From the Boston Globe:

Few environmental or ecological crises are as alarming as the plight of the honeybee. The massive losses of the insects in the United States since 2006 may reduce our chances of getting stung, but they also reduce our chances of eating fruits and vegetables: Bees pollinate a third of the nation’s crops. No bees, no food.

This is what makes the work of scientists trying to unravel the mystery — which has come to be known as Colony Collapse Disorder — so important. And it’s what makes the work of beekeepers — people like John Miller — so heroic.

Miller, a commercial beekeeper from California, is the star of “The Beekeeper’s Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America’’ by Hannah Nordhaus, a magazine writer. Miller spends most of each year traveling around the country with his truckload of hives, carting them to almond, apple, and cherry orchards, to pollinate crops as the bees gather nectar to make honey.

For more, see: A keeper and his bees stand against a mystery disease