"But Where's The Bees Gone?"

asks Captain Ja...oh, wait.

Anyway--pressing question. Where have all the bees gone?  Excerpts:

...Albert Einstein, who liked to make bold claims (often wrong), famously said that "if the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, man would have only four years to live".

Such "apocalyptic scenarios" are overblown, said Rabobank. The staples of corn, wheat, and rice are all pollinated by wind.

However, animal pollination is essential for...[long list follows]

The reservoir of bees is dwindling to the point where ratios are dangerously out of kilter, with the US reaching the "most extreme" imbalance. Pollinated crop output has quadrupled since 1961, yet bee colonies have halved. The bee-per-hectare count has fallen nearly 90pc.

"Farmers have managed to produce with relatively fewer bee colonies up to this point, and there is no evidence of agricultural yields being affected. The question is how much further this situation can be stretched," said the report.

Rabobank said US bee colonies were shrinking even before CCD struck because cheap imports of Asian honey had undercut US hives. Note the parallel with the demise of the US rare earth metals industry, put out of business when China flooded the world with cheaper supplies in the 1990s. This is what happens when free trade is managed carelessly...

That last line, that right there--that's why I get rather annoyed at many conservatives who speak quite casually about deregulation, small government, the problems of a state-managed economy...and then they suddenly say something like that last, and you become aware that nobody really is talking about what their ideal system looks like. The goal is not a free market. The goal is a properly regulated market. The issue is nobody speaks about what proper regulation really looks like. Bleah...

Finally, there's always the clearly clear and truly true answer to the question...