I live in a small city in Central New York where it is not a utopian dream to have a small farm. Many CSAs, or Community Supported Agriculture farms have sprung up in recent years. My family has purchased organic vegetables from one of these farms for the past 7 summers.

There could be even more of these small farms if the price of land around my small city was lower and the pace of development was slower. I think that there is even a greater consumer demand for locally-grown food. It is very important for the Federal and local governments to recognize the need to increase the amount of locally-grown food. Perhaps this would also help the bees.

So, first of all, I know nothing about bees except what I just read in the article, but given what I just read, there seems to be an obvious cause for the loss of the bees. Would someone with more authority and experience comment on my theory?

Here's the critical paragraph.

It's important to look at what's normal. In the summer, bees go through a six-week life cycle: three inside the hive, three outside it as foragers. Then they die of old age. When bees are coming to the end of their life for whatever reason, they just fly off and don't come back. They fly out to die because flying out and dying is what they do. The question is, Why are we seeing bees with such a shortened life cycle? Well, now we're talking about winter bees. As you move into fall, the colony is supposed to be rearing bees that have a long life expectancy -- from about October to March of the next year. The problem is the winter bees aren't making it. Everything just sort of fell apart near the end of this summer and those bees that were supposed to live up to six months didn't come close.

So, the problem is that the winter bees which are supposed to be longer-lived, for some reason, weren't. Is there any reason that this couldn't be because climate change confused the bees' life cycle, such that the bees which were produced at the beginning of winter, were actually short-lived summer bees? In other words, no disease, no mites, no whatever, just climate change and bees not adapting to it?

I used to think that I'd be gone by time the Great Human Dieback occurred. The bee problem exemplifies our dependence on nature, of which few of us are aware. The real carrying capacity of the world is probably a few hundred million humans, whether technology is high or low. Gaia is on the verge of teaching us a lesson.

Yikes! there are two glaring factual errors in the 1st paragraph alone.

1) The fruit trees are already "bloom(ing)". the pollen grains that the bees move from bloom to bloom enable the tree to "set fruit".

2) The bees role is that of a "pollinator", not a "fertilizer".

Given that the loss of honeybees could spell the end of our fruits and vegetables, doesn't it seem likely that multi-national junk food conglomerates, or teenagers -- take your pick -- could be behind the colony collapses.

Okay, sorry, I know this is serious and found the round table quite interesting, I just couldn't resist. I think the scariest part, which I haven't seen mentioned in the press, is that the feral population is also collapsing -- and not just the bees apparently.

Although there are still bees where I live, I have noticed a marked decline in the number this year.

plants tell the season by the length of day (rather, night) not by temperature. bees follow plants. thanks RealName, made me laugh.

According to popular mailing lists there are no ORGANIC Bee losses. See my signature for the link (Salon forbids links in the body of a letter).

The linked article from an organic beekeeper speculates that the key difference is that the commercial bees are a special very large hybrid. Then asserts that this results in larger brood comb cells which are more vulnerable to parasites.

Clearly the evidence presented for that hypothesis is currently slim, nevertheless, the lack of CCD within the organic sector should present a compelling direction for study. At least one difference (perhaps a combination of factors) is causing the large scale commercial beekeeping world a very serious problem. They report difficulties in studying feral bees, yet an easy to study population without these problems apparently does exist. Isolation studies should be carried out to determine which differences are crucial so that the commercial beekeeping industry can adopt them.

We're missing the crows and jay and parrots now thanks to West Nile. It's made a huge impact on those bird populations in my area.

Today was so sad. There's a stand of trees where a big family of crows used to live, and now there's only one crow left. He hops from tree to tree all day calling out but I never hear any other crows answer.

There was a flock of parrots in the neighborhood that seems to have been reduced to two, as far as I can tell.

And yesterday I heard a mockingbird imitate a jay several times. That reminded me I haven't heard any jays either. I read that they were hard hit by the virus. I wonder whether the mockingbirds were chatting about the missing jays.

I guess most people don't pay attention to these kinds of things but really that poor lone crow who calls out and never hears an answer just breaks my heart.

The mockingbirds are doing fine, though. It's too bad they can't imitate bees.

do you have to be so literal?

1) bloom obviously meant "set fruit."

2)fertilization like, sperm-and-egg type fertilization.

these aren't so much factual errors as they are non-scientific terms...and after all, this is just the intro, meant to ease non-scientists into the discussion.

We have two feral hives on our property, lots of flowering trees and shrubs and the bees are doing their thing this year just like always. They're everywhere, about their business. People who visit freak out and are not at all comforted by the news that in the ten years we've lived here no one has been stung. Not even once. They are our friends; I hope nothing happens to them.

BTW, for those who don't know Encino, it's anything but rural.