US Catholic: For years scientists have been puzzling over a vast die-off of bees in the United States and throughout Europe. After significant drops in recent years, alarms started sounding in 2012 when as much as 50 percent of the bee population in the United States perished. Finding the answer to the bee-pocalypse is important not only to save one of the wondrous sounds of nature—the soothing hum of the honeybee at work—but because bees represent an enormous industry in their own right.
Producing, processing, and retailing honey provides thousands of jobs across the United States and an avocation to thousands of hobbyists. Americans consume about 400 million pounds of honey each year, and the 2012 honey crop was worth more than $289 million. But our very busy bees also serve an even more important purpose in modern agriculture than providing a healthy and tasty sweetener. Read more here.
