disappearing bees

Bees, for some reason, seem to fascinate us. Perhaps it’s their social structure: the queen, the workers, the drones, producing honey and baby bees and living their short lives in a super-organized way that would be the envy of any business. So when the world learned five years ago that bees in America and Canada were dying in large numbers, and hives were becoming defunct, the agricultural community, beekeepers and the public became alarmed. Hives were deserted, the bees gone, presumably dead, honey production stopped, and the bee industry was crippled. The problem was called Colony Collapse Disorder or CCD, and it threatened California’s very profitable almond industry, which is dependent on bees to pollinate the trees that the nuts grow on. And not just almonds: 130 crops in California alone depend on honey bees.