“During the last three months of 2006, we began to receive reports from commercial beekeepers of an alarming number of honey bee colonies dying in the eastern United States,” said Maryann Frazier, apiculture extension associate in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences in a written statement distributed by the university. “Since the beginning of the year, beekeepers from all over the country have been reporting unprecedented losses.”
[snip]
In total, honey bee pollination contributes about $55 million to the value of crops in the state. Besides apples, crops that depend at least in part on honey bee pollination include peaches, soybeans, pears, pumpkins, cucumbers, cherries, raspberries, blackberries and strawberries.
The above from here.
They say it could be pesticides or some organism that is running rampant because of an upsetting of the natural balance.
We humans are the scourge of the earth. We are also a very weird unbalanced species. The following from Harper’s Weekly, to which you can link to check out sources.

Don’t get me wrong. I admire eldergloggers like Ronni Bennett and Marian Van Eyk McCain who set great examples of how dynamic and influential individuals over 65 can be.
While Ronni is right in championing elder pride and publicizing elder capability, the truth also is that there is a reason for the stereotypes of the little old lady and man who hold up the checkout line because they pay for their purchases in small change, try to get rambling conversations going with the checkout person, take forever to wheel their carts out of the supermarket door, and drive as though there are no other cars on the road. I always seem to be just behind them at checkout. My point is that there are many numbers of older elders in every community who try everyone else’s patience.
For four years I lived with my mother in an upscale Senior Citizen building (250 apartments) that also housed the town’s Senior Center, which offered all kinds of great programs, from dance to discussion, as well as the kinds of banal activities Ronni cites. I got to know lots of the women (the population was mostly female) who lived there. A large number of those I knew eschewed any of the activities in favor of sitting around the lobby and complaining. I found that the women I knew who were over 75 — probably because of the dependent and housewifely lives they led before they lost their spouses — had no interests outside of their aches and pains and piddling gossip. Those elders who had active intellectual and/or physical lives before reaching 70 (barring any severe illnesses) always seemed to be able to find places and ways to stay lively. But where I lived, those were in the minority.
I will be 67 next month, and I think I can still kick butt pretty well on any number of fronts. But in ten years or fifteen years (or maybe even before; who really knows) I might well be one of those annoying old ladies at the checkout counter. It won’t be that I plan to be or want to be. Rather it will be because I am the victim of whatever the aging process will be doing to my mind and body.
So, while we’re telling the world that we are still a contributing force in society, we should also remind the world that most of us who will manage to live long lives might well find our force severely diminished. We will need compassion and comfort and understanding and patience.
As my Polish grandmother (who died in her early seventies) used to say, “Staroszcz nie radoszcz.” Which, loosely translated means getting old is a bitch.
Nevertheless, somewhere before life’s last wanings, there is, for many of us, a rich eldertime that is both Ronni’s and Marian’s focus, and this piece captures it all beautifully.

