*begins building bunker*

This is very bad. Very very bad.

Yeah, this really is bad news. The bee population has been on the decline for more than a decade, giving rise to the proliferation of rent-a-bee businesses, or, as they may prefer to be known, pollination services. I first heard about it years ago on Nantucket, where in order to get their cranberry crop, the farmers pitch in and order a truck full of hives from New Jersey, which has to travel over on the ferry.

I'd like to put my ear against the side of that truck.

I found a big honey bee in my apartment the other day. All my windows were open, but the screens were secure and there's this bee, half-dead, lying on my floor. If it's EM radiation like they originally suggested, my apartment would certainly be seppuku central for the local bee population.

I am feeling panicked ... as though we're in a science fiction movie and the music is just starting to get creepy.

Crops that rely upon bee polination include: alfalfa seed, almond, apples, avocado, blueberry, cantelope, cherry, cranberry, cucumber, honeydew, kiwi, peach, pear, plum, sunflower, watermelon.

I paid $4.75 for one of those little plastic bears full of honey yesterday.

About ten years ago I worked on a documentary that aired on CNN called "The Forgotten Pollinators"... it freaked my partner out so bad he won't even let me kill a carpenter bee that I find drilling into our house.

That documentary aired while Ted still ran the network (Time-Warner got rid of all the environmental programming as soon as they could). I can only imagine the pollinator situation has gotten worse since then.

Dying slowly of malnutrition would be made more pleasant by epsilon if I knew that it was those damn cell-phone towers blasting radio waves all over that had been the last nail in the casket of humanity.

oh, and I'll be home in about 20 minutes. How's the dog? Mmmhmm.. ok. No, traffic is terrible. Yah. Unhuh. Yup. Eeew! Yuck! a bug just splattered on my windshield. I dunno, looked like a bee. Remember bees? Hey ya kno I heard on Fox News that all the bees were actually killed by some Al-Qaida plot.. No... Yeah.. So anyway, traffic is lou-- ASSHOLE! What? No, I wasn't talking to you. Some idiot just wandered into my lane. Jeeze, all the other drivers out here suck! So, as I was saying, um... I'll be home in 25 minutes or so. Traffic is slowing down, it looks like another accident ahead of me. Yeah. ummm yeah. What's for dinner? ugh. No, honey, I wasn't saying "ugh" about your cooking, I'm just tired of those blocks of cloned soy. Remember when we could have beef or chicken every night? Yeah, I miss it too. And salads. Uhuh. Okay, well, gottago, luvyabye.

Article claiming organic bees aren't being affected. It's thought that the anti mite chemicals and oversize foundations may be to blame.

I have been worrying about the bees. I have seen only 4 honeybees this spring, and I spend a lot of time in my garden. There are plenty of bumblebees and hoverflies, but the honeybees are scarce.

I bet the entomologists figure it out pretty soon, though.