Honey

City Island, The Bronx.  Young Hannah considers the gift of honeycomb.  By her side, a half-million honeybees toil deep into autumn, pollinating fall flowers and gathering nectar and pollen in the process.  It is a grand testament to the connectivity of things that the honeybee exists at all.  The by-product of its survival methods is the pollination of a vast amount of angiosperms – flowering plants, without which a majority of terrestrial species, including our own, would likely die. 

The honeybee accounts for pollination of one-third of the U.S. diet.  The agriculture industry is dependent upon the fuzzy fliers to the tune of $15 billion.  State economies, interstate commerce and the livelihood of thousands or more farmers and their families rely on bee colonies. 

Colony collapse disorder is threatening the global bee population.  This is largely an onus of the commercial honeybee industry, however, if it spreads, all the world’s honeybees will be in danger and the consequences are dire. 

There is an unsubstantiated quote, attributed to Einstein, that says if the honeybees go, humans are soon to follow.  Though I have been unable to find an original incarnation of this quote, the idea seems viable.  Without pollination, plants die.  Without plants, we die. 

The end.