The issue of the declining bee population is several pronged. Bee keeping as an occupation increased dramatically with the need for more bees to pollinate crops. The bee keeper could hire out a colony or two to the farmer when the plants/crops were ready for pollination. This seemed like a great idea in the beginning. There were more bees, bigger populations of bees, and the pollination was reliable. Farmers were no longer dependent on nature, they thought, but with the introductions of bee keeping on a larger scale, some other things began to change. With bee colonies cared for by bee keepers becoming more and more available, ordinary bee pollination declined. Stronger colonies forced out those that fended for themselves, and it wasn't long before the only way to guarantee a decent crop was to call a bee keeper.

Diseases in wild bees, and even simple mites can be enough to wipe out a natural colony, while bee keepers innoculate their bees against such issues. The obvious impact from this is that the stronger domesticated bee populations are slowly wiping out the smaller and often less healthy wild bee populations. I'm sure many people don't understand that this is not a plus. It makes us totally dependent on bee keepers in the future when not that long ago, it was a simple matter of watching nature take it's course. The more we interfere with nature in this regard, the less forgiving it is.

All creatures in the wild have adapted to their surroundings and learned to survive hardship, but when we introduce an altered population to the mix, the natural advantages, disadvantages and methods of selection are lost.

The future impact of this situation is yet to be fully appreciated, but it frightens me to think of what would happen if something new were to attack our carefully domesticated and innoculated new species of bee.

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