I'm doing a quick hit and run diary with a link to this story since I did a search for a diary on it and didn't find anything. If there is a more substantial diary on this issue please let me know and I'll remove this one...

Article

Cross posted at Politicook.net

Asinus Assium Fricat reports on Politicook tonight that Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) has now struck bee colonies in Germany.  This may not seem like a big deal, but it is, regardless or in spite of apocryphal statements attributed to Albert Einstein.  The problem is basic:  without bees to pollinate many, if not most, of our crops, food as we know it will be changed very significantly.

Many hypotheses have been postulated about the cause for CCD, but there is very little evidence for any.  Please follow me after the break and I will make a suggestion that might provide a method in which to glean some real data.

As Americans, we have grown up relatively safe from the perils of foreign aggression that have weighed so heavily on the minds of those outside our borders since time immemorial. But the stinging memories so many of us harbor in the primordial recesses of our minds, often accumulated in our early childhood, tell us that in spite of the superficial safety I allude to above, we Americans are never truly safe, nor are our children, from the near threat: The enemy within.

In recent decades, there's been so much whistling past the graveyard on this count, so much obfuscation and misdirection. We hear media reports of the invasion from south of our border -- a clear attempt to divert our anxiety away from the danger in our own backyards. Nevertheless, we know this enemy is neither remote nor exotic. It isn't just something old folks in the south worry about. We see it on the streets, in our parks, even on our patios and in our window boxes.

Last night was a tough one for insomnia.  So many thoughts rolling around, and absorbing late-night talk on "Coast to Coast Radio," I heard reporter Linda Moulton Howe reporting how the Colony Collapse Disorder affecting our North American honey bees is "worse than last year."  http://www.earthfiles.com/...

As I prepared this diary note about it, a dear school friend sent this You Tube link her niece made as a plea to help the honey bees in honor of her Dad who died 20 years ago May 1:

An article in the Independent from yesterday discusses yet another in a recent string of disturbing environmental phenomena: Apparently, flowers are losing their ability to produce an odor.

Pollution is dulling the scent of flowers and impeding some of the most basic processes of nature, disrupting insect life and imperilling food supplies, a new study suggests.

The study suggests that the principle culprit is auto emissions, and that the absense of odor may impede the ability of flowers to attract bees in order to pollinate them.

To those of use who have been worried about bees dying off due to an unexplained syndrome called Colony Collapse Disorder, a new study offers an interesting possible explanation: pollutants originating largely from car exhaust are interfering with the scent chemicals used by flowers to attract the bees.  

The bees are dying.  We need the bees.  If we rely on elected officials to save the bees, it may be too little too late.
I hope the next President will take quick, appropriate action to save the bees, but we cannot wait until Jan 2009 to get started.

Also, while the ‘experts debate what is causing the terrifying death and disappearance of the bees.....we can take some concrete action in our neighborhood to help save them.

The federal Agriculture Research Service, an arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, mobilized a team of scientists late last year to study and hopefully solve the problem.(of dying bees) Jeff Pettis, team leader based in Beltsville, Md., says the USDA is doing everything it can to find answers.

http://www.wcfcourier.com/...

This Earth Day please considering taking action, wherever you live, to help save native bees.

The film "King Corn" will be aired on PBS this week. I'm looking forward to it. I love corn. I just don't like what we do with corn. In honor of "King Corn" I came up with some reasons to just say NO to corn.

What do the cost of food,  the food riots, overweight Americans, drug resistant disease and possibly the die off of bees all have in common?

Disclaimer: This is a biased post. I am pro small family farms and I am pro honey bees.  I belong to a CSA. I am a lifetime honey eater. I go through a large jar of the stuff every month. I am firmly opposed to High Fructose Corn Syrup.

Update: Here is a link to a more thorough diary on corn written earlier this week by CSI Bentonville: http://www.dailykos.com/...

Or perhaps I'm an embittered one because I write about soaring food prices, organic farming vs the evils of Monsanto, impending catastrophes like a global shortage of water, the inanities and futility of wars so yes, I suppose I am an elitist since I care about our planet, as does the Senator from Illinois. The news we get in Europe from the US Primaries are somewhat farcical and anathema to our own expeditious political system: we elect a new head of State within weeks, not years. I would be the first one to concede that it may not be the best system either (look at the Italians, they've returned the gangster to power), but then again we don't have that much time to dwell on the avalanche of moronic pronouncements from the wingnuts ad infinitum. Ignore the clamoring repukes, elect Obama and get on with it. We are all elitists and proud to be!

