????我們需要蜜蜂。你喜歡蘋果嗎？那杏仁呢？洋蔥呢？藍莓、櫻桃以及所有開花的水果，它們要結出果實，花朵都需要授粉。而要說到授粉，沒有什么能比得上蜜蜂。據美國農業部（The U.S. Department of Agriculture）估計，人們的食物有四分之一是拜蜜蜂高超的授粉技能所賜。

????我們需要蜜蜂，然而蜜蜂卻正在一批一批地死去。這個現象大約始于2005年，當時首次被命名為“蜂群崩潰綜合癥”。我們在命名時并不清楚這個現象出現的原因。醫治蜂群崩潰綜合癥極為復雜，這種毛病似乎同蜜蜂所服務的行業一樣盤根錯節。紐約市蜂農協會（New York City Beekeepers）聯合創始人安德魯?科特數年前向筆者表示：“探究蜂群崩潰錯亂癥的原因就如同試圖探究貧困的根源一樣困難。”

????我們需要蜜蜂，因為如果沒有他們，我們就享用不了自己喜愛的美食。而現在，由于蜜蜂數量減少，我們喜愛的食品的價格會上漲。對于蜜蜂迅速死亡的原因，我們只有點模糊的概念，而所有可能的原因——營養不良、農藥、巡游的生活方式造成壓力過大——都直指蜜蜂處在中心地位的這個系統。蜂巢同農業一樣，是一個復雜且組織嚴密的系統，如果有幾只蜜蜂病倒，整個體系就可能分崩離析。正如在美國賓州經營一家工業授粉服務公司的戴夫?哈肯伯格所說：“如果開始縮短蜜蜂的壽命，哪怕就縮短幾天，幼蜂們不得不提前去采蜜，結果整個事情都會被搞砸。”

????哈肯伯格對蜜蜂的飛行路徑格外注意，從不讓這些小家伙接近玉米作物。因為“如果上面有什么污染物，蜜蜂絕對會把它們帶回蜂巢。”玉米等農作物使用一種叫做“新煙堿”的化學物作為殺蟲劑（這種化學物類似尼古丁，會影響神經系統）。新煙堿是目前全球使用最廣泛的殺蟲劑之一。上個月，來自美國養蜂人聯盟、塞拉俱樂部（the Sierra Club）、環境健康中心（the Center for Environmental Health）以及食品安全中心（the Center for Food Safety）的代表聯合起訴美國環保署（the Environmental Protection Agency），認為后者沒有經過慎重的評估就批準新煙堿用于殺蟲劑，結果導致蜜蜂死亡。上周，歐盟就禁用新煙堿殺蟲劑提案進行了表決，但由于英國和德國等國棄權，提案未能通過。位于德國的化工巨頭拜耳作物科學公司（Bayer CropScience）是全球最大的新煙堿類殺蟲劑制造商。

????丹?卡明斯是一位加州的農場主，種植杏仁，同時還養蜂。他表示，一些養蜂人損失了高達70%的蜜蜂。卡明斯目前正和蜜蜂研究人員合作，嘗試識別出蜜蜂帶回蜂巢的所有致病菌。卡明斯稱：“整個行業已經排除了所有的單一原因。通過長期研究，我們發現事情越來越古怪。它似乎和所謂的營養有關。蜜蜂的活動范圍越大，采食的作物越多，生命力就越頑強。”卡明斯目前正試圖找出究竟該為蜜蜂補充哪些營養。“相比于以往，蜜蜂現在的食譜范圍真是小的可憐。”

????卡明斯有一塊被柵欄圍起來，沒有種莊稼的地。他希望能在上面種些美國本土作物，例如狼灌。他說：“這樣蜜蜂就能飛到狼灌上完成授粉了，真是太妙了。”而且，這種作物是寄生蜂的天堂。寄生蜂這個名字雖然不好聽，但它能捕食螨蟲，而后者會導致蜂群發病死亡。卡明斯計劃修一道籬笆把殺蟲劑拒之門外，也不讓甜三葉草和風信子等作物污染了蜜蜂的美食。當然，籬笆看起來挺傻的，但為了心愛的蜜蜂，值了。（財富中文網）

????譯者：項航

????We need bees. You like apples? Almonds? Onions? How about blueberries or cherries or, heck, any flowering fruit out there -- to get the fruit you need the flower pollinated; and to pollinate, nothing beats a honeybee. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that a quarter of our diet depends on honeybees' pollination prowess.

????We need bees, and bees are dying en masse, have been since about 2005, when a phenomenon called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) was first given a name. We named the result without knowing its cause. Curing CCD has proven extremely complex, the ailment seems as knotty as interconnected as the industry the bees serve. As Andrew Coté, co-founder of New York City Beekeepers, told me years ago, "Asking to explain what causes CCD is like asking what causes poverty."

????So we need bees because, without them, we wouldn't have all these foods we love; and right now, with fewer of them, the foods we love are going to cost more. We have only some vague notions of what it is that could be killing them off so quickly, and all possible causes -- bad nutrition, pesticides, an itinerant lifestyle that's full of unnatural stresses -- point to the very system of which they are a central part. Hives, like the agriculture industry, are such complex, tightly organized systems that if a few bees fall unwell the whole structure might fall apart. As Dave Hackenburg, who runs an industrial pollination services company in Pennsylvania, says, "If you start shortening lives of bees, just by a few days, young bees have to go to the field earlier, and the whole thing gets messed up."

????Hackenburg is careful about where he sends his bees and won't let them near corn crops because "if there's contaminants, they're bringing it home." Corn, and plenty of other crops, use pesticides with chemicals known as neonicotinoids (they affect neurons, and are similar to nicotine). Neonicotinoids are one of the most widely used classes of pesticide in the world. Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency was sued by a coalition of beekeepers, as well as representatives from the Sierra Club, the Center for Environmental Health, and the Center for Food Safety, for failing to protect bees by approving neonicotinoids without proper review. A proposed ban on the insecticides went before the European Union last week but was postponed because England and Germany, among other nations, abstained from voting. Bayer CropScience, the giant German-based company, is among the largest producers of neonicotinoid-based pesticides in the world.

????Dan Cummings, a California almond farmer who also keeps bees, says some keepers are losing up to 70% of their population. Cummings is working with honeybee researchers to try and identify all the pathogens bees bring back into the hive. "We as an industry have eliminated all single-cause agents, so we've learned a lot, but it's become more mysterious. It seems," he continues, "to be highly correlated with nutrition. The bees that have better forage, a more diverse diet, are more resilient." Cummings is now working on just what that supplemental diet should be. "The bees' diet today is poorer than it's ever been," he says.

????Along his own fence lines, in areas that aren't farmed, he favors native plants like coyote bush. "Honeybees go out and make wonderful pollen out of coyote bush," Cummings says. Plus, the plant serves as home to parasitic wasps, which sound nasty but prey on mites, which infest and can kill off bee colonies. He's planning hedge barriers to keep sprays from drifting, sweetclovers and bluebells that get mixed into the bee diet. Sure, the hedgerows are attractive, he says, but they're there for the bees.