Afternoon tea is a luxury that I afford myself sometimes. I don't usually spring for expensive or imported kinds. I usually just pick up a box of Lipton that I can have with a spot of milk or herbal flavored tea with honey.
It's the herbal that I like best and I usually spend an obnoxious amount of time looking for different varieties, like the Orange Blossom kind I just bought or the Clover type with it's mild delicate fruity flavor that finishes with a little bit of spice.
But imagine my surprise when I read an article in the latest Food & Wine magazine that had a snippet on the yet to be explained "Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD)." CCD is described as a sudden abandonment of beehives by the worker bee population .
Apiculturists (Beekeepers) were not alarmed at the disappearance until it became widespread in 2006. According to Food & Wine, "CCD affected roughly one-third of U.S. beehives last year." Some of the proposed causes include environmental change-related stresses,malnutrition,pathogens,mites,and pesticides.
Think this doesn't effect you? Wait until you try to drown your sorrows in a pint of Haagen-Dazs and you can't get your favorite flavor! CCD has Haagen-Dazs up in arms as they claim bees are actually responsible for 40% of its 60 flavors - such as strawberry, toasted pecan and banana split.
As per, Kathy Pien, brand director of Haagen Dazs, "the company is donating $250,000 to both Pennsylvania State University and the University of California, Davis to fund research into CCD," and is also launching a new flavor this spring called Vanilla Honey Bee to raise consumer awareness of the disease. Haagen-Dazs plans to use part of the sales from the flavor to help the honeybees.
DIY Beekeeping is becoming possible even in unlikely places like New York. Go to abfnet.org for more info on how you can help save the bees.
As for me, I'm going to vow to get over my fear of the flying maker of all things sweet. I've never been stung by a bee and so I've always freaked out when they were near but I promise not to lay a newspaper near any bee who carelessly wanders into my living room.
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