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Where are the bees?

Bees are essential to the production of food we eat. Bees make honey, but they also pollinate large areas of crops, such as straw berries, apples and onions. About a third of the food we eat is a result of pollination of the bees. Unfortunately, bees have been disappearing at an alarming rate.

In 2006, bee keepers started reporting about something called Colony Collapse Disaster (CCD).The main sign of CCD is the loss of adult honey bees from a hive. In October of 2006, some beekeepers reported that they had lost between 30 and 90 percent of their hives.

There were many theories for the disappearance of the bees. But the most convincing one has to do with pesticides and lifestyles of bees today. Nowadays, beekeeper get most of their income not from producing honey but from renting bees to pollinate plants. This means that the life of the typical bee now consists of travelling all around the country to pollinate crops as the seasons change. That means a lot of traveling on trucks, which is very stressful to bees. It is not unusual for up to 30% of the hive to die during transport due to stress. In addition, bees that spend most of their time locked up on trucks are not exposed to what they usually live on. Instead, they live on a sweet liquid from corn, usually polluted with pesticides.

The exact reason for the disappearance of bees is not sure, but losing bees is very costly to the economy. The bee pollination services are worth over $8 billion a year. With no bees, pollination will have to be done by hand, which would have effects on the quality of food and increased food priced. We hear a lot about big environmental disasters almost every day. But one of the biggest may just be the less of that tiny flying insect.