Okay, lame title, but I’m running out of clever things to say about bees dying off. I’m hoping that this will be my last post on “Colony Collapse Disorder” in the world of bees.

Colony Collapse Disorder, as I’ve previously reported, is the name given to the mysterious disappearance of bee colonies. One day everything is fine and the next - no bees! Poor bees. Why is this apocalyptic if you’re not a bee? Because bees play an important part in our food supply - it’s not just the honey, it’s the pollination. Without bees, may of our food crops won’t be pollinated and will not fruit properly. We won’t starve but we also will miss a lot of foods we currently eat.

Fortunately, bees aren’t the only pollinators. Butterflies, moths, wasps, flies and even bats also carry pollen, but bees are the most important pollinators for US food crops. And not all food crops depend on insects for pollination. Some are pollinated just by the action of the wind blowing pollen between plants. (Corn is an instance of a wind-pollinated crop - which means that the X-Files movie made a rather large faux pas in having the evil corn that would spread the black oil virus be pollinated by bees - but I digress).

Then came the news: researchers said that our cell phones are killing bees. The blogosphere erupted… how would we live without food? how could we live without cell phones? The Einstein quote: “”man would have only four years of life left” appeared over and over again.

A few skeptical responses appeared. Snopes even debunked the Einstein quote - at the least, there is no mention of bees in “The Quotable Einstein”.

In fact, the researchers quoted in the original article that broke the “cell phones are wiping out bees” have spoken up saying that they weren’t using cell phones, they were using cordless phones, and to please stop calling them because they’ve been being bothered so much since the Independent published that article, they haven’t gotten a lick of work done.

Thankfully an answer has finally been found, which is why I expect not to be writing more about the bees. Two separate researchers have reported finding a parasitic fungus called “Nosema ceranae” in affected hives. While this finding is still being called “highly preliminary”, it’s a better theory than cell phones killing bees, and it gives researchers an obvious avenue for trying to prevent Colony Collapse Disorder.

Perhaps once the problem is solved, the bees can go back to making art.

Did you know that the US Senate has declared the week of June 24-30 to be “National Pollinator Week”? We wouldn’t want those hard working pollinators to go unrecognized. It’s good to know that the United States Senate is on top of things.

Via: Vanishing honeybees mystify scientists - CNN.com

Via: Pollinator Week 2007 - Pollinator Partnership

Via: Boing Boing: Are cellphones killing bee colonies?

Via: New Scientist Environment Blog: Are cellphones wiping out bees?

Via: No Tinfoil Hats for Bees (TreeHugger)

Via: Slashdot | Cell Phones Aren’t Killing Bees After All

Via: Boing Boing: Art made with help from living bees

[tags]bees, colony collapse disorder, senate, congress,fungus, national pollinator week, Nosema ceranae[/tags]

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