Fruitless Fall Book Review

The bees are disappearing. This story has been in the news off and on for the last three years. Most people are not paying attention. Unless it's the headline news story they forget about it. Increased food prices and decreased food availability will wake them up at some point. Hopefully it will not be too late.

I just finished reading Fruitless Fall by Rowan Jacobsen. This book explores the causes of colony collapse disorder. The author explains and debunks some of the myths and theories surrounding it, such as the cell phone rumor.

It thoroughly details the life cycle of the bees and the hive, along with all of the ways we've distorted the natural cycle and all of the perils we've placed in their way. Today's bees are fed high-fructose corn syrup. They are treated with antibiotics, miticides, and must deal with multiple highly toxic pesticides. They are trucked all over the country, over-worked and over-stressed. They are exposed to exotic pathogens and parasites.

Unfortunately, our wild pollinators such as bumblebees are also disappearing. They face many of the same problems- habitat loss, massive amounts of toxic chemicals and exotic pathogens that we have introduced.

Various food crops and their pollinators are mentioned. Honeybees pollinate almonds, bumblebees pollinate tomatoes. Humans hand-pollinate all of the world's vanilla because the only variety of bees that once did it are extinct.

The book ends by explaining some things we can do. There is some info. on starting your own hive. For those of us who aren't that ambitious, we can help the wild pollinators by eliminating the use of all pesticides; fungicides, herbicides and insecticides. There is a list of plants that are good for wild bees. It ends with a chapter on the healing properties of honey.

This was very thorough, well researched and written, and quite an interesting read. This is information that affects us all. We all eat and without the bees our food choices will be very slim. I highly recommend this book.