Burt's Bees President Asks Congress to Help Honeybees

By Barbara Barrett, The News & Observer (USA), 6/26/2008

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Congress took up the plight of the honeybee this morning, welcoming a North Carolina cucumber farmer and the president of Durham cosmetics company Burt's Bees to talk about how mass bee deaths could affect food supplies and the economy.

For each of the past two years, about a third of the nation's honeybee colonies have mysteriously disappeared, dying off because of some unknown virus or environmental hit -- or, more probably, a combination of both.

Because a third of the nation's food supply relies on pollinators such as honeybees to survive, the consequences of continued bee colony wipeouts could be devastating, say researchers, beekeepers and farmers.

Researchers finally identified the unknown danger as "Colony Collapse Disorder," though they still don't know the causes or what actually kills the bees...