LIZ CLANCY: Bees Make Honey

It is always nice to be able to introduce you all to a new guest blogger. Possibly the nicest thing about the CFZ bloggo is that it is a living, breathing community, and new people arrive on a regular basis. I can't tell you anything about Liz, apart from the fact that she bought some books from us at Uncon, briefly spoke to Richard, and had a charmingly old-fashioned habit of referring to me as `Mr Downes`, when everyone else calls me `Jon` or `Hey You` (or somethimes something more scatological), until I told her not to. She is obviously one to watch...

There's a more immediate problem with the shortage of honey bees than impending Armageddon. I and many like me rely on local honey to cure symptoms of asthma and rhinitis because often conventional medicine is just not good enough (believe it or not you can overdose on a reliever inhaler, which is easy to do when the recommended two puffs fail to make you breathe).

I bought my honey from a shop in Rochdale for years until last year the beekeeper was forced to retire when ALL the bees in his hives died or deserted. For months I struggled as he was the only beekeeper for miles (supermarket honey, for some reason, can make things worse). I recently found another beekeeper a little closer to my home but who charges a fortune because his bees, too, are dying off and he's struggling to make ends meet.

I would urge all CFZ readers to follow the advice in yesterdays article (http://cryptozoologynews.blogspot.com/2009/05/bee-population-collapse-could-be-saved.html or see Oll's link to is in "yesterdays news today" post) in order to help honey bee populations to rise. It's not difficult and will help not only those with respiratory and other health problems but also the whole of life on Earth if the worst case scenario we've been told of is to be believed.