To bee or not to bee

It's a chilling January night and there's a cold drizzle outside that's not making it any warmer.

My thoughts turn to all the living things out there in this cold wave, and for some reason I'm suddenly thinking of bees.

Yes, bees. the kind that buzz and build hives and gather honey from flowers. I have in my hand a bottle of 'bee honey' - an excellent traditional remedy for a sore throat: honey and brandy; honey, lemon and brandy, honey and ginger - three effective ways of soothing a throat on a wintry night. And then there's my favourite snack: braised pork in honey sauce.

But honey.. 'pure bee honey' is getting more expensive by the minute. The reason is perhaps because in spite of 'bee farms', the bee population is facing a population crisis. The bee population is actually decreasing.

If 2010 continues to see entire colonies of honey bees wiped out by the indiscriminate spraying of pesticides, freak climate change, sudden, unseasonal freezing temperatures, the it's going to be a very hungry future in store for the world.

The orange crops in California, the litchies in Muzaffarpur, the Mango flowers and Jamun blossoms, all need honeybees to perform the pollination ritual to turn flower into fruit. Honey is just the by-product.

Now, if we don't do something about saving the bees, we're going to do more than ponder the question

Humankind : to bee or not to be?