THE BUZZ

All we are saying, is give bees a chance

There is increasing reason to believe that Gaucho and other members of a family of highly toxic chemicals - neonicotinoids - may be responsible for the deaths of billions of honeybees worldwide.
Something is killing the bees. Some scientists suspect a virus; others mites, even cellphones. (Bees are not known to use phones, though, having their own communications system - a dance called the "waggle.")

Rachel Carson was vilified by an industry smear nearly 50 years ago, after the release of her book, "Silent Spring." "If we were to follow the teachings of Miss Carson," said American Cyanamid, the maker of DDT, "we would return to the Dark Ages ... insects, vermin and disease would once again inherit the Earth."

But, as Carson so eloquently put it in a CBS documentary in 1964:
"Man's attitude toward nature is today critically important simply because we now have acquired a fateful power to alter and destroy nature. But man is part of nature, and his war is inevitably a war against himself."