The ABC's of Bees

As a young person I was often stuck and bored on our remote farm in West Virginia. One benifit of being there was that you would ultimately get bored to the point that you would read something. There was no electricity,running water, or any other modern convinences. A book that sat around was "The ABC's of Bees". It was written by one of the most famous beekeepers of the time. My father kept bees. One of the most facinating things in the book was a section that told you how to make a beard out of bees for the county fair.

The New York Times ran a story yeaterday about bees in jeapordy.

"In 24 states throughout the country, beekeepers have gone through similar shocks as their bees have been disappearing inexplicably at an alarming rate, threatening not only their livelihoods but also the production of numerous crops, including California almonds, one of the nation’s most profitable.

“I have never seen anything like it,” Mr. Bradshaw, 50, said from an almond orchard here beginning to bloom. “Box after box after box are just empty. There’s nobody home.”

The sudden mysterious losses are highlighting the critical link that honeybees play in the long chain that gets fruit and vegetables to supermarkets and dinner tables across the country. "

If you get time go on line and read the story. Most of us have foggoten how fragil the world is we live in. Bees seem very unimportant, but if they disappear we are in peril. Traveling around it is easy to see how out of hand human beings have become. Every major city is now covered by pollution. It may be the bees are being killed by some chemical in the environment. Check your flowers this spring. Put your ear up to the flower when a bee is working. If you hear the bee coughing we are in trouble.