Oh, Bother.

There's much discussion these days about why American and European honeybees are dying. The arguments over the culprits have boiled down to either cell phones, genetically modified crops, poor diet, loss of natural habitat, neoconic pesticides and, everyone's favorite, mutant mites.

But it's pretty clear that the bees are dying due to one thing and one thing alone:

Mankind.

Without any doubt, if our African forebears hadn't dropped out of the trees the bees would still be contentedly buzzing along, pollinating the flowers and fighting off the occasional honey badger instead of deserting their colonies en masses or suddenly dropping dead.

A company named Beelogics, said to be recognized by leading entomologists, was created to sort out this mess, to divine a suitable answer for colony collapse. When several of their studies began pointing fingers in Monsanto's direction, chiefly regarding their pesticides, herbicides, and stable of GMOs, the company took immediate action... and bought Beelogics.

Two years ago. Since then, crickets.

Meanwhile, the bee population of Australia remains hearty and robust, free from colony collapse though Europe and Canada have banned nicotinoids, known to adversely affect bees. As for the U.S., Monsanto tells the USDA what to think so its poisons will still be on the bee's menu, whether they like it or not.

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One more thing... you and I can't do much to help the bees but we can help our fellow man. For the past three years I've been supplying money via Kiva, in the form of micro-loans, to people in third world countries to help them start businesses of their own. So far, the money has been borrowed and paid back several times, which is how the program works. Check out the program yourself and see how a little goes a long way.

=Lefty=