Though worldwide honey bee health has been on the decline since the 1980's, it wasn't until the fall of 2006 that beekeepers nation wide began noticing honey bee colonies disappearing in large numbers without known reason. This syndrome, named Colony Collapse Disorder or CCD, is characterized by the inexplicable disappearance of the hive's worker bees, leaving the newborns to fend for themselves.

Researchers globally have been trying to pin down the cause or causes of this mysterious ailment. Most entomologists believe a combination of factors are involved: exposure to pesticides, urbanization, disruption of habitat, water pollution, climate change, the Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus, the Varroa mite and literally trucking bee hives around the world to pollinate crops. However, more and more evidence is pointing to sub-lethal pesticide exposures as critical contributing factors.

Beekeepers and environmentalists called on the US EPA to remove the pesticide Clothianidin, manufactured by Bayer Crop Science, earlier this December, citing a leaked EPA memo that discloses a critically flawed scientific support study. The Huffington Post reported that the November 2nd memo identifies a core study underpinning the registration of the insecticide Clothianidin as unsound after EPA quietly re-evaluated the pesticide just as it was getting ready to allow a further expansion of its use.

According to a Guardian article, one-third of all our food staples only grow after pollination. In the United States alone, the cost of replacing this "free service" which nature has provided for hundreds of thousands of years, is put at anything between £14bn and £92bn.

While Albert Einstein most likely did not create the fatuous statement that "if bees were to disappear from the surface of the earth, humanity would have no more than four years to live," it is nevertheless hard to dispel the significance of insect pollinators, such as bees, in crop production.

(Source: Beekeepers Ask EPA to Remove Bayer Pesticide Linked to Colony Collapse Disorder [Huffington Post])