Development Day.

I had intended to post this for Monday, but since my husband hit the deer, I posted the pictures of the van and that story instead. This is one of grave importance and I hope if you don't already know about colony collapse disorder that you will gain some knowledge here today.

Sunday night on 60 Minutes, professional beekeeper David Hackenberg, explained that last November, he found 400 hundred of his beehives empty. There were still eggs and larvae inside the hives, but not one single bee. Crawling on his hands and knees, Hackenberg tried to find dead bees. There were none. It seemed his bees had simply vanished off the face of the Earth.

Hackenberg has been in the beekeeping business for 45 years. He has never seen anything like this before. All year 'round he loads his beehives onto flatbed trucks and travels the US in order to provide bees to farmers to pollinate their crops. Unfortunately, he has lost two-thirds of his 3,000 beehives, which he fears will put him out of business. He's not alone! Beekeepers all over the US have reported similar problems. Some have lost 90% of their hives to what scientists are calling "Colony Collapse Disorder."

Hackenberg knows if the same thing that happened last November happens again, he has lost his livelihood. Last year he lost thousands of dollars and had to replace the hives that he lost. He doesn't believe he can survive such a loss again and he's not the only beekeeper who is in this predicament. In one year, a third of the honeybees in the US have flown into oblivion or died of Colony Collapse Disorder.

A task force of scientists have been gathered by the US government to look for the reason behind Colony Collapse Disorder. They are looking at such factors as poor nutrition, a virus, parasites and pesticide use. The leader of the efforts for the Department of Agriculture, Jeffrey Peltis stated, "I don't think it's going to come down to a single factor. We're not going to be able to pin all of these losses on either one factor or even maybe one combination of factors."

Professor Maria Spivak of the University of Minnesota says, "Either there is not enough food or its contaminated. Then they come back to the nest and the nest is contaminated with disease or mites and so their whole environment is not healthy." Spivak believes the bees are telling us that they can't live in our environment because it is toxic.

What people don't realize is that without bees, mankind cannot survive. People in America can't comprehend that without bees fruit and other crops cannot be pollinated. Without being pollinated, nothing grows. There would be a serious food shortage in North America because it takes crops to put food on the table.

Bees pollinate all fruits and other crops such as alfalfa. Without bees, it's doubtful that mankind will survive.

To let you know how ignorant people can be, (I'm using the word ignorant in its correct context here) a waitress in a truck stop told my brother (who's a truck driver) she didn't care anything about the farmers. He asked her where she thought she would get her food. "Oh," she said. "I'll just buy it at the grocery store."

Having been raised on the farm and being very knowledgeable about where food comes from, my brother almost fell off his chair. "Where do you think the grocery store gets their food?" he asked her. She replied that she had never really thought about it. When she needed food, she just went and bought it.

It's time that the governments of Canada and the US start to think about what is in store for us if our environment doesn't cease to be polluted. We are breathing in toxins everyday, as are all of the creatures on Earth. We need to stop global warming. We need to stop using pesticides. We need to be good stewards of the Earth and value it. Without it we will become extinct, as surely as the dinosaurs did thousands of years ago.

Man is the only animal on Earth that is willing to poison himself. Other animals take care of their dens and the environment in which they live. Mankind is going to self-destruct if he doesn't wake up and it will only be because of his lust and greed for the almighty dollar. For that is how man thinks these days. He is greedy for power and wealth, no matter the sacrifice.