Prehistoric Clues Might Offer Answers to Modern Day Bee Die-OffHeather Callaghan What happened to those guys? A fascinating new discovery about bees in prehistoric times actually sheds a lot of light on our current situation with massive bee die-off and colony collapse disorder. A vast majority of people are still under the impression that it will simply resolve itself; but really, we might be on the brink of an endangered era with already visible impact. Even an endangered classification for bees today would mean major ecological devastation. A recent milestone: scientists for the first time have documented the mass bee extinction dated to have occurred 65 million years ago. It coincides with the huge event that wiped out the land-roaming dinosaurs and much of the flowering plant life. This is still often called the K-T boundary the end of the Cretaceous era and beginning of the Paleogene eras where a massive event like a meteorite or a series of events impacted the environment so immensely that plant-life died off, taking with it most of the non-avian dinosaurs. In this study First Evidence for a Massive Extinction Event Affecting Bees Close to the K-T Boundary, published recently in PLOSOne Journal, they combined the sequencing with existing fossil records so that they could also introduce time into the equation. This helps to discover data like how old the bees are, how they are related, and what happened when a particular family nearly vanished completely. BBC Newsreported: Sandra Rehan said: Study co-leader, Mike Schwarz, pointed to a lot of diversification among the bee family followed by stalled diversification followed by sudden increase in the four bee tribes, indicating an extinction event that could have completely wiped out other competitive bee species allowing remaining species to eventually rise again. He delved into the important findings of the symbiotic relationship a particular type of flower and carpenter bee ancestors shared. Eucidot flowers originated around the same time. He emphasized climate changes, whereas Rehan focuses on bee behavior, relationships and diversity. Admittedly, we have an attempt at modern-day, man-made climate change atmospheric geoengineering. It has been suggested that the thick haze veiling the sun could have impacts on agriculture, not to mention the metallic residue fallout. Interestingly, part of the theory of the K-T boundary event(s) surrounds the idea that meteorite dust covered the sun and led to mass plant die-off. My thoughts mirror the ones in Sandras press release, Indeed, the findings of this study have important implications for todays concern about the loss in diversity of bees, a pivotal species for agriculture and biodiversity. Monoculture (versus polycuture and biodiversity) is increasing due to corporate biotech monopolies and large-scale farming practices. Genetic engineering starting in the mid 90s and various types introduced in the early 2000s allowed for extra mass pesticide spraying. While a lot of it worked for farmers in 2003, now survivor pests like corn rootworm are running rampant on their crops while helper bugs like bees and butterflies continue to die out. Those are just a couple factors implicated in the vanishing of the bees, scarily noticeable starting in 2006. Yet, polyculture and biodiversity are just one of the many methods to increase yields, nix pesticide use, and keep the biodiversity that will help bring back pollinator species. What if these modern-day practices combine to form a less intense event, not so suddenly traumatic, that impacts the environment to the point of actually losing pollinator species in the near future? Will prehistoric answers help create action for today? Heather Callaghan is a natural health blogger and food freedom activist. You can see her work atNaturalBlaze.com and selfnewsPost.com. Like at Facebook. Recently From Heather Callaghan: 