- Honey Bee Decline
- 5 views
The Mystery of Colony Collapse Disorder
Above is a 60 Minutes report on colony collapse disorder. When billions of bees began to disappear in 2006, people began to get concerned... You can find the second part of the video here.
This engaging New Yorker piece is a great place to start reading about CCD. The author describes the commercial beekeeping industry, the pollination process, gives a firsthand description of colony collapse from a beekeeper, and recounts her own attempts at keeping a hive.
The massive bee die-offs spurred the U.S. government to initiate research on the issue. This Q&A on CCD from the U.S. Agricultural Research Service provides a good overview on what's been happening, and here is .pdf file detailing the agency's plan of action for dealing with it.
This piece reports on how CCD has yet to go away, and this video about CCD in the U.K. is here to show you that bee decline is a problem in Europe as well.
And a world without bees, it turns out, results in a more boring, less delicious breakfast.
