The case of the vanishing honey bees

"Honeybees are a crucial part of our food chain. As they gather nectar from flowers to make sweet honey, these bees also play an important role in pollination, helping some plants produce fruit. But large numbers of honeybees are disappearing every year ... and no one knows why. Is a fungus kill ing them? Could a poor diet be the cause? What about changes to bees' natural habitat? In this real-life science mystery,scientists and beekeepers are working to answer these questions ... and save the world's honeybees before it's too late.

For roughly the past decade, honeybees around the world have been dying at an alarming rate, and scientists are hard at work determining why and how the bees might be saved.