Word: beese
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The Lowdown: You can't finish this book unconvinced that our food supply is in serious danger. Although Jacobsen doesn't solve the CCD mystery, he presents ample evidence that the current state of affairs - "rented" honey bees that are shipped coast to coast to pollinate crops - is unsustainable and...
The Gist: By exploring the mysterious phenomenon of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) that is wiping out honey bees worldwide, Jacobsen lays out a case for why we need to care - and it has very little to do with honey. A spiritual successor to Rachel Carson's seminal eco-polemic Silent...
Highlight Reel: 1. On the "waggle dance" that a nectar-gathering honeybee does in the hive to alert others that there's an orange tree nearby: "She heads to the dance floor and does her waggle dance for the spectators, running up and down the comb while wiggling her butt...
2. On what Pennsylvania's state beekeeper Dennis vanEngelsdorp found when he examined victims of CCD: "[W]hat he saw looked like an infinitesimal World War I battlefield. Everywhere was shiny, pockmarked ruin. The bees' guts, which should have been white, were stippled brown with infection. Their sting glands had...
3. On what a "hive mind" - the highly organized honey bee hierarchy - looks like when it's suffering from CCD: "There were usually a few bees, yes, but they were wandering without purpose like survivors of an apocalyse, which they were ... Great lobes of the hive mind had died, and...