Colony Collapse Disorder

For the last few weeks I have noticed a disturbing trend on my front door – bees.  At first I dismissed it, thought it was nothing important, a mere fluke of nature, but the bees continued to come. At first it was just a few. I would occasionally notice a couple of them crawling around the hallway light near my front door in the morning when I went to work (around 5:30am). Then I caught a few crawling into the front of my condo under the door. The bees were not flying around or acting crazy, in fact they were pretty chill – I could usually walk right up to them and brush them off the wall with my junk-mail. They just fall to the ground, look up at me with their big bee eyes, and stumble around in little drunken circles.  Its almost like they saw me come home from the bar one night and started to mimic my behavior.  Very strange indeed!  Perhaps they believe me to be their mighty queen bee?

One morning I came outside and found a gigantic pile of bees covering the porch light. We’re not talking  ten or twenty bees, but about a fucking hundred. I was mega tired and didn’t feel like going back inside for the Raid so I just left them alone. Besides, I’m not real big on hurting my little bee-buddies if I don’t have to.  Regardless, when I came home that day from work they were mostly gone, but the few that did remain were all dead. There was a collection of dead bees all around my front door. I looked at the pattern of their corpses to see if it spelled something – maybe this could be some supernatural message or phone call from aliens…?  I thought the mass bee suicide on my porch was curious but I was not completely convinced until I got back from a week long trip and found a massive pile of bee bodies strewn about willy-nilly.  Now I knew that something truly bizarre was going on, something sinister, dark and foreboding, mother nature was definitely trying to fuck with me…

Being a modern ape-like creature I got on the internet to see what the fuck kind of plague god was crapping upon my front door and came up with some varied and startling results. One major issue attacking bees currently is something known as “Colony Collapse Disorder”. Colony Collapse Disorder occurs when worker bees stop returning to their hives, leaving juveniles and other bees to die. It has swept through 22 states and into Canada, and some beekeepers have lost as much as 90 percent of their hives.

The source of the disorder is unknown. Some say it is due to climate changes brought on by global warming – somehow the climate is fucking with the bees internal workings enough to cause mass die-offs. Some say it is a new bee disease brought into our country following the lifting of the ban on importation of foreign bees back in 2006. Some say the varroa mite, a parasite that sucks the blood of both adult and larval bees, is to blame. The varroa mite is a well-known bee nemesis that can weaken a hive and set the stage for viral devastation. Some believe it is a result of the prevalent new pesticide “clothianidin” manufactured by Bayer CropScience. Clothianidin is one of a relatively new class of insecticides known as neonicotinoids that impact the central nervous system of insects.

Whatever the cause of the disorder it has had a dramatic effect on bees in California. Commercial honey bees pollinate about 90 of crops in the US. I’ve been thinking of how I could parlay this situation to benefit me in some way, maybe harness the power of the mighty bee and unleash it on my evil neighbor Shirley.  I think the next time they have their bee-kegger on my porch I’m gonna scoop a bunch up into a tupperware and maybe release them into somebody’s mailbox or something.  Fuck, I dunno, but the good lord works in mysterious ways and he has granted me (like his chosen people the Israelites) the power over bees for his great tasks (even if I have no idea what those tasks may yet be).  So whatever is the scientific explanation for all this Colony Collapse Disorder mumbo-jumbo I don’t know or care because with my new bee-allies I will lead my people to the promised land! Hooray!

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