Customer Reviews
To bee or not to bee, is that really the question? - By: Ashtar Command, 24 Aug 2008 
Alison Benjamin & Brian McCallum are two British reporters & amateur bee-keepers. Benjamin works for the British daily paper The Guardian. Their book "A world without bees" was published earlier this year, & deals with the mysterious mass deaths of honeybees all around the world, the so-called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). While some people belive that CCD doesn't really exist, for instance the current Wikipedia writer on the subject, others consider it a serious, global threat to bee-keeping. Benjamin & McCallum certainly belong to the latter camp, claiming that one third of US beehives & two-thirds of thosein France have been wiped out by this mysterious condition. Most scientists seem to agree that CCD does exist, but so far no good explanation have been offered, at least none everyone agrees with. The two authors have interviewed researchers who blame pesticides, fungicides, the varroa mite, climate change, new viruses, or even mobile phones (that's a fringe position). Indeed, CCD could be a combination of several different factors. Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV for short) is a prime suspect, but correlation is not necessarily the same thing as causation. Perhaps somethingin the environment is causing bees to loose their resistance to killer viruses?
The authors own position isn't entirely clear-cut, but their favorite hypothesis seem to be loss of genetic diversity. Most honeybees around the world apparently belong to the same group of Mediterranean subspecies, & the same goes for feral honeybees. These have interbred with wild honeybees, creating a situationin which the honeybee gene pool is virtually the same the world over. When the varroa mite struck, & developed resistance to pesticides, millions of honeybees quickly succumbed - their gene pool was too narrow to develop defenses against the parasite. Benjamin & McCallum therefore strongly supports conservation efforts aimed at preserving local subspecies of wild honeybees. They mention a particular attemptin Denmark, & describe the conflicts this has created between different factions of bee-keepers (the local bees are less productive than the Mediterranean breeds).
The bee-keeping industry seems to take the opposite position from that of the authors: the industry wants to genetically engineer a resilient, resistant & high-productive superbee. The authors fear that this will narrow the gene pool even more. What happens if (or when) the superbee is challenged by an equally resilient superbug?
The book then describes the chilling effects of a world without honeybees. If you think only the honey would disappear, think again! Many important crops are dependent on honeybees for pollination, including alfalfa, apples, almonds, cotton, citrus, soya beans, onions, broccoli, carrots, sunflowers, melons, blueberries, cherries & pumpkins. A world without bees would be a world without fruit, vegetables, juice, health food (the soya) or clothes (the cotton). Alfalfa is used as cattle feed, so a world without bees would also be a world without meat! To drive home the point, the two authors have visited California, where the highly profitable almond orchards are pollinated by honeybees from all over the United States, driven there on enormous trucks. If the honeybees would be wiped out by CCD, an entire industry would be gone. Already today, food prices are going up, due to ethanol production & other factors. CCD doesn't exactly help...
One solution to the crisis mentionedin the book is to use other insects as pollinators, including solitary bees & bumblebees. There are several research projects to that effectin the US. Meanwhile, habitat change have driven bumblebees to near-extinctionin some areas, & other insects live too far away from agricultural land to be of much use. Once again, the authors feel that a more environmental-friendly policy is the bottom line.
Is the author's alarmist perspective true? No idea. Until I picked up this book, mostly by chance, I never even heard of CCD. (Of course, I have heard of the varroa mite.) However, Alison Benjamin & Brian McCallum have written an easy-to-read introduction to the issue, after talking to both scientists, migratory bee-keepers, almond growers, & even conspiracy theorists. I recommend the book, & call on everyone to continue researching the topic.
Timely, persuasive and necessary - By: A. M. Shepherd, 25 Jul 2008 
If climate change doesn't get you, the disappearance of the honeybee will - this is the rather gloomy message of Alison Benjamin & Brian McCallum's well researched & engagingly written new book on Colony Collapse Disorder - a honeybee `plague' which has already killed millions of bees worldwide. Some 90 commercial crops owe their continued existence to the pollination services provided free of charge by the honeybee so its fair to say that A World Without Bees is an important book. For it to succeedin its mission it has to put the fear of God into us without losing us to jargon. It does so admirably, taking us through the rather complicated but interesting world of honeybee health, politics & economics & delivering us to a conclusion which lays the blame firmly on our own shoulders. Time to start talking about bee rights? Could be.
Unique, valuable, objective; a fantastically GOOD book - By: Nicholas Horne, 24 Jun 2008 I read this wonderful bookin one very long sitting; I really could not stop once I started. Having grown up surrounded,in my immediate family, by the 1950's acute nature-awareness of the early Soil Association days of Bob Waller & Harold Horne et al, it was like deja vu to me.
The authors have been very disciplinedin producing a really worthwhile book; it is almost perfectly objective, & therefore above cheap criticism. They have worked immensely hard to source a huge amount of sound material, & they have taken the trouble to understand it thoroughly before using itin their book. And the mystery at issue is no less than how terrifyingly detached from truth we are becoming, & how little we now understand our own misery & poverty of lifein the midst of all our illusion of ease; how deprived of reality we have already become.
Read it! In the morning, the evening, on the train,in the bath, but read it. It is more real than most other stuff you will find on printed paper or glowing on a monitor any day of the year.
