Tuesday 6 September 2011

Balancing Act

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I believe this is a european honeybee, aka apis mellifera, although I'm not entirely sure. I hope it is, because honeybees are nice. For one thing, they make honey, and honey with butter on toast is one of my favourite breakfasts (second only to toasted cinammon fruit bread. And ice cream, except obviously I don't actually allow myself to have that for breakfast because I don't want to turn entirely spherical). For another, they pollinate things in a useful and civic-minded manner. What's not to like?

And of course the poor honeybees are suffering from colony collapse disorder, which seems to me a rather ridiculous name, but there you go. No-one knows why the bees are disappearing, and it probably doesn't help that, bizarrely, there is genuinely a booming black market for bees, with thefts happening all over the place. On the one hand, it shows that British criminals are displaying an impressive level of knowledge and expertise in the field of beekeeping, which can only be admired.
On the other hand, they're stealing all the bees.

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