What's The Deal With The Colony Collapse Thing?

We're trying to decide if we're panicked about the bees. The other day -- sunny, warm -- we were in Volunteer Park in the middle of a patch of clover and it was completely bee-free. It would have been chilling except, like we say, the sun was out and it was in the 80s. We have a lot of respect for bees, and not just because a dead one stuck in some honeycomb took revenge on us from beyond the bee-grave. It's because they always seem to be busy getting stuff done. You rarely spot a bee just fucking around out there.

We're not the only locals who are uneasy. Our friend Mark blogged about it too:

The bees are gone. Vanished. I read a national story about this some time ago and thought ourselves unaffected here, as we are by so many things. I hate bees. But I like cherries. We have several cherry trees, wild cherries, sour pie cherries, some amazing tasting Princess Anne cherries (or some similar name I’m confused with). All the cherry blossoms bloomed as they always do, but this year, for the first time ever, there are practically no cherries on any of the trees. The bees are gone.

So we've been reading up on the colony-collapse thing, but it's frustrating how opaque the reporting is. It's full of generalizations, with few benchmarks for perspective. We guess most papers don't have a regular bee-beat.

We've had to resort to MAAREC, the Mid-Atlantic Apiculture Research and Extension Consortium. There (FAQ pdf) we learned that Colony Collapse Disorder is a term invented for this latest die-off, which affects over half the states in the U.S., and is being reported in Canada and Europe, too. Basically, adult bees are experiencing a Bee Rapture, leaving behind kids and an empty hive. While bee populations have fluctuated before, for a variety of reasons, this fleeing their duties is just odd and the reason isn't obvious.

Research indicates that it's not your cellphone, or feeding bees high fructose corn syrup, or genetically modified crops. Stress is implicated, and the few dead bees that have been found tend to have high levels of bacterias and viruses in their little bee-stomachs. But dying is stressful and makes you prone to picking up bugs, so that's no smoking gun.

Whatever it is, it's quiet. Too quiet. The Washington Post article compares it to the "So long and thanks for all the fish" from the dolphins before the Earth is destroyed. When bees are fleeing their hives, it's hard not to take it as an omen. Or as a reminder of just how clueless we are about the smallest, everyday things, like bees buzzing about in spring.