Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 11 · column 1 of 6 · from the scan, no model involved
Bees
From Page B1
early 1900s an important topic for research. Not only did farmers start keeping beehives near their crops, but with the evolution of farming, bees eventually began to be transported from crop to crop across the country as needed during the pollination season.
This keeping and transporting of bees for our purposes worked well for a long time. Then, several years ago, beekeepers became aware that entire bee colonies were suddenly disappearing. While such disappearances have occurred throughout the history of apiculture (beekeeping), the term “colony collapse disorder” was first applied to the drastic rise in the number of disappearances of Western honey bee colonies in NorthAmerica in late 2006. These disappearances awoke people around the world to the plight of honey bees and subsequently other pollinators.
Why should we care that bees are disappearing? Pollinators are critical to reproduction of most plants. Not only are they integral to the stability of natural ecosystems, but almost 80 percent of the world's crop plants require pollination, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. NRCS estimates the annual value of insect pollinated crops in the U.S. at $20 billion. As the NRCS Web site notes, “new language in the 2008 Farm Bill makes pollinators and their habitat a priority for every USDA land manager and conservationist."
The most well-known pollinators are honey bees, but other animals are hard at work, too, helping plants reproduce While we enjoy the Star Wars antics of humming
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