When was the last time you chomped down on an apple?  Okay, if you don't dig apples in their most "apple-ish" form, when was the last time you ate Apple Jacks, or an Apple Strudel?  It's getting to be apple season, and the produce aisles of supermarkets are piled high with those tasty red, green and yellow orbs.  But none of those succulent spheres would be here without BEES!

No, that's not a handful of raisins- that's a pile of dead bees scooped up by an Oregon farmer, and for 3 years such entomological horror shows have been found with increasing frequency across North America.  While bee hating children might rejoice at the news, apple lovers ought to cringe- every apple you ever ate was pollinated by a bee, and if bees take a trip down do-do way, so do Johnny Appleseed's children.

Here at Peeled Snacks World Headquarters, we've been following this Bee story for some time, all the while our eyes flitting nervously and our necks sweating bullets, because if bees all die, well, so does many of our ingredients (almonds, fruit, peaches, PLUOTS!!!).  When some of our farmer-friends have reported bee shortages, we've actually offered to pollinate the trees ourselves.  We try our best not to be offended that nobody took us up on that generous offer.

This lack of Bee-ness is actually very serious business for us, and, frankly, for any American that likes to eat "food".  So much produce relies upon bee pollination that a prolonged absence of bees might empty supermarkets' fruit aisles, not to mention punish the hard-working American fruit farmer.  Furthermore, many have worried that the bee die-offs portends to looming environmental disaster, which scares more than farmers and snack magnates.

When last I made my way through California's Central Valley (the source of most of our fruit & nuts), I noted a ridiculous increase in the number of chain linked fences.  I asked one of my farmer friends, "what's with all the new fences?"  He replied that some entomologists theorized that the bees were dying off due to increased cell-phone signals, which chain link fences disrupt.  Break up the signals, save the bees, or so the theory goes.

Seemed unlikely, but chain link fences are a cheap way to save America (though they won't do too much on the Mexican border, I'm afraid).  Last Thursday, however, researchers published a new theory as to the cause of the bee deaths.  Turns out, right about the time the bees started dying, beekeepers began importing Australian Bees, who, it turns out, are carriers for the vicious , bee-killing Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus!

So bee-keepers were re-enacting their own little colonization of the new world (complete with the common cold, which wiped out most of the Indian populations), and unbeknownst to them causing the largest insect genocide since the Summer of 1983 when my friends and I declared war on all 17 year locusts.   Native American Bees welcomed the Australians with plates of nectar and sweet potatoes, only to wind up coughing themselves to death shortly thereafter.

Let's hope that this new information will help entomologists and farmers find a way to save our bee populations.  I worry, though, that the card carrying members of the North American Bee Union (NABU) will have their jobs replaced by beer swilling, kangaroo eating bees who fly upside down and, instead of buzzing, make an annoying "Oi oi oi!" sound.

To learn more about the bees' colony collapse, go HERE.  Read all about the study HERE.  And then pray they find a cure.  I find it appropriate to deliver some semi-apocalyptic news today, since it is September 11th.  To think that just 6 years ago, Americans received the support and good will of the world.  And now we receive truly killer bees.