This is something to be concerned about - UPDATED

"Trent has hopped from orchard to orchard this month, making sure enough bees were in each hive provided by beekeepers. Not enough bees covering a frame indicates an unhealthy hive — and fewer working bees to pollinate the almond bloom, which starts next week across hundreds of thousands of acres stretching from Red Bluff to Bakersfield."

In fact the root cause of the decline of bees Colony collapse disorder might be man caused.  The various scientists are still arguing about it.  But that still leaves us a major problem.

Without bees, the vast majority of plants, trees, food crops and other things don't get pollinated.  Without being pollinated, plants don't continue to grow, produce fruits and vegetables, you know the stuff we and the animals we eat, eat.

Pollination by hand can be done.  However it would take too many people too long to pollinate enough things to ensure enough food can be grown to sustain life on this planet.

So please pay attention to any stories you see about this.  This particular problem could actually be catastrophic for humans.

A little bit after posting this I got an e-mail.  I'll post the whole thing so you can make your own determination.

"The problems with the bees are pretty widespread, and current beekeeping methods certainly have impact on the decline of hives throughout the country.

That said, they're not the actual root cause ... that remains to be discovered.  But whatever it is, the stressed out migrating hives don't help any.

A local friend of mine and I are trying to do something about it in our neck of the woods, and there's a bunch of similar efforts around the country.  

The keys in our mind to reestablishing healthy hive populations are:

• Education to folks willing to listen ... local foodies, CSA consumers, etc are all great candidates
• Education for prospective beekeepers ... major areas have this covered...smaller areas like our rural county don't have anything
  
• Getting hives into back yards and rooftops ... just putting a couple hives in a back yard has a massive impact.  Doing it through your town or city is transformational.
• Leveraging crowdsourcing concepts for research ... Modern bee researchers are saying that natural pest mitigation methods such as small cell beekeeping and whatnot don't work, despite the evidence to the contrary.  If enough smaller beekeepers out there practice and research and experiment, sooner or later it's hard to ignore.
  
• Local bees are the best bees ... right now most folks get their bees from warmer areas.  This results in bees that aren't well suited for the climate they're going to be in.  We think it'd be amazing if every county in the country had a source for local bees and queens that beekeepers could leverage to get bees that are adapted to their climate and area.
  

Anyhow, not trying to take up your day with a whole novel, but it's a hot button topic for me!  Like I said, my buddy and I are doing something about it, and you can read more about it at http://apexapiaries.com ... Haven't announced that site yet, but will be in the next day or two.

We're not the only ones doing it, there's efforts all over the place with people trying to reestablish the back yard beekeeper.  They won't replace the commercial guys taking 5k hives to the almonds in CA, but they'll keep local crops pollinated.

I didn't post this as a comment or anything because I didn't want to seem like I'm soliciting anything from your readers (since we're taking donations on that website once we announce it to folks here and on my blog) ... but feel free to repost any of this on your site if you want.

Take care,

Rudy"

Rudy Kearney
http://preparingyourfamily.com

Very interesting.  The idea of farming more hives around actually has merit in my opinion.