Where have the bees gone

I’d read the stories about vanishing honeybees, but didn’t put much stock in them. I was still seeing plenty of bees.

Now all of a sudden I’m not.

Last year when I’d walk close to my caragana hedge it was abuzz with a low hum. Not this year. There wasn’t a honeybee to be heard or seen among the yellow blossoms. In my sweet corn patch only a couple of bees flit from tassle to tassle doing their work.

At the lake where miles of clover lines the shore and the slightest breeze used to push bees out over the lake and into our boat while we fished, the only thing riding the wind these days is the sw...