Are honey bees dying out? Didn Einstein say that if honey bees die out humans would follow soon after?
As far as we know, bees are not dying out. However, they are under threat from a number of different diseases, some of which are capable of wiping out entire colonies. A recent phenomenon, dubbed Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD, has caused large losses in bee colonies in the USA. At the present time the cause of CCD is not known and research continues into this worrying development. Despite the claims made by some newspapers, there is no evidence that mobile phones play any role in CCD. Britain’s only professor of apiculture, Prof. Francis Ratnieks, discusses the fears about bee die-off in this interview with The Guardian newspaper. As for Einstein, there is no evidence that the great physicist had anything to say about honey bees. The quote attibuted to Einstein seems to have first made an appearance in print in a 1965 beekeeping magazine – ten years after his death. The urban legend site Snopes says: “All in all, this looks like a classic case of a useful quote being invented and pu
