Posted by Stephanie | Posted in Cut Flowers, Park Seed, Seed, USDA, Vegetables | Posted on 12-02-2007
Five or six hours into a road trip, you start to get a little antsy, and a service station just won’t do. You spot some of those people many like to call “salt of the earth,” honest people for sure, selling what they grow and taking life real easy. You’ve probably bought peaches, melons, and apples and sampled some homemade jam. There have been potted mums, pumpkins straight from the patch, and maybe a jar of the finest honey you could never find in a supermarket.
If you start from the honey and work your way back through the list, you will find very quickly that there may be a crisis upon these honest people, and, ultimately, the rest of us. The bees are sick. There was a story from the Associated Press today that seems to be buzzing in a few local news sources. “Colony Collapse Disorder” is what they are calling, a mysterious condition that has caused domesticated honeybee populations to drop dangerously low these last few months. Any gardener knows how important honeybees are because they provide the bulk of the pollinating workforce for the agricultural industry.
Researchers at universities all over the country are working on this problem right now. According to the USDA, one-third of the food consumed in the USA comes from plants pollinated by insects, and honeybees do most of that work.