ponderings & pennings

The August’08 issue of GEO carries a good description of honeybee lifestyle. And any reference to the insect does invoke my interest as it immediately takes me some years back when a whole swarm of honey bees chased me and beat me in 400 m dash though I still think I would have rescued myself had my brother not refused to open the main gate of our house out of fear on seeing me chased by hundreds of bees. Well, on a lighter side I think not many are as fortunate as me being chased by hundreds of females at the same time (that too without any axe effect) though it’s a different matter that the chase ended in painful stings and resulted in visits to the doctor.

Anyways, coming to the theme, I was wondering why no one is talking of the declining population of honeybees as is reported in the mentioned issue of GEO which states that the worker bees are being found to be disappearing across different places in the world with India being one of such places. Some very funny but plausible reasons are being given like mobile phones’ affect besides parasites, disease, genetically modified crops and climate change. A theory also reasons that the disappearance could be because of stress and overwork for the worker bees!

Should we bother? I too would have not even bothered to answer this question if I had not known that one-third of all of human consumption is dependent on bees and as per a study human beings would survive just four years in a world without honey bees!

So, should not the honey bee get atleast half as much attention as given to the tiger, elephant and the panda before it gets late?

So while we deliberate on this, here’s a video: