Astounding Honey Bee Deaths!
I’ve debated with myself long and hard over the story I’m about to tell you. It really zeroes in on a personal situation I faced with an HOA bully. I swore I would keep the story to myself until I read today’s article about America’s tragic loss of honey bees. Forty percent of all honey bees in the country died last year. Forty percent!
(link to 40% loss of honey bees in just one year)
You cannot imagine how important honey bees are to our agriculture and our very survival as a species. Man just can’t do what bees do for us. Without bees there is no produce in your grocery store. None!
Now, my personal story. I own some acreage in Colorado adjacent to a Homeowners Association. Several years ago, a teenager who raises bees and produces honey for a hobby asked if he could place a half dozen bee hives on my property. There’s no way I would have refused him. For several years the hives were thriving and pollinating vegetation for miles around.
Last year I was away at a publishers’ conference when I got an angry call from a typical HOA bully. He demanded I remove the hives immediately. Mystified at his sudden rage I asked him why? Believe it or not, this guy said “Your bees are drinking from my wife’s pond!”
This is not a joke. Despite the fact that there are several bee keepers within a four mile radius of this property, MY bees were drinking from his pond!
I guess I shouldn’t have ignored him because a few days later every single one of the bee hives was dead. Stone cold dead in just one night. I seriously doubt they died that suddenly from natural causes.
