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The Mystery of the Bees
By Jon Menaster | May 13, 2007
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Small, buzzing bees. They bothered you at your picnics when you were a kid. You never really took much notice of them, until one day, they started to disappear. Sounds like science fiction, right? Well believe it or not, bees all over the country have been disappearing at an alarming rate over the past 6 months.
Dubbed Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD, by scientists, this phenomenon is leading to millions upon millions of honey bees mysteriously dying. Well, big deal, you say.. I really don’t like the bees anyway! Many people aren’t aware of this, but the bees ability to pollinate crops is absolutely crucial to the entire agricultural industry in the United States. Crops such as apples, almonds, cotton, onions, broccoli, carrots, sunflowers, cantaloupe and honeydew melons are pollinated a majority of the time by honey bees. Without the bees, the crops don’t get pollinated, and therefore the fruit won’t grow. This creates a problem for not only farmers, but consumers as well. Some fruits may start to see slight increases in price as the lack of bees affects the production numbers across the board.
The CCD phenomenon has been reported in some 30 odd states across the country, with more and more states chiming in to report a strange loss of the bees as well. It has even been reported abroad in countries such as Canada, India, Brazil, and some regions in Europe as well. The House Subcommittee on Horticulture and Agriculture even held a hearing on March 29, 2007 to try and flesh out the exact nature of the problem and some potential solutions. The most interesting part is that in most cases the bees never even come back to their hives - they just disappear.
There are several theories as to why this is happening, including lack of genetic diversity, contamination of their environment, disease, or a combination. The most interesting theory, in my humble opinion, is that the proliferation of mobile phones may be to blame. Scientists from Landau University have done a study whereby they placed a cell phone near a bee colony, and the bees refused to return to that colony. They believe that the radiation may be interfering with the bees navigational systems.
Another facet of this problem that you should be concerned about is the financial aspect of it all. What if the major agri-businesses saw huge losses in most of their crops? What if you were invested in those companies - would your portfolio take a big hit because of the lack of bees? Now you may think that I’m just over-exaggerating everything, but to be honest I really am concerned. Not only are the small farmers all the way up to the major company farms at risk, so are all the companies and people along the supply chain. We have done so much damage to the planet in recent times that things may be slowly falling apart around us. I hope that some solutions crop up to help deal with the loss of these bees and hopefully reverse the slow deaths of such large numbers of colonies, but only time will tell.
For further reading, you might want to check out GNN’s excellent article, “Please Lord, not the bees”, or the Wikipedia entry on Colony Collapse Disorder.
Topics: Business, Investing, Life, Philosophical Musings |