Bees are the canaries this time

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To the Editor:

I’m a local beekeeper. Everyone has been asking me lately about the honeybee, and when asked, I look at the questioner and wonder if they could handle the truth of the matter. I feel the CCD or Colony Collapse Disorder is the result of three basic reasons: overwork, environment, and greed. The bees are dying because of insecticides and corn syrup. The commercial beekeepers are completely robbing the bees of honey and then giving them corn syrup, which kills the healthy bacteria in the intestines hence making them poop themselves to death. Not only is their diet killing them, but by nature they are known to work only six months out of the year and not the entire year. Who would imagine that this little insect would have so much significance to our own world? And really, who cares, as long as we have almonds on the table. Consumers don’t care about the bees anymore than they care about the fact that corporations have this country hostage. The country’s moral decay is manifested in its physical decay, and it is no coincidence that our infrastructure is overburdened, outdated, and in dismal repair. There is nothing President Obama can do to stop it, because it has been decades in the making. Americans insist on living in the past, and that will be our doom. In no period in American history has democracy been in such peril, and special interest groups such as the tea party group are completely off-line as to what the real problem might be. Take a look at corporations, and you will find a power that is holding this government hostage. I doubt that anyone would have the knowledge to even find them because most are largely anonymous. Here on the East Coast, and especially Martha’s Vineyard, we have a golden opportunity to do something better for the environment, but that will never happen because of the eastern bullheaded mentality surrounding change, and not just change, any kind of change. This will be our ultimate undoing, and it doesn’t have any thing to do with ignorance, but everything to do with greed.

Fred ThornbrughVineyard Haven