Rarely seen by the naked eye, this intersection between the animal world and the plant world is truly a magic moment. It’s the mystical moment where life regenerates itself, over and over again.

Here, from his presentation, recorded March 2011 at TED2011 in Long Beach, California, Schwartzberg presents some of the his film’s extraordinaryhigh-speed images of pollinators in action:

If you’d like to watch at full screen size — highly recommended! — just click on the icon in the upper-right of the embedded video player.

(Note: If you’re reading this in an email and can’t see the video player, please visit http://cba.stonehavenlife.com/2011/11/schwartzberg-pollination-film on the Central Beekeepers Alliance website.)

From the filmmaker’s introduction:

Beauty and seduction, I believe, is nature’s tool for survival, because we will protect what we fall in love with. Their relationship is a love story that feeds the Earth. It reminds us that we are a part of nature, and we’re not separate from it.

When I heard about the vanishing bees, Colony Collapse Disorder, it motivated me to take action. We depend on pollinators for over a third of the fruits and vegetables we eat. And many scientists believe it’s the most serious issue facing mankind. It’s like the canary in the coalmine. If they disappear, so do we. It reminds us that we are a part of nature and we need to take care of it.

You can learn more about Louie Schwartzberg and the film Wings of Life at www.MovingArt.tv.

In 2004, Vernon R. Vickery was made an Honourary Member of the Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturists (CAPA), in recognition of his contributions to Apiculture.

Vernon Randolph Vickery
1921-2011

Prominent Entomologist Passes Away

Vernon Randolph Vickery – 90, of Kentville passed away on Tuesday, August 30, 2011 in the Valley Regional Hospital, Kentville. Born in South Ohio, Yarmouth County, Nova Scotia, he was a son of the late Leo and Maude (Moses) Vickery. He was a Veteran of the Second World War, serving with the RCAF/RAF in the United Kingdom, North Africa and Italy. He was a radar technician 1941-1945. He was a member of the Royal Canadian Legion, Kings Branch No. 6, Kentville. He was a retired Professor of Entomology from McGill University and also taught at the Nova Scotia Agricultural College in Truro. He received a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture an MSc and his PhD; FRES, FCES. He worked on pollenization projects on various kinds of crops and was a pioneer of industrial pollenization. Vernon was the founding President of the Orthopterist’s Society and was Emeritus Curator of Lyman Entomological Museum at McGill University. He is survived by his wife of 64 years, the former Muriel Jewl McAloney; a daughter, Susan (Peter) Arntfield, Winnipeg, Manitoba; two sons, William (Judith Nowlan), Sainte Anne de Bellevue, Quebec; Edwin (Amy Creighton), Westmount, Quebec; grandchildren, Karen, Allison, Margot, Laura and Lexington; sister-in-law, Linda; brother-in-law, Victor Greene. He was predeceased by two sisters, Pearl and Leona; a brother, George. A celebration of life and reception will be held at 2:00 p.m. Saturday, September 3, 2011 in St. James Anglican Church, Kentville, Reverend Pam Bishop officiating. Burial will take place in South Ohio at a later date. Family flowers only by request. Donations in memory may be made to the charity of your choice. Funeral arrangements have been entrusted to the White Family Funeral Home and Cremation Services, Kentville. On-line inquiries may be directed to www.whitefamilyfuneralhome.com.

Until next year, thank you!

Christine Dembenski
President of Central Beekeepers Alliance

[Backyard Beekeeping 2011 photographs by Canadian Forests International on Flickr.com]

The beekeeping workshop was written up in a recent CanadaEast article by Molly Cormier, which emphasized the growing appeal of hobby or backyard beekeeping by Maritimers with an interest in a sustainable lifestyle:

Sackville-based Community Forests International hosted its second apiculture course last month and welcomed prospective beekeepers for a weekend of learning the ins and outs of the beekeeping world. You might say it was a hive of activity.

All bee jokes aside, CFI’s Nick Belanger organized the workshop with an emphasis on all-natural techniques and hands-on learning.

“Backyard beekeeping is a loose term for a small operation,” he says. The honey and wax produced by the bees doesn’t have to be used for profit, but it can be a nice way to supplement an income, he noted.

Read more:
Busy as a Backyard Beekeeper by Molly Cormier, 18 August 2011, CanadaEast.com.

