Hi All...I saw the show last night. I think it was slanted toward the greenies, which is to say that it was full of drama (like human caused global warming) and warned of the dangers of the overuse of pesitcides (which is a serious problem) but it also partially blamed our capitalist culture where we, as humans, are trying to squeeze every last drop of profit out of these natural systems and are thus abusing nature. I certainly feel for beeks who experience devastating losses but my best sense is that most of the participants on this board are not commercial beeks. More so, we mainly tend to be the backyard or even some sideline beeks. I like the fact that more attention is being paid to beekeeping but my personal belief that CCD is more of an issue than a catastrophy. Of more serious consequence is the mite. While they did mention the mite they did concentrate on the idea that it is human intervention that is causing our own demise. I am not saying that this is untrue, even in the case of bees, it can lead to faulty logic when that is applied to all natural systems.
I recently read a really good book about migratory beeks called "Following the Bloom" by Douglas Whynott. It is really well written and more accurately depicts the challenges faced by migratory beeks.
My big thing is spreading backyard beekeeping. I think our strength and the survivability of bees rests in our hands. Convince as many people as you can to keep bees in their own back yards. While none of us may end up with thousands of hives, if we get thousands of new beeks I think that wiill be helpful to both the bees and the environment. (Distributed, not centralized) Just my 2 cents...