I was surprised to find the Western honeybee in twelfth place on this list of weirdest insects. Supposedly, it made the list because it’s the only insect capable of producing such a wide variety of useful and delicious things, such as honey, bee pollen, beeswax, royal jelly, and medicinal bee venom. They’re also master architects, chemists, and engineers, making them quite extraordinary creatures indeed. 

So extraordinary, in fact, that they are absolutely crucial to our human food production, pollinating billions of dollars worth of crops every year, in addition to pollinating flowers, trees, and other flowering shrubs, which adds to the beauty of nature in general.

Unfortunately, the honeybee population may be in grave decline across the United States. This is a serious problem, because almost 100 different kinds of crops need honeybees to transport pollen between flowers, prompting fertilization and jump-starting the production of seed and fruit.

Now it seems bees are disappearing at an alarming rate, and there may soon not be enough bees to transport a sufficient amount of pollen because of “colony collapse disorder.” This is the catch-all phrase adopted, which encompasses a myriad of possible reasons why the honeybees are vanishing. Possible answers range from a new infection, to compromised immune systems, pesticides, EMF’s (electromagnetic frequencies), and genetically modified crops.

I am relatively convinced that the primary reason for this disorder is that the bees are the proverbial canaries, reacting to the epidemic increase in cell phone use. It took from 1984 to 2004 to reach the first billion cell phones and then only 18 months to get to the second billion, nine months to the third, and we will hit four billion cell phones by the end of the year.
 
Wireless broadcasts are loaded with information containing packets, which resonate at various frequencies (depending on the source), and can cause biological effects when the frequency is the same, or similar to, the biological system of the organism. In the case of the bees, it appears to disrupt intercellular communication and cause disorientation of the magnetite in their bodies that they use to orient themselves to the earth. They can’t find their way back to the hives and they die because they don’t have the capacity to store much nutrition in their body, because they require food from the hive.

Some economists have estimated this single species of insect is worth as much as $14 billion to the U.S. economy. Moreover, pollinated plants may account for as much as one-third of the average American diet, and possibly the healthiest portion of it. So maybe the honeybee isn’t just one of the weirdest – it may be one of the most symbiotically life affirming insects out there.