By analyzing data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations for temporal trends in the number of commercial bee hives, they found that the global stock of domesticated honey bees has increased by about 45 percent over the last five decades.
Got that? Honey bees have increased by 45% in the last 50 years, but last year Time Magazine's review of "Fruitless Fall" a book about the world's honey bees dying off:
By exploring the mysterious phenomenon of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) that is wiping out honey bees worldwide, Jacobsen lays out a case for why we need to care — and it has very little to do with honey. A spiritual successor to Rachel Carson's seminal eco-polemic Silent Spring, Fruitless Fall walks us through the various theories put forth as causes of CCD —genetically-modified crops, global warming, God's wrath, cellular phones, loss of habitat and a nicotine-like pesticide to name a few. Jacobsen concludes that a return to simpler times — for example, before honey bees were pumped full corn syrup and bred to pollinate monocrops from California to Florida — may be the only answer to the decimation of these vital insects, upon which our food supply depends.
So in 2008, Time Magazine throws skepticism out the window and seems to promote Rowan Jacobsen's idea that we, as a nation, need to return to our rural days to save the bees... when in reality the world has a vastly increased bee population. Something to consider whenever you read Time Magazine.
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