On 27-Aug-09, at 2:50 PM, allen wrote:

>>
> I personally, though, find it surprising and noteworthy how this  
> story has been exploited and packaged as a money-maker and by  
> whom.  Of course it was a great excuse to funnel more badly needed $ 
> $$ into bee research, but even an ice cream manufacturer managed to  
> hitch a ride, and journalists have been eating out on it for ages.  
> Nothing like a good emergency and a well primed hype machine to get  
> people reaching for their wallets to help an normally obscure and  
> somewhat boring (for the population) cause.
>
>

Hi Allen Jerry and all

I agree with you about the hype Allen.  When people who are  
legitimately concerned about bees ask me about my bees I tell them  
that I lost all my bees (except one dink) last year but that this  
year all my hives survived(including the dink which survived without  
formic treatment last fall).  They often, then, repeat the story  
about our loss of our food without honeybees to which I reply that  
honeybees are not native to the Americas while tomatoes and potatoes  
are.  These major food plants and others  do not require pollination  
by honeybees and that the plants that do depend on honeybees, such as  
apples and pears,  were imported from Europe with the bees when the  
settlers came.  Imagine the Italian diet without tomatoes or the  
Irish without potatoes which they didn't have before 1492.  I hope I  
am not wrong in trying to correct some of the starvation stories that  
have risen from the CCD story but the loss of any pollinator will  
result in the loss of a group of dependent plants(thinking Monarch  
butterfly and milkweed).  We need to protect all of our pollinators  
and their habitat, native or imported.

Bob Darrell
Caledon Ontario
Canada
44N80W

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