Community Forests International (http://forestsinternational.org/):
“Community Forests International connects people to the forest, fostering sustainable environmental relationships while strengthening communities against climate change. Driven by farmers, foresters, and their rural communities, CFI’s programming spans the globe: planting trees with rural villages in Pemba, connecting environmentally-minded youth in India, Tanzania and Canada, and promoting ecological forestry in Atlantic Canada.”

At the Free University of Berlin, researchers are working on a mechanical bee they hope will be able to communicate with real bees about the location and quality of a food source. The implications for pollination services are enormous — if the robot bee can master the complex “waggle dance” language of bees, could it encourage a colony to work a field of canola rather than, say, more attractive wildflower forage in another direction?

What an idea! But it’s a steep learning curve for the scientists and their robot bee, according to Rebecca J. Rosen’s article in The Atlantic online:

So far, the dancing robotic bee has not been able to successfully communicate the location of a new food source, according to a new paper in PLoS ONE. The scientists list a couple of possible reasons: For starters, the robot can’t seem to get enough other bees to pay attention to its dance for long enough, perhaps because of a lack of buzzing wings (whose role in the waggle dance is unknown), sufficient body heat, or legs for creating vibrations in the honey comb. It’s also possible that chemicals on robot are off-putting to the other bees.

Robotic Bee Presentation

Robot Bee Communicates with Real Bees

Read more:
The Atlantic, 20 August 2011: Attack of the Robobees! A Mechanical Bee Tests Its Wings.

Photo credit:
Chittka L: Dances as Windows into Insect Perception. PLoS Biol 2/7/2004: e216. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0020216

“A team led by Professor Rose Cooper, from the University of Wales Institute Cardiff (UWIC), found that manuka honey prevents the attachment of bacteria to tissues – an essential step in the infection process,” reports The Daily Mail (UK) online.

But this certainly isn’t the first study to suggest honey may be used to fight infections.

“There are now many published reports describing the effectiveness of honey in rapidly clearing infection from wounds, with no adverse effects to slow the healing process,” reported Dr. P.C. Molan of the University of Waikato, New Zealand, in Honey as a topical antibacterial agent for treatment of infected wounds (2001).

Dr. Molan notes, “there is also some evidence to suggest that honey may actively promote healing. In laboratory studies, it has been shown to have an antimicrobial action against a broad spectrum of bacteria and fungi.” Key points in his paper:

1. Honey is a traditional topical treatment for infected wounds. It can be effective on antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria.
2. Honey is produced from many different floral sources and its antibacterial activity varies with origin and processing. Honey selected for clinical use should be evaluated on the basis of antibacterial activity levels determined by laboratory testing.
3. The antibacterial properties of honey include the release of low levels of hydrogen peroxide. Some honeys have an additional phytochemical antibacterial component.
4. Many authors support the use of honey in infected wounds and some suggest its prophylactic use on the wounds of patients susceptible to MRSA and other antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Indeed, with the rise of antibiotic-resistant “super bugs” in recent years, the public and professional interest in natural antimicrobials – and specifically in the medical use of honey – has grown, and continues to grow.

The most thorough, yet easy for the non-medical layman to read, summary of the current status of medical use of honey that we’ve found so far appears in the Nursing Times’ Can honey fight superbugs like MRSA?:

The laboratory research behind these claims is of particular interest as it also highlights the growing concern about the spread of drug-resistant bacteria, which was last week highlighted by a new report from the World Health Organization. However, the effectiveness of honey in combination with antibiotics has yet to be tested in clinical trials and further research is still needed to assess whether it could be used to treat drug-resistant infections.

It is important to note that the honey used in the trials was filtered, medical-grade honey with all impurities removed. People should not try using honey bought from supermarkets to treat wounds at home.

For more information, see also:

• Daily Mail (UK): Traditional honey remedy ‘could fight MRSA in hospitals’
• Waikato Honey Research Unit
• Klaus Kirketerp-Møller, Karen Zulkowski and Garth James: Chronic Wound Colonization, Infection, and Biofilms

Have you ever held honey in your hand? Well now you can: introducing the Honey Drop™. The Honey Drop™ solves a common problem: liquid honey can be messy. The Honey Drop™ is an individual serving (one teaspoon / 5 g.) of 100% pure dried honey without any additives or binding agents. All of the natural honey flavor without any of the mess.

