As a farmer you get used to the rhythm of the natural world.
Animals are born and others die...it is the way of things.
You may be saddened but you know that it is the way it is supposed to be...
This is not something that is remotely in nature's rhythm.
We have lost 7 different colonies to Colony Collapse Disorder or CCD.
Our last hive was lost this fall...
I am actually in tears as I type this.
How does one get so attached to honey bees?
Could it be the delicious honey that they share with us each year?
Is it their unequaled work ethic?
Maybe it is the indispensable way they pollinate our garden and orchard...
It is probably a combination of all of these things and just the allure of the mighty little insect that is the honey bee.
We have always been so careful to not use pesticides on the farm for fear of harming our tiny friends...
They have always been surrounded by a buffet of things to feast on, both wild...
And purposely planted.
Yet they have still disappeared...
Leaving us perplexed and saddened.
The honey bee is being lost at a rate faster than they can reproduce...
I shudder to think what that means for the bees...
And for us.
We are more dependent on these little pollinators than most people could possibly realize.
"Perhaps nothing on our list of disappearing America is so dire; plummeting so enormously; and so necessary to the survival of our food supply as the honey bee. 'Colony Collapse Disorder,' or CCD, has swept beekeepers throughout the U.S. and Europe over the past few years, wiping out 50% to 90% of the colonies of many beekeepers -- "
(quote from the top 25 things vanishing in America...the bees were #3 on the list with the family farm being #1, but that is for another post.)
I sure hope we find the cause and the cure soon.
For now our farm and our lives will be a little quieter, a little less productive, all because of the loss of our tiny friends.
