more on bees

(and by the way, my mother's father was a bee keeper back in the old country)

A stinging loss for U.S. farms as honeybees vanish
Experts fear their disappearance will take a toll on the nation's food chain

BY AMY ELLIS NUTTStar-Ledger Staff
Jean-Claude Tassot felt the sunshine spilling over his shoulders. It was unseasonably warm for January -- a good day, he decided, to check his honeybees. So Tassot jumped in his truck and rumbled over the back roads of Morris County to the first of the eight farms where he stores his boxes of hives.
"When you first take the cover off, usually you can see the bees," said Tassot. "But when I looked, there was nothing. I kept looking (but) the hives were all dead."
Tassot drove to the next farm, then the next and the next. At every stop it was the same thing.
Out of 171 hives, 140 were wiped out. Even the few dozen that remained were weak at best.
"It was a catastrophe," he said.
In New Jersey, as in at least 26 other states around the country, commercial beekeepers and hobbyists are reporting catastrophic losses of honeybees this year. As many as 700,000 of the nation's 2.4 million bee colonies have been affected, according to the American Beekeeping Federation.
"I've talked to several beekeepers up and down the state, and they're reporting from 30 to 99 percent bee losses," said Bob Hughes, president of the New Jersey Beekeepers Association. ..............