As a fellow elitist, I'd like to report some news on the bees and the scent of flowers and why it's important politicians worldwide should take global warming seriously, not just paying lip service as many seem to do.

Air pollution from our power plants and cars is
destroying the fragrance of flowers. This may sound like a silly, liberal "tree-hugging" complaint about the evils of air pollution. But, think about the ecological impact: Our lovely little bees use the scent of flowers like a roadmap to the source in order to pollinate flowers for our bouquets as well as our flowering plants for our food supply.

I am not a biologist but the recent reports of bat die offs as reported by the New York Times on March 25 sound very familiar to the Colony Collapse Disorder of bees. They both may be related to poor nutrition during hibernation.

The New York Times recently carried the die off of bats in NY, VT, and MA:  http://www.nytimes.com/... A researcher interviewed by the Times speculated that the bats were not getting enough nutrition that created the brown fat to enable the bats to last through the winter.

And from Brit Amos at Global Research on how GMO may cause the CCD in bees:  http://www.globalresearch.ca/...  A quote from the article:

When the flower pollen becomes genetically modified or sterile, the bees will potentially go malnourished and die of illness due to the lack of nutrients and the interruption of the digestive capacity of what they feed on through the summer and over the winter hibernation process.

Conserve your energy. Take a breather from candidate bashing diaries. Let's talk about ISSUES...shall we?  Now...ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS TO USE!

Radioactive remains: The forgotten story of the Northwest's only uranium mines. One of the world's largest mining companies is trying to wash its hands of responsibility for a costly cleanup of the Northwest's only uranium mines. Seattle Times

Your sewer on drugs. Sewage is more than just filth. It’s evidence of our worst habits, everything from caffeine to cocaine, all ingested and flushed down the toilet. Now scientists are using wastewater to drug-test entire cities, and the results are sobering. Popular Science.

The ice cream maker Haagen-Dazs is warning that one third of the US food supply is at stake because of the colony collapse disorder that has wiped out millions of bees around the world. This is the sort of thing that happens when we have a mentality that what is good for corporations is good for America.

I managed to survive the first election. (Full disclosure...I'm working a temp job in an Elections Office) The phlem in the lungs is still not gone after 5 weeks. Still hacking. Our office now has a special election on April 22, the Statewide Primary on June 3 and the Presidential General on November 4. Anyway...onto the topic that the two Donkey candidates aren't talking about. ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS (to use.)

District connects lead with special ed. Galveston Independent School District has too many African-American students in its special education program. And school administrators think it may be due to lead. Galveston County Daily News

Environment not among top campaign topics. The environment has not been a hot topic in the presidential races up to this point. Salt Lake Tribune

I love my Treo.  And even though I know I only want it because it's cool, I'm dying for an iPhone.  But in this great article on the Movement Vision Lab blog, two grassroots activists push us to examine the social, economic and political context behind cell phones...

The bee at the window was bio-engineered, computer-enabled, remote controlled.  

The gnats in the park were spying and sniffing for suspicious chemicals and substances, drugs, bombs, DNA signatures.  

There were wasps and hornets chip modified, armored, weaponized for individual and crowd control.  

The early models had had an extra antenna for the human i/o interface but these days you could hardly tell the bugged insects from the natural ones.

Except for the bees, all the bees had to be manufactured after the multiple disasters that followed colony collapse disorder.

AP - MERAUX, La. - Africanized honeybees, a fierce hybrid strain sometimes referred to as "killer bees," appear to have established themselves in the New Orleans area, the state agriculture commissioner said.

A swarm of the bees was captured about five miles from where demolition workers found a colony of Africanized bees in January, commissioner Bob Odom said Tuesday.

White House sources say that President Bush was awakened from his nap and immediately informed of the crisis.  He then called an emergency meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Marine One, on his way to a scrambled Air Force One.

"Gentlemen," Bush said gravely, "New Orleans needs us.  Let's ride."

The survival of the honeybee, perhaps the world’s largest matriarchy, has been a matter of real concern since the announcement of Colony Collapse Disorder earlier this year.

As we discussed in an April story (On Bees, Or, An Apple A Day May Be A Thing Of The Past), the pathogenic loading seen in the few recovered bees was so dramatic and of such a great variety that it was assumed there was more than one cause for the troubles.

Recent news reports from Spain have suggested the answer may be at hand...but apparently nothing in life is that easy. We’ll talk more about the bad news-and the good-as we go on.