The Global Food Marketplace convention, SIAL D’Or – an event for all those involved in the food industry: retail, trade, manufacturing, catering and food services – was held in Paris, France, from Sunday, October 17 through Thursday, October 21, 2010. Island Abbey Foods won among 1,500 competitors from 30 countries.

“We are incredibly honored to win the Global SIAL d’Or,” said John Rowe, President and CEO of Island Abbey Foods Ltd. “They gave out the country awards first where we received the ‘Best in Canada Award,’ then the category awards were presented and we received our ‘Best Grocery Sweet’ award, and after much suspense they announced Honibe as the Grand Prize winner.”

For more information, visit www.honibe.com.

The FREX was just another event that we attended. This was a chance to inform the general public about the HONEY BEE, and all of the ups and downs of keeping bees. We had an observation hive for all to see and many of our beekeepers talked to everyone who would listen …AS WE LOVE OUR BEES!! Some of our beekeepers had honey and other bee-related products to sell, as this was a great way to promote our honey bees in NB.

I would like to thank all of the beekeepers who gave the gift of their free time to help with these events.

Christine Dembenski
Vice President, Central Beekeepers Alliance

If you are a member of the Central Beekeepers Alliance and you’d like to order any of these shirts, caps or badges, just speak to VP Christine Dembenski at the next CBA meeting.

A special variation of the CBA logo shown was created at the same time to mark the occasion of our association’s 50th Anniversary, which we’ll be celebrating in 2013.

You’ll also see a miniature version of the CBA’s new mascot bee logo decorating the top header of our website, and members of the group are able to purchase club clothing — caps and shirts — that sports our new logo. CBA members will be all dressed up to put on a fine show at this year’s Maritime Bee Tour!

While researchers are looking for the causes, honey bee populations around the world continue to decline at alarming rates. Given that more than a third of our food supply is dependent on pollination by honey bees, it is not an exaggeration to say that we have the potential for a major agricultural disaster. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that there are many things that we as individuals can do to promote the health of the honey bee.

Bee the Solution:

• Grow bee-friendly plants
• Create a four-season sanctuary for pollinators
• Become a beekeeper
• Make a drinking fountain for bees
• Buy local, organic, unpasteurized honey
• Stop spraying
• Support bee research

Endorsed by Bee Culture Magazine and Brushy Mountain Bee Farm, A Bee Lover’s Garden has produced a fundraising calendar to support the Eastern Apicultural Society’s Foundation for Honey Bee Research. Kim Flottum, editor of Bee Culture Magazine, will chair a committee to review proposals and make the final recommendation.

Bees can be trained to recognize human faces, so long as the insects are tricked into thinking that the faces are oddly shaped flowers, new research shows. The insects use the arrangement of facial features to recognize and distinguish one face from another.

Bees recognize human faces using feature configuration. ScienceDaily.

First, the researchers used an arrangement of dots and dashes to represent the eyes, nose and mouth of the human face, and demonstrated that bees could learn to tell the difference between a face-like arrangement and a non-face-like arrangement. The bees learned to recognize the arrangement of features that makes up a face, and to associate a visit to that arrangement with a sugar reward, while non-face arrangements gave no reward.

But how robust was the bees’ ability to process the ‘face’s’ visual information? How would the bees cope with more complex faces? This time the team embedded the stick and dot faces in face-shaped photographs. Would the bees be able to learn the arrangements of the features against the backgrounds yet recognise the same stick and dot face when the face photo was removed? Amazingly the insects did, and when the team tried scrambling real faces by moving the relative positions of the eyes, nose and mouth, the bees no longer recognised the images as faces and treated them like unknown patterns.

Bees Recognise Faces Using Feature Configuration by Kathryn Knight
Journal of Experimental Biology 213, i (2010)

The topics are similar to another documentary The Vanishing of the Bees.

It was released in the UK in October 2009 and is scheduled for US and international theatrical release in March, April and May. At this point the film is being screened at smaller venues in the states and the next showing is in New York in February. 

The trailer for the film is available on youtube and you can sign up for mailing list updates on their website and follow release dates near you.

