The Birds and the....wait...where are they?????

I wanted to blog on a daily basis, but this past Monday and Tuesday have been literal hell at work, and I just couldn't come up with an idea to write on until today....

Most people today seem quite bent out of shape about Global Warming, Global Cooling, Ice Age, Climate Change, Asteriod Collision, Comet Strike, Nuclear War, Terrorism, Radical Religious Fundamentalism and gosh knows what else that to continue the trend I've decided to give you one more that doesnt get much press (whether the press is interested in reporting is probably another question unless it creates sensationalism or dirty laundry)

I would like to talk about colonies (since being an alien, Im quite familiar on the subject, and most have seen our handywork)

The colony I am referring to is of course, the bee. Literally thousands of workers and drones support a single queen, create a hive and live in harmony. (plus all that yummy honey you like to eat, which in all reality is nothing more than bee barf....)

Now there has become a problem.

Of course if you remember from school, bees of course in the process of gathering nectar from plants do a lot of pollination. Pollination is important because bees are so efficient, they do a lot as well for crops and trees and other plants you humans and animals depend on for food.

The bees are dying now, from disease, from parasites, and from CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder) that last year alone the percentage of lost bees from commercialy run hives throughout the United States was at a staggering 36%. (And this is just in the US, does not include the rest of the world, nor bees that are in the wild)

CCD is an unknown, basically the adult bees for no reason are leaving the hive, and the hive dies. If it is disease, it is not known what is causing it.

Could you imagine losing 1 out of 3 cows or chickens or pigs?

Some are more concerned when the next shipment of Wii's will be in stock because of shortages...

I've known about this for the past year, the did a short 15 minute thing on 60 Minutes last year on CBS.

Here was a short diddy from the FoxNews website on whats being done:

On Tuesday, Pennsylvania's Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff announced that the state would pour an additional $20,400 into research at Pennsylvania State University looking for the causes of CCD. This raises emergency funds dedicated to investigating the disease to $86,000.

The issue also has attracted federal grants and funding from companies that depend on honey bees, including ice-cream maker Haagen-Dazs.

Because the berries, fruits and nuts that give about 28 of Haagen-Daazs' varieties flavor depend on honey bees for pollination, the company is donating up to $250,000 to CCD and sustainable pollination research at Penn State and the University of California, Davis.

Whatever happens, got to make sure we have ice cream above all else.....

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,354384,00.html