she loves to dance so every night we put on the easy listening channel on cable tv and I lead or she leads. she follows almost perfectly. I’m perfecting my lead very nicely with her as my partner. she will be 91 next week, and she still asks where and when we can go out dancing. she doesn’t always know where she is or how to get to her bathroom, but she knows how to dance. we laugh really hard when we trip over each other’s feet (which doesn’t happen to often, but when it does, we start giggling and can’t stop). today I laughed a lot with three of my former work colleagues (women) who came down to spend the day with me. we howled over the silly things we did and silly things we do. made so much noise we thought we’d get thrown out of the cafe where we had lunch. shared endless anecdotes about the kids we know and love and mates and how we spend our days. complained about getting older. unlike many of the elderbloggers I read, I still color my hair, wear make-up, and am addicted to fashion. I have to make sure that my hair covers my ears so that my pretty-much invisible hearing aids don’t show. they looked at the things I am knitting and reminded me that I could sell them for a good price. someday I might, when I have the energy to deal with record keeping. I am overwhelmed with ideas for what to blog about. she will be 91 next weekend and my brother began inviting some of our cousins to come up for lunch and now there will be more than a dozen and guess who gets to do all the preparation. my cat is too fat. I weigh too much. I am going to ignore valentine’s day. my four and one-half year old grandson uses words like “apprehensive” and uses them correctly in context. next month I will be 67, WTF!
after a survey of 1,000 American women found that most valued their favorite clothes more than sex, and would gladly abstain for 15 months in exchange for an entire new wardrobe.
A world that’s 7 to 12 degrees hotter will require a lot of adaptation, said Robert Samuelson in The Washington Post, but right now, we have no real alternative. “The dirty secret about global warming is this: We have no solution.” About 80 percent of the world’s energy comes from fossil fuels. With India, China, and other parts of the Third World rapidly developing, worldwide output of carbon dioxide will likely grow from 26 billion metric tons to 40 billion metric tons by 2030. ….. Politicians who blather about Kyoto, or “cap and trade” schemes for carbon dioxide emissions, are simply “grandstanding”—pretending to be addressing climate change, when they aren’t. “That’s one truth too inconvenient for almost anyone to admit.”
The U.S. simply can’t admit how badly it has behaved, because the consequences would be disastrous: criminal charges, trials, “and a complete breakdown in morale among intelligence officers.” No, the return of justice will come only “after Bush has left office.” The next president will make redress. He—or she—will have to apologize to el-Masri, “or else the guilt will truly belong to America, and not just to the Bush administration.”
Asked why he is in such a hurry to run, Obama tells Kroft, “You know the truth is I’m not. We have a narrow window to solve some of the problems that we face. Ten years from now, we may not be in a position to recover the sense of respect around the world that we’ve lost over the last six years. Certainly, when you look at our energy policy and environment and the prospects of climate change, we’ve gotta make some decisions right now. And so I feel a sense of urgency for the country.”
saw this huge woodpecker as I was heading down the driveway today — big plumed red head, looked like the Woody Woodpecker cartoon. I’ve counted five different kinds of woodpeckers around our property. also the usual junkos, chickadees, jays, cardinals, mourning doves, titmice (or is it titmouses?), wrens…… we have our own aviary. endlessly hungy winged things. I feed them. I feed everyone.

Just for fun, I went looking back to see what I might have posted on February 8 in some past year. To find a post for this day I had to go back to 2003. The title of the post is Countdown to War and in it I link to this still relevant article about the shrouding of Picasso’s Guernica.
Excerpt:

Guernica pales before the images we see every day of the war that actually did go down.

When I moved into my brother’s house, I got rid of a lot of my big old shabby furniture and bought a few shelf-based pieces that I could use for a variety of purposes and that are easy to move.. After all, I’m not going to live here forever. No, I’m not.
One of the pale oak bookshelves I bought now serves as a storage space for the seeds I plan to start soon and some small potting containers. Above it, between the sunny windows where it’s located, I have hung my one free-form crochet hanging and other objects I like to look at. The top shelf of the bookcase holds various icons that I find empowering. Some might call it an altar, although that’s not how I interpret it because I surely don’t pray at it. But I do, on occasion, stand it front of it and feell surrounded by a sense of peace.
I wanted to cover the storage areas of the shelves, and I didn’t want to put up a curtain. So, instead, using a size 11 knitting needle and Lily cotton yarn in the “Rainbow Delight” color, I knitted two panels and double crocheted the top edges so that I could weave a curtain rod through the openings. I used a plain garter stitch and knitted it lengthwise so that the rows go up and down instead of across.
All in all, I’m pretty happy with the result:

Several years ago, I blogged about the making of the freeform crochet item that I’ve hung over the bookshelf just above an icon of A Kwa Ba, the Ashanti primal goddess. I’d like to make another, different and larger freeform crochet wall hanging someday. I’ve been putting away various yarns in shades and textures of blue. (Hey, Andrea, maybe someday you can send me any scraps you have that you’ve spun – blues, grays, off whites will work.)
But for now, I have to content myself with knowing that if I managed to create one once, I can surely figure out how to do it again.

Why we are the bad guys, synopsized by Harper’s Weekly

So, I’m thinking — what if we used the $100 billion more that Bush wants to spend on the war and allocate $100,000 to every Iraqi family who wants get out of the country in order to help them relocate to Syria or whatever country is willing to take them. Let the United Nations use some of that $100 billion to hire ombudsmen to work with the families and the country to which they would be moving to use the family’s allotment to establish housing and businesses and/or find employment. Some of the emigrating Iraqi people and some of the American soldiers who are interested could also be trained and paid to act as ombudsman for the émigrés.
Get all of the non-Iraqi fighters out of Iraq and turn the battleground over to the Iraqi factions. They will have to figure out what to do – fight to the finish of or find a way to compromise. Either way, the non-warring citizens of Iraq will be safe, the American soldiers will be safe, and the $100 billion of our American tax dollars would be used for positive rather than destructive activities. And the Iraqi idiots who want to fight with each other can be left to war amongst themselves.
And then make sure our Homeland Security and FBI and CIA people concentrate on tracking down whatever terrorists are out there as well as in here. And then the National Guard can be available to help our own citizens it times of natural disasters and other large scale emergencies.
Oh, I know. ” It’s the oil, stupid.”
Unimportant news you might have missed (excerpted from the same Harper’s Weekly):

