I’m reading Fruitless Fall, by Rowan Jacobsen.
It’s mainly about Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), which has apparently devastated the bee keeping industry around the world.
I haven’t gotten to a lot of the CCD stuff yet (as of page 60), but what I have read has been fascinating. Bees’ lives, the different roles in their society, their history, their food, etc. And, the main point, why we need them.
Our technology hasn’t come up with a way to pollinate fruiting plants on a wide scale; and without wide-scale pollination, there’s no fruit.
No fruit. And this is the botanical sense, so it includes cucumbers, zucchinis, tomatoes, almonds, and anything else with a nut or seed. Even coffee.
The only way to pollinate most of those plants on a wide scale is by using bees. (Not coffee, though, which uses some kind of fly.) Fewer bees equals fewer groceries. And the bees are apparently dying out without leaving much clue as to why.
At the point I am in the book, we’re just leaving the life of bees and are moving on the mystery of CCD. How it first became noticed, some possible culprits, etc.
The only place where Jacobsen kind of bugs me (was that a pun? you be the judge) is when he doesn’t bother to give data before making judgements.
This is a paraphrase, but he basically says that there’s no real information about wild bug populations, but they’re probably being wiped out. I’d like to know what makes him say that. This WSJ review has the same kinds of problems with the book. But in the meantime, it’s been great.
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