Elizabeth Kolbert in the New Yorker had a very informative article about the decline of honeybees in America. It appears that they may have developed a heretofore unknown immune deficiency disorder, a kind of bee AIDS. In any event, if pollinators continue to decline, this may threaten our food supply. Many food crops rely on bees to facilitate reproduction. I was fascinated to learn about traveling beekeepers who rent out their hives to farmers around the country and who move them around on flat bed trucks from crop to crop.
I have observed only a single honeybee on our property this year, even when the clover was in full bloom. There have been lots of other kinds of bees, but just the one honeybee. Evidently, wild honeybees are a thing of the past. We have a neighbor about a quarter mile away who supposedly keeps a couple of hives, so I would have expected to see at least some of her bees in the garden.
I have contemplated keeping bees on our property, but I reckon that this would just attract bears unless I put the hive way up a tree. In which case, what’s in it for me?
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