Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

1 March 2007 16:40
Species under threat: Honey, who shrunk the bee population?

Across America, millions of honey bees are abandoning their hives and  
flying off to die, leaving beekeepers facing ruin and US agriculture  
under threat. And to date, no one knows why. Michael McCarthy reports

It has echoes of a murder mystery in polite society. There could  
hardly be a more sedate and unruffled world than beekeeping, but the  
beekeepers of the United States have suddenly encountered affliction,  
calamity and death on a massive scale. And they have not got a clue  
why it is happening.

Across the country, from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific, honey bee  
colonies have started to die off, abruptly and decisively. Millions  
of bees are abandoning their hives and flying off to die (they cannot  
survive as a colony without the queen, who is always left behind).

Some beekeepers, especially those with big portable apiaries, or bee  
farms, which are used for large-scale pollination of fruit and  
vegetable crops, are facing commercial ruin - and there is a growing  
threat that America's agriculture may be struck a mortal blow by the  
loss of the pollinators. Yet scientists investigating the problem  
have no idea what is causing it.

entire article at
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/wildlife/article2314202.ece