My trainer, Ray, is sort of a crazy anarchist. He's training me to be physically prepared for the revolution (or Armageddon, whichever comes first.) I know this because he has actually said this to me. Yes. And while I've become somewhat grr over the past couple of years, prepared for guerrilla warfare I am not. So he has his work cut out for him.
While a little eccentric, Ray is very well read, and enjoys sharing his finds with me, particularly those having to do with modern society falling into chaos. Tonight's tale was particularly interesting, so I looked it up when I got home.
If you've not heard of "colony collapse disorder" go Google it now. Apparently, the world's honeybee population is mysteriously disappearing. Honeybees, in addition to producing a delicious English muffin topping, are also responsible for pollinating pretty much every food crop in the US. In fact many bees are bred solely for this purpose, and beekeepers drive around the country with truckfulls of bees looking for pollination work.
Theories abound regarding the causes of this troubling bee decline, and include pesticides, mites, "bee stress", immune deficiency (bee AIDS), and the explosion of wireless technology (bees may be getting "confused" by cell signals and can't find their way back to the hives.)
Whatever the cause, this is not so good. Now, the world may not be coming to an immediate end, and perhaps bee decline is not quite at the level of concern as say, global warming (or at least not as well publicized), but I will close with this quote (courtesy of Wikipedia) and you can decide for yourself:
If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals...no more man...
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