Honey Bees

The article Stung by Elizabeth Kolbert is about colony-collapse disorder, a new problem American bees are facing. Colony-collapse disorder is a recent development that has scientists and bee-keepers baffled. Right now researchers, scientists, and farmers are trying to understand as much as they can about colony-collapse disorder before it completely whips out North American honey bees.

The author’s argument is vaguely written in the article and at first glance it is hard to tell what her argument is. She begins by talking about the behavior and anatomy of bees. Then she goes on to describe how they came to North America. Originally Honey bees were native to Europe and the early settlers brought honey bees to the Americas. Now day’s bee-keepers ship bees to the United States from all over the world. Shipping bees to The United States from foreign countries transfers foreign diseases that effect bees as well. In the article the author talks about these diseases and the devastating effects they have had on the bee population in America. At one point in the article she states that wild honey bees have been almost completely whipped out because of these imported viruses.

One would think that the author was speaking out against importing foreign and invasive insects from around the world but she is not. The author talks a great deal in her article about the bees she has personally imported (Italian bees) and raises in her own backyard. Someone against importing foreign insect would never do such a hypocritical act. Instead, the reader can gather from this article that the author is bringing awareness to the seriousness of the issue of the possible extinction of bees in North America. Bees have a very important roll in the pollination of flowers. The author reports that, “As the National Research Council report noted, invertebrate extinctions don’t tend to have much “marquee appeal.” Yet if it’s a bad sign when an ecosystem loses its large mammals, it is probably an even worse sign when it can no longer support its insects.”

This article was different from a newspaper article in that it was longer than the average newspaper article and the author reported the news about honey bees as well as related the news to her own life. The author parallels the news of colony-collapse disorder in North American bees to her own experience of raising a bee hive and the troubles she faced. Like the bees in North America facing Colony-collapse disorder, the author’s bees were facing a much smaller threat, a black bear. In the end the author managed to protect her bee colony form destruction, which the reader could take as a symbol of hope for honey bee colonies on a global scale.

Three facts the author used were:
1. Queen honey bees can choose the sex of their offspring. (Paragraph 3)
2. Bees descended from predatory wasps. (Paragraph 4)
3. Honey bees are the only other animal besides humans known to have their own representational language. (Paragraph 3)
All of these facts could be checked on wikipedia.org but just to be safe they can also be checked in the article, Bee fossil, DNA generate a buzz at
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6084974.stm
Which talks about the oldest bee fossil ever found and the evolution of bees
Or these two websites dedicated to Bees, http://www.judywoods.dial.pipex.com/Insects.html
http://www.discoverlife.org/20/q?search=Apoidea