Sobeys (Oromocto)
Atlantic Superstore (Oromocto)
Home Depot (Fredericton)
Giant Tiger (Smythe Street, Fredericton)
Burger King (Smythe Street, Fredericton)
Greco Pizza (Dundonald Street, Fredericton)
Hilltop Grill & Beverage (Prospect Street, Fredericton)
Shur-gain Feeds n Needs (Exhibition Grounds, Smythe Street, Fredericton)
A & W (Prospect Street, Fredericton)
Roblynn Home Hardware (Oromocto)
Jungle Jim’s (Smythe Street, Fredericton)
Subway (Oromocto)

Your support of Central New Brunswick beekeepers in the holiday season is greatly appreciated!

Christine Dembenski
Vice-President
Central Beekeepers Alliance

If so, would you be willing to loan one of them to the Canada Agriculture Museum?

I am looking for an antique or vintage honey tin from the provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia for an exhibit on beekeeping in Canada “Taking Care of Beezness” that I am curating at the Canada Agriculture Museum in Ottawa. The gist of the concept is to have a tin from each of the provinces to make the point that beekeeping is practiced accross the country. The exhibit opens in March 2010 so I am beginning to feel worried that those two provinces’s beekeepers will not be represented. Please e-mail me if you can help!

Thank you;

Franz

Franz Klingender is Curator of Agriculture at the Canada Science and Technology Museum, Ottawa, ON. You may reach him by email at fklingender@technomuses.ca.

update: Mr. Klingender was able to locate a collector who supplied him with a couple of old honey tins for the exhibit. We’re hoping that when the exhibit is mounted in the spring that photographs may be available to share with you.

ScienceDaily (Aug. 31, 2009) reports:

When bees sting, they pump poison into their victims. Now the toxin in bee venom has been harnessed to kill tumor cells by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The researchers attached the major component of bee venom to nano-sized spheres that they call nanobees.

In mice, nanobees delivered the bee toxin melittin to tumors while protecting other tissues from the toxin’s destructive power. The mice’s tumors stopped growing or shrank.

An abstract of the research report is available at the Journal of Clincial Investigation website, and a detailed article aimed at the general public –‘Nanobees’ Zap Tumors With Real Bee Venom — is posted on the website of the Discovery Channel.

This funding program is intended to help commercial beekeepers to expand their existing operations by increasing the number of colonies, and small-scale beekeepers who wish to expand their operations to commercial status

Who is eligible for funding?

• The applicant must be registered as a commercial New Brunswick beekeeper (as per the requirements of the New Brunswick Apiary Inspection Act) in 2009.
• Applicants who are not currently considered a commercial beekeeper must submit an expansion plan, indicating how they will reach commercial status (50 colonies or more by September 15).
• Colonies must be available for pollination within New Brunswick.
• All applicants must submit a plan that includes a summary of their production management practices including disease control and overwintering practices. Applicants with poor management practices (as deemed by the New Brunswick Department of Agriculture and Aquaculture) will not be eligible for funding assistance.

What costs are covered by the program?

• The 2009-2010 New Brunswick Honey Bee Expansion Initiative provides financial assistance for:
  • Purchase of colonies
  • Purchase of nuclei colonies (nucs)
  • Splitting of colonies

Although the season is already well underway, eligible expenditures made since April 1, 2009, may still qualify for funding if they meet the guidelines. Expenditures made before that date are not eligible.

For more information about this program and other NB Strategic Agriculture Initiatives, please contact your nearest regional office of the New Brunswick Department of Agriculture and Aquaculture. Guidelines and Application forms for the Honey Bee Expansion Initiative are available on the NBDAA website at www.gnb.ca/agriculture (select “Strategic Agriculture Initiatives”).

To read more about the latest buzz on the White House lawn you can find the article by clicking on this link:

thedailygreen

This news comes from Kim Flottum, editor of Bee Culture – The Magazine of American Beekeeping, who is a regular contributor to the BeeKeepers Quarterly). Flottum notes that Bee Culture, too, will be releasing a digital edition later this year.

Other digital beekeeping magazines include Bee Craft (UK) and MidWest Beekeeper (US). So far, the American Bee Journal is not available on the Internet, but you can subscribe to the Journal through its website, or view the Table of Contents, Covers, and an index of articles in past issues.

Ireland has been described by many poets and story-tellers as the land of milk and honey, and there is little doubt that there was milk and honey in abundance in earliest times…

Honey was so important in early Ireland that a whole section of the Brehon Laws was devoted to bees and beekeeping. Tributes were paid in honey and no banquet table was complete without honey and mead, the legendary drink made from it. Honey was used not just for cooking, but also for basting, and as a condiment in which to dip meat, fowl and fish at the table.

