Vanishing bees – is it something we said?

Picture this, one morning you wake up, stretch out and get ready for another day. You open your front door and look out on to the street. Something is wrong. It is empty. There is not a single other soul around. No buzz of traffic, no deep humming of life, no throbbing car engines. Nothing. You make your way to work through the silence and enter your office. You are alone, except for the shuffling of a few elderly co-workers. Overnight the entire population of your city has just simply disappeared.

From their bellies comes a drink of varying colors, containing healing
for mankind. There is certainly a sign in that for people who reflect.Qur'an, The Bees: 69

It sounds like the opening scene of a post-apocalyptic Hollywood movie. But if you happen to be a honeybee this is exactly what is happening in your world right now. Seemingly all of sudden, almost all adult worker bees have abandoned the hive, leaving stores of honey and larvae behind. Oddly, there are no dead bees to be found, no piles of corpses to be studied. Its called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) and its consequences make the plot lines of a Hollywood blockbuster seem like a walk in the park. The vanishing bees is a reality.

There is no other insect in the history of human kind that has garnered as much awe, mythologizing and worship as the bee.

The Ancient Greeks, Celts, Mayans and countless other cultures all created a folklore based around the bee. From the Egyptian Bee Kings to Napoleon, the bee has represented immortality and resurrection and has long been a symbol of regal dominance. Political theorists from Plato to Marx have employed the concept of the hive as a model for society. Linguistically the bee is exalted as a symbol of perseverance and hard work (as busy as a bee) and the divine. To Virgil, honey was the gift of heaven; to the ancient Jews the word bee indicated the insect’s mission to give the “Divine word, Truth”.

Saving the vanishing bees one step at a time

As individuals these big picture problems can be overwhelming. We feel the big decisions and changes need to come from the top. However, we are far from powerless and can take simple steps to limit our own impact.

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Written exclusively for The Goodness Magazine by Danni Landa to raise awareness for the movie Vanishing of the Bees.

Enjoy reading the rest of this article in the
June 2014 Issue of Healthy Mama Magazine (formally The Goodness Magazine).

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