Silence of The Bees.

I had a chance last week to review a pre-showing of the PBS special "Silence of the Bees" that will be on this weekend. The show was excellent and I recommend that you view it Sunday at 8 P.M. on PBS. It discusses the fact that bees are disappearing all over the world, which is referred to as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). To quote the site:

How's this weather-related? Well, the film pretty much finds other causes besides climate change, which has been mentioned as a possible cause, though others still believe that the two are related (see our recent Global Warming Blog article about it). As a scientist, I am also fascinated by this topic.

Some highlights from the film which explains why this is an important topic for all of us (without giving too much away):

- Bees pollinate 1/3 of American food and 3/4 of our plants, including, crops, fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts, even cotton that is used in fabrics - $15,000,000,000 in services are dependent on the bee. This threat could be more important to humans than Global Warming.

- About 24,000,000,000 bees have disappeared since Spring 2006 (based on 800,000 hives with approx. 30,000 bees per hive) worldwide, on every continent but not in Britain (so they claim).

- Even predators such as the bear won't touch the hives affected by CCD.

- Bees could completely disappear from Earth by 2035, if they continue to die at the current rate.

- The U.S. is now importing bees from Australia and trucking them around the country to pollinate flowers at major growers.

- We say "disappear" because bees are programmed to leave the hive if they start to feel sick, so presumably they are flying away and dying away from the hive.

- Some possible causes for CCD are: Pesticides, Parasites, Malnutrition, an AIDS-like Virus, and more. An experiment which appeared to blame cell phones or cordless phones (confusing the bees natural directional ability) appears to be invalid.

- A possible cause has been found, but there is no cure, we don't know where it started, and it doesn't appear that it is the only cause.

So tune in Sunday and check it out. Also check out the comments left by readers on on our Global Warming Blog entry, and post your own there (since I can't technically accept comments on my blog).