http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/marsh/11358 I just learned from a respected colleague and professor, the honeybee population of the USA and Europe is in sharp decline.&nbsp; Bees are leaving hives in swarms and dying. (they can&rsquo;t find their way back&mdash;and is a swarm supposed to come back???) Very odd.&nbsp; I did some quick research to verify this &ldquo;startling statistic&rdquo; and we have indeed lost about a quarter of our domesticated bee population.&nbsp; That&rsquo;s scary because about 1/3 of our food supply is reliant on bee pollination (according to my professor friend and what I read on the internets [sic]). &nbsp;Now, being a conservative, and since there&rsquo;s plenty of environment left (just enough for us) I immediately came back with a capital idea to make money on the situation.&nbsp; We&rsquo;d pollinate ourselves using high tech machinery!&nbsp; Probably find a way to do it better than Mother Nature Herself!&nbsp; AND we can make money doing it.&nbsp; &nbsp;Then my left brain caught up with my right . . . THAT would be expensive (because nature provides the service virtually for free) and would raise food prices.&nbsp; Of course, what do I care, I&rsquo;m actually rich (must be nice) but compare me to the rest of the world, where I make in a few hours what they earn in a year and I can&rsquo;t feel so smug anymore.&nbsp; &nbsp;The loss of these bees makes beekeeping more expensive, which raises the price of food (scarcity of bees + utility of them = value of their service, added to the cost of production).&nbsp; If we invent high-tech mass-pollinating machines we raise the price even further.&nbsp; The end result is the higher price of food puts regular, affordable nutrition just out of reach of those who need it most.&nbsp; End result: my all-you-can-eat buffet at the Wynn Resort in Las Vegas will go up in price, and a lot of people in the Third World will actually starve.&nbsp; &nbsp;But hey, my conservative brain thought&mdash;that&rsquo;s just Malthus!&nbsp; Eat up!&nbsp; Then the left catches up again, you mean the third world, like India and Pakistan and North Korea with their nukes?&nbsp; Oh . . . I guess that really does make it MY problem . . . better bomb Iran right now . . . &nbsp;Sometimes, I learn that some of my cherished conservative values are actually molehills that are just too expensive to die upon. &nbsp;(RIGHT Brain) Then again, maybe we should just import migrant labor to do all the pollinating for us by hand . . .and oh my, how I really enjoy those crab legs at the Wynn . . . (yeah crab legs have nothing to do with pollen--or do they?&nbsp; =p) I just learned from a respected colleague and professor, the honeybee population of the USA and Europe is in sharp decline.&nbsp; Bees are leaving hives in swarms and dying. (they can&rsquo;t find their way back&mdash;and is a swarm supposed to come back???) Very odd.&nbsp; I did some quick research to verify this &ldquo;startling statistic&rdquo; and we have indeed lost about a quarter of our domesticated bee population.&nbsp; That&rsquo;s scary because about 1/3 of our food supply is reliant on bee pollination (according to my professor friend and what I read on the internets [sic]). &nbsp;Now, being a conservative, and since there&rsquo;s plenty of environment left (just enough for us) I immediately came back with a capital idea to make money on the situation.&nbsp; We&rsquo;d pollinate ourselves using high tech machinery!&nbsp; Probably find a way to do it better than Mother Nature Herself!&nbsp; AND we can make money doing it.&nbsp; &nbsp;Then my left brain caught up with my right . . . THAT would be expensive (because nature provides the service virtually for free) and would raise food prices.&nbsp; Of course, what do I care, I&rsquo;m actually rich (must be nice) but compare me to the rest of the world, where I make in a few hours what they earn in a year and I can&rsquo;t feel so smug anymore.&nbsp; &nbsp;The loss of these bees makes beekeeping more expensive, which raises the price of food (scarcity of bees + utility of them = value of their service, added to the cost of production).&nbsp; If we invent high-tech mass-pollinating machines we raise the price even further.&nbsp; The end result is the higher price of food puts regular, affordable nutrition just out of reach of those who need it most.&nbsp; End result: my all-you-can-eat buffet at the Wynn Resort in Las Vegas will go up in price, and a lot of people in the Third World will actually starve.&nbsp; &nbsp;But hey, my conservative brain thought&mdash;that&rsquo;s just Malthus!&nbsp; Eat up!&nbsp; Then the left catches up again, you mean the third world, like India and Pakistan and North Korea with their nukes?&nbsp; Oh . . . I guess that really does make it MY problem . . . better bomb Iran right now . . . &nbsp;Sometimes, I learn that some of my cherished conservative values are actually molehills that are just too expensive to die upon. &nbsp;(RIGHT Brain) Then again, maybe we should just import migrant labor to do all the pollinating for us by hand . . .and oh my, how I really enjoy those crab legs at the Wynn . . . (yeah crab legs have nothing to do with pollen--or do they?&nbsp; =p) en-us Several B.com bloggers wrote about this a few months back. There are many hypothesis about whats going on and why. But any way you slice it, it can not be a good thing Marsh. http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/marsh/11358/#c_110917 http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/marsh/11358/#c_110917 Several B.com bloggers wrote about this a few months back. There are many hypothesis about whats going on and why. But any way you slice it, it can not be a good thing Marsh. <font size="2">Marsh~lol good read,just what we need a light approach~to a very serrious weird problem.Losing all those bees is not a good thing~but crab is at least 10 steps away on the food chain~so we are safe&nbsp; for awhile!</font> http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/marsh/11358/#c_110939 http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/marsh/11358/#c_110939 <font size="2">Marsh~lol good read,just what we need a light approach~to a very serrious weird problem.Losing all those bees is not a good thing~but crab is at least 10 steps away on the food chain~so we are safe&nbsp; for awhile!</font> Y'eah... save the bees.. http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/marsh/11358/#c_115978 http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/marsh/11358/#c_115978 Y'eah... save the bees..