Bumbly thinking

About two years ago I was walking by a neighbour's house when I noticed a swarm of bees on his tree. I've never seen one before. It was huge, bigger than the one in this picture. It was about three feet across at the top where it was widest, and three to four feet long. Many many thousands of bees in there, not aggressive but not looking entirely insignificant either, from the threat perspective. My first instinct as always was to throw rocks. Maybe I could drive them inside his house before he got home? Sort of a surprise for him. But I didn't do that. He drove up while I was considering how to do it.

"I didn't do this," I promised him.

We scratched our heads together, admired the bees a great deal, made jokes about bees, all pretty predictable. He called a bee keeper who came over a couple of nights later and, for $400, removed the bees. I didn't think about it again until this morning.

This morning I learned that about one-third of all America's honeybees are missing. Not dead, just missing. They leave home but they don't come back.

Speculation is rife.What could account for this? Bee rapture is my favorite. Strange mite infestations is good. Strange mites. The words conjure up strangely unnerving images, only half seen, murky but scary.

Cell phone interference is another proposal. This one seems far-fetched to me. According to this theory bees who talk on cell phones while flying don't pay attention to where they're going and have... accidents? I don't know but the consequences are important.

Bees, besides making honey, pollinate most of our crops. They go, there go the crops. I am beginning to feel hungry already.

Before the arrival of Europeans there were no honey bees in America. Pollination was done by a variety of insects - bees, hornets, other things, but not the hives of honey bees we take for granted. There must be an interesting story behind how the first European honey bees arrived here. Stowaways? Paying passengers? Insects seeking religious freedom? Bugs seeking a better life in the New World? Is it possible they're leaving again, for the same reasons?

Let us hope that that generic group of faceless saviours called scientists, whatever those are, figure this out pretty quick. Life without honey is not the end of the world for me but life without crops sounds bleak, exclusively carnivorous and brief.