Appis Mellifera is Missing

By Jeff Frank

Over the past summer seasons I have noticed a big decline in honey bees... This year I have not seen one honey bee doing its work of pollen collecting. Most people, especially ones that are susceptible to bee stings have not noticed nor do they care if a type of bee is missing. What for, they only make honey and there are lots of people that do not eat honey. I look in herb and flower gardens, clover in the lawn, wild flowers and flowering trees and shrubs and see only bumble bees or wild bees. No honey bees!
The bee is an interesting and wonderful creature that according to science cannot fly. Its body is too big, its wings are too small and the wings dont beat fast enough to carry its weight. No one has told the bee he cannot do what he does, so he does...a mystery.
Scientists do not know where the bee came from or how it evolved. They do know up until the bee arrived pollination was done very slowly by the wind, animal or insect pollination. When the bee arrived, flowers appeared simultaneously and on the planet vegetation quantitatively grew. At the same time dinosaurs became extinct and some suspect flowers of having something to do with the demise of these large animals.
The bee brought pollination and plant growth to heights never seen before on the planet. Things went fine for a long long time. Then in the 1940's and 1950's chemical fertilizers and toxic genetic sprays began their work on our soils and crops with devastating effects that we are seeing today in reduced production, loss of diversity, loss of organic and mineral content of our soils and increased health risk from using and ultimately ingesting the chemicals sprayed on the soil and plants.
In 1947 there were over two million honey bee hives in the United States. Today we have less than a half a million and most of those are in decline from a destructive varroamite infestation. How did we let this happen?
Scientists at Princeton University did an interesting test with the honey bees they were studying. On a particular day, they moved the food they fed the bees with, to a new location over a half a mile away from the hives. The bees took all of ten minutes to find the food. The next day the scientists took the food source three quarters of a mile away and the bees were there in five minutes. The third day the scientists moved the food source a mile away and the bees were waiting there for them.
Gee, does that mean bees can think? I believe so...I mean when a scout finds a new source of food it goes back to the hive and dances in a particular way which explains to the hive how to find the food! In a dance!