Bee Concerned, Bee Very Concerned

MISSOULA, Mont. -- The disappearance and deaths of millions of honeybees in nearly half of the nation's states is a mystery seemingly befitting an episode of "CSI" and is threatening an estimated $14 billion in crops that rely on pollination.

"It's called Colony Collapse Disorder," said Jerry Bromenshenk, a University of Montana professor and head of Bee Alert who has studied honeybees for more than three decades.

Sounds like we need to invent some Bee-agra.

Bromenshenk is part of a national task force attempting to figure out why bees leave their hives and don't return. He recently returned from California with thousands of dead bees that he suspects were in colonies in the midst of collapsing.

Perhaps they're crossing the border to live in Mexico illegally?

"We are … trying to figure out the unknown," Wick said in an interview. "This is a devastating situation. If every honeybee disappeared tomorrow, we would still have produce in our markets—it just wouldn't come from the United States."

Great. Little yellow bees from China taking our bees' jobs...

Bromenshenk's addition to the team studying the bees' disappearance was prompted by the significant research he has conducted at the university as well as the company that spun off from that work.The firm has learned how to train bees to perform a variety of tasks, including sniffing out poisons, a skill that can be applied to such things as land mine detection or use of chemicals in a terrorist attack. Bromenshenk said the company has discovered how to train a bee in less than a day to identify things by smell or by sight.

Or maybe the bees don't want to bee little slaves for no pay...