




"Who the hell was pollinating before all those (people in) Conestoga wagons came down the Oregon Trail and started planting apple trees?" he asked.

He says that in Oregon and Washington alone there are something like 900 native catalogued bee species.

"That's a lot and they handle the general environmental background pollination and they have been doing it for millions of years," he said, quickly adding that the system today is far more efficient.

"An apple grower want to put a million honeybees in his 100 acres of apples and all it takes is a phone call to a beekeeper. Much better," he said.

Bees usually have a brief but very active life, Burgett explained. So what killed them before the mysterious Colony Collapse Disease arrived in the bee yard?

"The fancy term is physiological senescence," he said. "They literally wear out."

A worker bee lives about six weeks, with the first half spent inside the hive.

"They feed the queen, feed her sisters and make honey," Burgett said. The bee then begins a new life as a forager bee, flying out to collect nectar and pollen.

He said a bee finally leaving the safe environment of the hive is analogous to a teenager leaving home.

"There are a lot of things out there that'll get you, and if you avoid the predators -- and there are many -- you're just going to wear out," he said, citing a Germany study which reported that "bees are programmed to fly 1,000 kilometers, and after that, they go to hell."







"You know, honey is honey, sweet and sticky. I think a lot of them just buy on price," said Grigg.

Burgett points out that honey has a reputation thousands of years old.

"It has long been considered a very, very pure product and its just pisses me off greatly when people destroy good honey with cheap sugary additives and adulterations with health implications like residue from illegal antibiotics," he said.