Something strange is happening to honeybees. They’re vanishing. In parts of the country, bees are leaving hives and not returning. The phenomenon, dubbed Colony Collapse Disorder, has wiped out a quarter of the hives of commercial beekeepers since last summer, according to the American Beekeeping Federation, and set off a flurry of debate about how to stop it, whatever it is, and what it all means. Though scientists from UC San Francisco announced Wednesday that they had identified a parasitic fungus and a virus as two potential causes, the culprit or culprits behind a national phenomenon still have not been definitively confirmed. As if out of some lost Rod Serling script, this warp in the daily rhythms of a tiny creature has potentially big consequences. Bees, after all, don’t just make honey. ‘One-third of our daily diet is based on crops produced by honeybee pollination,’ says Eric Mussen, an entomologist and bee expert at UC Davis who believes Colony Collapse Disorder has the potential to threaten U.S. food production. Crops that rely on bees, he says, represent ‘the lion’s share of our fruits and vegetables.’ But it’s not just at the dinner table where these unsung constant […]