permaculture

[Marimike6@cs.com]

A much fuller treatment of CCD was shown on Nature last night, titled Silence 
of the Bees. Interestingly, it featured the same guests as the Sixty Minutes 
piece. Here's the link:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/bees/impact.html 

The gist was that CCD's origins are multifactorial, with pesticide 
accumulation probably leading the list. They also pointed out how much the 
syndrome was 
like human AIDS. The honeybees suffer an immune system breakdown, rendering 
them vulnerable to viral and parasitic infestations and other maladies. Then 
they follow their instincts, which are to leave the nest so as not to infect 
the 
others.

But the nests are already infected-- which is why opportunistic creatures 
don't immediately come to feast on the unprotected honey being left behind. 
There's some kind of poison it it that insects stay away from.

Most sobering, they state that if die-offs continue at their present rate the 
honeybee will be extinct by 2035. As will the flowers they pollinate. The 
program visits southern Szechwan, where bees and flowering plants are already 
extinct, and the local pear crop has to be pollinated by hand (farmers on 
ladders 
with little chicken-feather pollinating tools).