Approximately one-third of the typical American’s
diet (primarily the healthiest part) is directly or
 indirectly the result of honey bee pollination.
                                                                      

On their travels, they transfer pollen from plant to plant, flower to flower, fertilizing the blossoms and allowing them to set fruit. This ancient partnership of pollinator and plant is essential to life as we know it. One-third of the food we eat comes from crops that need animal pollinators, a role often filled by bees but sometimes by butterflies, beetles, birds, or bats.

The New York Times and other major media sources have recently published scary articles about a catastrophe in the making, about a disaster that will soon have a direct impact on our collective stomachs. In 24 states throughout the country, beekeepers are getting the shock of their lives seeing hundreds of millions of their bees literally disappearing. Beekeepers go out to open their hives and find them empty. Bees are flying off in search of pollen and nectar and simply not returning to their homes, they vanish without a trace. Researchers say the bees are dying in the fields, perhaps becoming exhausted or simply disoriented and eventually falling victim to the cold. Researchers have labeled this affliction “colony collapse disorder.”

Experts are speculating that it may be the consequence of a new infection, or of several diseases simultaneously, leading to a fatally compromised immune system. It is also possible that severe stress brought on by crowding, inadequate nutrition or perhaps the combined effects of prophylactic antibiotics and miticides sprayed by beekeepers to ward off infections. Another particularly sad possibility is that accidental exposure to a new pesticide may cause non-lethal behavioral changes that interfere with the ability of honeybees to orient and navigate; brain-damaged foraging bees may simply get lost on their way home and starve to death away from the hive.

Honeybees contribute to our food chain in more
ways than any other animal species. They are vital to alfalfa
and clover, which is processed into hay to feed beef and dairy cattle.

The public does not recognize the magnitude of the threat that these mysterious events present but we should be more than alarmed. Scientists have been observing how one species after another is disappearing from our planet but never before has one with such a direct bearing on food production been threatened. Extinction of a species doesn't just affect the group that disappears - it tends to alter much more.

Earth's biodiversity is being overtaken by a mass extinction
 which, if allowed to proceed unchecked, could well
eliminate between one quarter and one half of all species.
                                                                                          Norman Myers

Bees do make excellent biological geiger counters. They are especially valuable perennial mobile biomonitors of the local environment. Foraging honey bees fly and crawl into flowers and inspect many substrates and openings. As such, they come in contact with naturally-occurring materials in the environment as well as manmade pollutants including heavy metals and pesticides. Pollen and these exotic materials stick to their hairy bodies and are carried back to the nest cavity where they often become incorporated into the beeswax, pollen and honey stores. Thus, with their wide foraging range and collecting activities, they are natural monitoring agents for investigating the ebb and flow of floral resources and toxic substances within the environment. At least one researcher has effectively used honey bees to collect pollutants including heavy metals, radionuclides and pesticides, which are concentrated within their nests and can be subsequently analyzed using modern chemical analytical instrumentation.[i]