There is an environmental mystery afoot,
and it begins with the seemingly trival detail
that reveals a disaster of global proportions.
One day, you notice that the honey
you slather on your morning toast
is more expensive.
Instead of switching to jam,
you investigate the reason for the price hike.
What you find is shocking.
The number of domesticated honey bees in the US
has been decreasing at an alarming rate.
This decline appears too big to be explained
by the usual causes of bee death alone:
disease, parasites or starvation.
The typical crime scene
has almost no adult bees left in the hive,
except, perhaps, a lonely queen
and a few other survivors.
It's full of untouched food stores
and a brood of unborn larvae,
suggesting that the adults vacated
without waiting for them to hatch.
But what's particularly eerie
is that there is no tell-tale mass
of dead or dying bees nearby.
Either they have forgotten their way back to the hive,
or they have simply disappeared.
These mysterious disappearances aren't new.
Humans have been collecting honey for centuries.
But it wasn't until European settlers in the 1600s
introduced the subspecies, Apis Mallifera,
that we domesticated bees.
Since the 19th century, bee keepers have
recorded occasional mass disappearances,
Giving them enigmatic names like