It’s 11 degrees outside at this very moment, but that’s not the cold I’m talking about.
Two days ago, my mother started sneezing. Yesterday morning, she woke up with a red and drippy nose and red, watery eyes. And so I went after that big bad cold with my Kalilily foolproof cold cure — or rather a lower dose version of it for my 100 lb. mother.
Zicam swabs in the nose every three hours. Emergenc-C Cold Cough and Flu twice a day, and a dropperful of Echiancea and Goldenseal extract twice a day. And an aspirin after dinner.
She woke up this morning with all symptoms gone.
As for me, I’m being protected by daily doses of a new product for which I am part of a market test. I get free ColdMD for 16 weeks and have to report each week on how I’m doing.
When I was visiting my grandson a couple of weeks ago, he had a cold and managed to wetly sneeze right in my face a couple of times. I never caught his cold.
The ColdMD tablets are pretty big, and I usually can’t swallow such big pills. But I manage to get these down just fine.
My mother’s cold is gone in three days and I’m still cold free.
Unfortunately, I can’t do anything about that big bad cold outside, where the wind chill puts it down to -4. Yes, that’s minus 4.

I could have entitled this post “relatives and friends” but that’s not as catchy. And I do love metaphors.
As I get older, relatives seem to become more important. I’m not sure why, since I still feel closest to those friends who continue to breathe inspiration, warmth, and support into my life. And that includes blogger friends . And, of course, my long-time women’s group (who I don’t get to see much of any more).
Today, the mail brought some photos of a batch of my cousins (I have a slew of cousins), some of whom have moved to Florida and some of whom often visit those who have moved to Florida. The photos show them tanned and smiling, even my younger cousin whose hair is growing back after an intense bout with major breast cancer. She looks perkier than ever, with her growing-back hair short and curly. “Come down and visit us in Paradise,” they tell me. Ah, if only I could.
I’ve never felt I had much in common with my cousins besides blood and the shared memories of our young years growing up together. My life went in a different direction from theirs. But whenever we get together, I laugh so hard I have to run to the bathroom. I don’t always make it. They know how to enjoy themselves. They know how to relax. And it’s all contagious. As we get older and become the “elders” in our clan, we find ourselves coming full circle.
We live too far apart to get together these days, but we have begun to email more, reminding me of the thickness of the blood that binds us.
LIving as I isolated as I do, I seem to have forgotton how to make friends, even blogging friends, and that’s something I have to put more effort into. Instead of complaining that I don’t feel connected any more, I need to reach out and make or keep connections to friends.
And so I thank those of my readers who left comments on this post.
Maria at Alembic is someone whose blog I used to read all the time. Her writing is lyrical and personal and compelling. It’s my fault that I’ve lost touch with her, and I’ve already begun to renew the connection.
Rebecca, of Pocahontas County Fare, is a blogger I hadn’t heard of until now, when I linked over to her site. She blogs about poetry, knitting, her cat, the land where she lives, fiber arts — so many of the things I also blog about. Why hadn’t I discovered her before this? She obviously discovered me!!! I’m certainly going to get to know her in the days to come..
Elayne Riggs is a blogger I’ve read on and off since I started. (She introduced herself as Elayne with a “Y”; that’s how I still think of her.) She works hard and blogs hard and spends a lot of time reading the blogs of others. Another friend whose creative air I need to breathe more of.
Full circle, back to “blood,” I’m waiting to see if b!X (my son), who designed and hosts my weblog, can switch my comment feature from Typekey to Halo Scan — thus making it easier for readers to leave comments and for me to filter out comment spam. Maybe the conversations can start again.
I’m feeling a little more optimistic today about both blogging and breathing.

Both Hillary and Nancy are playing the “mommy” card.
Accroding to here, excerpted:

I know that a lot of people don’t like Hillary because she’s such a political animal. But her “mamisma” gives her a balance the guys don’t have.
Harriet Rubin is the author of The Mona Lisa Strategem: The Art of Women, Age, and Power.
Now, there’s a book I’d like to own.