More human insanity

Will we ever learn? I read an article in today's New York Times about an unexplained mass disappearance of honey bees in 24 states.

This matters because a third of the food we grow in America is pollinated by the honey bee. Potential explanations for the mass die off--the first documented case of this occurring nationwide--include insecticides and weakened bee immune systems.

And just why are bees immune systems weakening? Well, in our endless attempt to turn nature into one more cog in the U.S. industrialized agricultural machine, bees are now trucked from location to location on 18 wheelers. They are being bred to spend more time gathering pollen and less time making honey. They're being fed a mixture of sucrose and corn syrup instead of honey. And they're being forced to pollinate more months out of the year. The article said that the average lifespan of a queen honey bee is half of what it was ten years ago.

One proposed solution: import Australian bees! Sure, that makes sense... once we kill off the domestic version that's perfectly adapted to our environment, we'll bring in a replacement and take our chances with the unknown consequences of introducing a non-native species.

And we're at the top of the food chain?