Who Needs Fruit, Anyway?

I've been following the news on the collapse of bee colonies for the last few years, an issue that's been widely under-reported.

Here's the latest buzz:

I can never resist the opportunity for a bad pun but the collapse of honey bee colonies are a serious issue. Bees are a vital part of our ecosystem, without them we wouldn't have the abundance of fruits and flowers available to us now:

There are a lot of theories about how to bring bees back from their population collapse. One is to reform bee care practices, allowing queens to have multiple mates, creating hives with more robust genetic diversity. Another is to study whether there are microbial changes causing colony collapse — perhaps from viruses or gut bacteria associated with toxins in the environment.

 As a whole, we need to have a better idea of what's going on with our agriculture. Food doesn't originate at Publix, how it's grown, produced and sold has a major impact on our standard of living.