The Sacred Bee in Ancient Times and Folklore by Hilda M. Ransome (first published in 1937) explains that there’s a whole section about honey in the Brehon Laws, which date back to somewhere around 600 AD and probably much earlier — the “Bee-judgments” as the laws about beekeeping were called.

For example, under those old laws, anyone who kept bees was obligated by law to share the honey harvest with land-owners of the four adjacent farms, as that’s where the bees gathered nectar.

And if a man found a swarm in the faithche (the green surrounding and belonging to a house), three-quarters of that colony’s honey harvest at the end of the year was owed to the owner of the house. It certainly speaks to the value placed on honey!

We can guage what abundance of honey there was by the size of the vessels in which it was measured. The Brehon Laws mention four sized of vessels used when measuring honey in large quantities. A milch-cow measure was one which, when full, an ordinary person could lift as far as his knee; a heifer, one he could life to his waist; a small heifer to his shoulder; and a dairt or still smaller heifer vessel which he could raise over his head. It was a quaint way of measuring!

You can read more about the Brehon Laws on a fascinating website called Library Ireland, dedicated to sharing Irish culture and folklore.

For those who’d like to enjoy their honey in Irish culture with a bit of a “kick” to it, David Lee of the Federation of Irish Beekeepers’ Associations explains how to make your own mead.

The potent honey-based beverage might go nicely with this gourmet menu from the Institute of Northern Ireland Beekeepers, drawn from the old legends of County Tipperary:

Appetiser:
Wild Irish Rabbit Terrine, accompanied with hedgegrown brambles, Mead Chutney, garnished with Armagh Apple Crisps, accompanied with Guinness wheaten bread.

Main Course:
Crystallized pan fried Wolf fish, served with Colcannon potatoes served with a white butter sauce, infused with Field Nettle emulsion, garnished with Irish streaky bacon and deep fried leeks.

Dessert:
White Chocolate Beehive, filled with a Hazelnut & Irish Mist parfait, served with a rich raspberry & thyme compote, and a splash of fresh cream, garnished with Ling honey comb.

If that’s a bit much, just take a page from A Smaller Social History of Ancient Ireland, by PW Joyce (first published in 1906), which says:

A mixture of milk and honey was sometimes drunk; a mixture of lard and honey was usual as a condiment. Honey was sometimes brought to table pure, and sometimes in the comb. Often at meals each person had placed before him on the table a little dish, sometimes of silver, filled with honey; and each morsel whether of meat, fish, or bread was dipped into it before being conveyed to the mouth.

Or what about a broiled salmon steak, basted with honey, like the meal that was served by Ailill and Maive, king and queen of Connaught, to the young chief, Fraech, according to the old Irish tales. That sounds like a St. Patrick’s Day meal that would go down just fine here in New Brunswick!

Anyone got a stainless steel 4 frame extractor to sell ( or even better – give)
Does not need a motor, I can rig that up.

Please feel free to drop a note in the comments here, if you don’t know Sterling and have a way to contact him directly but have an extractor to spare.

Back row: Ralph Lockhart (NB), Alden Thomas (NB), Paul Vautour (NB), Mary Colpitts (NB), Fletcher Colpitts (NB)

Next: Edith Thomas (NB), Jerry Draheim (NS), Pascale Dillon (PEI), Joanne Moran (NS), Deborah Woodward (PEI), Homer Woodward (PEI)

Front row: Ann Vautour (NB), Paul Kittilsen (NS), Chris Jordan (PEI), and Peter Dillon (PEI)

[Photograph submitted by Ann Vautour]

The good news is, and we’ve been collecting this for awhile now, is that with all of the fuss and attention, beekeepers are this fall and winter taking much better care of their bees than in the recent past.

Bee nutrition is improving, as are basic management practices such as rotating out old comb for new foundation; and Varroa treatments are settling out into solid protocols, as “those that don’t work are being phased out and those that are somewhat kinder and gentler on the bees are coming of age.”

On the other hand, it sounds like even non-lethal levels of Nosema may have debilitating effects on a colony by making them more vulnerable to pesticide damage and Varroa attacks.

