Einstein Bees

"If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would only have four years of life left.'

This quote is in the press a lot lately, and is attributed to Einstein. As much as I am interested and concerned with the bee situation, and as much as I like Einstein, and as much as I'd like to believe that he said this so as to fuel my "what a wonderful and unexpected end to mankind!" inclinations, it seems that the quote is entirely apocryphal, or at least entirely impossible to substantiate. Also not like Einstein was some sort of bee expert, or entomologist, but hell, people have been getting Nobel Prizes in various fields for over 50 years simply by linking the barest shred of their work to something Einstein may once have said, so I guess it comes as no real surprise.

While there are probably hundreds of articles on this topic, my general lack of time and interest w.r.t. current events, and my suspicion of the media leads me to not read much news in a given day. On a whim I went and found the first bee article that caught my eye. I am particularly fond of this innocent quote:
'I told Pat it looked like they had a panic attack, as though they were all trying to leave at the same time.'

That's some action/disaster movie dialogue right there. When the birds stop singing on a beautiful day, or the animals all start running in one direction, or an entire hive of bees flips out and soccer-mob-tramples themselves to death trying to flee their home, then I don't think we need an Einstein quote to start noticing something bad is coming.
Posted by charlie on April 23rd 2007
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