melons!”
buzz the bees
Three pictures, three stories – are there connections?
To get this Daily Mail/DIGG story go HERE
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To get this story go HERE
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Honey bees are the No. 1 insect pollinator on the planet, responsible for pollinating one-third of the fruits, nuts and vegetables that we eat – over 90 crops in total, including apples, berries, cucumbers, nuts, cabbages and even cotton. Recently, they’ve been dying in their millions. An ecological crisis threatening the end of global agriculture. Martha Kearney tries to separate reasons from rumours in the hunt for the cause behind the decline of bee colonies across the globe.
Empty hives have been reported from as far afield as Taipei and Tennessee. In England, beekeepers have called for government funded research into what they say is potentially a bigger threat to humanity than the current financial crisis.
Investigating the problem from a global perspective, the programme travels from the farm belt of California to the flatlands of East Anglia to the outback of Australia. They talk to the beekeepers whose livelihoods are threatened by colony collapse disorder (CCD), the scientists entrusted with solving the problem and the Australian beekeepers who are making a fortune replacing the planet’s dying bees. They also look at some of the possible reasons for the declining numbers – is it down to a bee plague, pesticides and malnutrition, or is the answer something even more frightening, such as mobile phone radiation, Bt crops (genetically modified to control insects), or the stress of hives being used as mobile pollination machines?
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