Another item that caught Flottum’s attention — recent research shows there are many many viruses in the environment against which the honeybee must battle. Interestingly, although most of these viruses are spread from bee to bee in ways that make sense to the non-scientists among us, it seems that even the pollen that bees bring back to the hive is almost certain to be carrying one of three different honeybee viruses — transmitted from wild native bees, most likely, or from honey bees that visited the same bloom beforehand.

How all these factors play into the continuing concerns about Colony Collapse Disorder is still unknown, but CCD was still very much in the minds of beekeepers at the annual conference. You’ll want to read all of Flottum’s report (here), but I thought this closing anecdote of his was both interesting and slightly chilling:

On the last day of the conference I asked one of the commercial beekeepers who was there and who had colonies in a holding yard in southern California waiting for almond bloom how things were going. His answer was telling…”Well, he said, it’s been cold in California so far and the bees haven’t been moving…until the middle of the week. That’s when the temperature warmed up and bees could fly…and that’s when they started to disappear. Again.”

For more information, see Kim Flottum’s articles on the American beekeeping industry and Colony Collapse Disorder at TheDailyGreen.com:

• At Annual Beekeeper Conference, All Talk Turns to Colony Collapse Disorder
• U.S. Beekeepers Have More Bees Than Anytime in 3 Years
• The First Full Accounting of Colony Collapse Disorder

Part of the Häagen-Dazs loves Honey Bees™ campaign is an engaging website that’s sure to brighten a winter day.

Visitors to the website click on an old-fashioned skep-style beehive to reveal the website’s menu of educational and entertaining options —

• fly through the fields with a pollinating honey bee,
• make a cartoon bee< and send her by email to another honey bee fan,
• download a lesson plan about the bee crisis and how you can help,
• shop for “Feel the Love Buzz” and “Long Live the Queen” T-shirts to support honeybee research
• and more.

Go to HelpTheHoneyBees.com to learn more and explore.

[Thanks to CBA member Jessica Breau for the link!]

In this video of a lively talk given by vanEnglesdorp at the Taste 3 food and wine conference, the “bee crusader” compares CCD to the ‘flu and explains some of the strange and mysterious discoveries about colony health that make CCD such a challenging problem — and what can and should be done about it.

He pins the decline of pollinators on what he calls “Nature Deficit Disorder” (NDD) — for which the iconic image is the sterile “green desert” of lawn that has replaced the diverse ecosystem of the meadow.

The talk is aimed at a general audience, not a bunch of beekeepers, so it’s a great introduction to honeybees, beekeeping, and colony collapse disorder… but there’s lots there for even the most experienced beekeeper to hear and enjoy.

You’d think it might be a depressing talk, but far from it — vanEngelsdorp’s own excitement about the fascinating world of pollination is contagious. In fact, we only wish that all speakers were as entertaining!

1. Original Articles — improve your skills and knowledge
2. Municipal Codes Search — to find out the codes related to beekeeping in your area, including state regulations where applicable
3. Hive Diaries — keep track of your activity or publish photos for everyone to see
4. Retail Directory — find supplies online
5. Message Boards — get in touch with other urban beekeepers and trade experiences

The site is just getting started –it launches officially on 1 February 2009 — so the information is still sparse (and much of it is specific to beekeepers in the United States), but this seems to be one of the few websites that sets out with a focus on urban beekeeping. City-dwellers with bees or an interest in keeping honeybees can check out this new community at www.UrbanApis.com.

Honey bees are the unsung heros of agriculture — their ceaseless hunt for nectar ensures our food crops are fertilized. In fact, without the honey bee, agriculture would be in a pretty sorry state. The problem is, things aren’t looking good for bees. Over the past few years, two-thirds of the North American honey bee population has mysteriously disappeared, a disturbing phenomenon called Colony Collapse Disorder. American science journalist Rowan Jacobsen has been following the honey bee decline, and in his new book, Fruitless Fall: The Collapse of the Honey Bee and the Coming Agricultural Crisis, he explores the complex world of the honey bee, our precarious dependence on them, and the frightening consequences if they continue to die out.

This program will air on Radio One on Saturday, 24 January 2009, at 12:06 p.m., with a rebroadcast on Monday evenings at 11:06 p.m. It may also be heard on Sirius satellite radio. Past shows are usually made available on the website, for those who miss the broadcast.