Left In Lowell

Yesterday’s Sun’s big shmeer (major front page package), “Beekeepers worry about mysterious colony disorder,” is about the world’s disappearing bee population. Not hot news, you say. Certainly not political. But it’s a decent story focusing on the impact on beekeepers in the area, though it only hints at the true calamity of a bee-less world. For that you have to go The Independent in London: Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?“The scare sentence: “Most of the world’s crops depend on pollination by bees.”

Both the Lowell and London papers used what Einstein said about bees.

Lowell: “It’s the one species whose extinction Albert Einstein said would wipe out mankind.”

London: “Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, ‘man would have only four years of life left’.”

How do I know that London had its own bee story?

Because Matt Drudge lead his Web site with it Saturday night and Sunday. Better bees than Bush, right?

Maybe there was a common source for both The Sun’s and The Independent’s bee story. I couldn’t find it on the AP’s site. But you can be assured, any minute now the networks and cable news channels will go bee crazy, if they haven’t already. It’s a cosmic doom story, with cute part played by bees buzzing around.

BTW, no one knows why bees are disappearing. The Sun’s nut graff: “Scientists call the strange disappearing act ‘colony collapse disorder,’ or CCD. What’s most worrisome is no one has any idea what’s causing it.”

See you around the hive, if you can find one.