would be devastating.  How devastating?  The Guardian points out that…

People’s initial response to the idea of a bee-less world is often either, “That’s a shame, I’ll have no honey to spread on my toast” or, “Good - one less insect that can sting me.” In fact, honeybees are vital for the pollination of around 90 crops worldwide. In addition to almonds, most fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds are dependent on honeybees. Crops that are used as cattle and pig feed also rely on honeybee pollination, as does the cotton plant. So if all the honeybees disappeared, we would have to switch our diet to cereals and grain, and give our wardrobes a drastic makeover.

According to Albert Einstein, our very existence is inextricably linked to bees - he is reputed to have said: “If the bee disappears off the surface of the globe, then man would only have four years of life left.”

So the cause of this colony collapse problem?

The answer is probably overwork, coupled with various environmental factors that are the flipside of pollination on an industrial scale and intensified food production.

However one beekeeper feels otherwise.

“It’s those new neonicotinoid pesticides that growers are using,” he says. “That’s what’s messing up the bees’ navigation system so they can’t find their way home.”Honeybees have a sophisticated dance language they use to communicate with each other in the hive. Until Karl von Frisch unlocked the mysteries of this dance - his discovery won him a Nobel prize in 1973 - we didn’t fully appreciate that bees returning to the hive laden with nectar and pollen will tell their sisters (all worker bees are female) where they got their supplies by doing a dance that points to the location of the flowers in relation to the sun’s position.

Tests have shown that the pesticides Hackenberg refers to can interfere with the bees’ communication and orientation skills, and also impair memory.

An issue we should all be concerned about.