05/17/2008
Reports coming in so far indicate further massive losses this spring. Since the bee die-off has been going on for some time and there are now none in sight , and since other pollinators are becoming rarities, we would expect serious shortages to emerge soon. Indeed, this could well be an element in the current shortages. However, due to the lack of proper investigative reporting it is difficult to assess the situation: the crisis could be upon us before most people are aware of the danger. Ultimately, without pollination, we face the prospect of famine.-Ed.
David Roy Park began finding empty hives where his bees should have been in the winter of 2006. In a matter of months, he went from 4,000 hives to 1,600.
“You go to the bee yard and open the hive and there’s just no bees in it,” said Park, a fourth-generation beekeeper who runs Cold River Apiaries in Moore, in Frio County. “We started losing bees left and right for no reason that we could figure out; they just disappeared.” Read the rest of this entry »
In These New Times 