In a Land of Milk and Honey

The phrase “In a country where milk and honey” refers to an idyllic place where there are plenty everything you could want and no one wants for nothing. It may therefore slightly ironic that the recent phenomenon of Colony Collapse Disorder means that bees out of our ecosystems will disappear, that could mean honey may soon seem to be scarce.

Would this be a terrible loss? Does honey serve a purpose more than just a sweet stuff that’s delicious piled on bread and butter taste like? If only that was the only dilemma, for this sudden loss of bees could be more affecting than honey production – a third of our fruit and vegetable production relies on pollination by bees, and therefore the decline in bee populations could have profound effects on our entire eco system.

So just what is Colony Collapse Disorder or CCD? The worrying thing is that very little seems not yet to be known about them. What is a mass disappearance of a bee colony – all the bees simply vanish, with no signs of dead bees around the hive. Although a decline in wild bees, and “domestic” bees to a lesser degree were identified and monitored since the early 1970s, it was not until 2006 that saw the decline in beekeepers escalate to alarming proportions. Reports all over the world suddenly circulating that beekeepers lost their hives, literally – the bees just disappeared, so that their queen, their pollen and their groceries behind.

In the U.S., concerns are so serious to CCD that a working group was established at Penn University to try to identify the cause, and thereby help stem the flow. Within the community are beekeeping seems the fundamental belief that contribute a variety of factors about this strange syndrome – a poor diet due to extreme weather conditions caused stress the colonies, environmental conditions, the existence of a variety of invertebrate mites, among other factors, such as use of pesticides , genetically modified foods and the use of antibiotics to the bees. But so far there are no conclusive results.

In the meantime, farmers are going to extreme lengths to ensure their crops do not suffer as a result of the lack of bees. For example, in California, the state makes almonds profitable horticultural export 80% of world supply of almonds. In order to maintain their crops, farmers are now forced millions of bees in the transport sector, for three weeks each year to fertilize the plants and consequently ensure the fruit is produced.

In a recent BBC program on honey, the farmer and presenter Jimmy Doherty said that if the bees die out completely then he believes that the human race would struggle to survive – apparently a concern initially dampened by Einstein. Even though we might mourn the loss of honey as a favorite teatime snack or as a natural medicine, or even as an ingredient in beauty products, such as Burt’s Bees there are more pressing problems of fundamental importance for life as we know it.

If our bees do not fall victim to continue, Colony Collapse Disorder, it is certainly not without a land of milk and honey for all of us.

 

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