Colony Collapse:

 Colony Collapse:

Elder, Glen; Utah--

So, I was watching this documentary about bees; you know, one of those, ‘Humanity is so awful, destroying the world, farming is evil’ type of things. It did not represent the natural world in a ‘real’ way; it was some green bullshit. They said because we use bees, we cause colony collapses and the reduction of native bees by introducing European bees, fertilizer, pesticides, or mono-culture crops. In other words, they don’t know what particular bullshit reason they can pin on us farmers, but they will find something that sticks.

Bullshit.

I have been farming almonds out here in the desert since I could walk, my daddy before me, his daddy before that. Well, the whole time, we’ve been working with the same company that comes out and sets up a bunch of hives for us each year during pollination season. It is something we do every year always have. This company has semi-trucks stacked high with bee hives; they drive around the country from farm to farm and set up for a spell to pollinate. The plants, apple trees, almonds, olives, shit --everything needs to be pollinated. They have it all timed out and follow a set route to be at the correct type of farm at the right time of year. They track their bees to maximize their business.

Well, anyway, three years back, they came through, like always, and they set up their hives. I mean, I didn’t actually make it out to the site, so I didn’t actually see it; I read the weekly reports religiously. I got me this Mexican, Jose, who manages all the day-to-day stuff—never seen a more prominent, whiter cowboy hat or as dust-free of a pickup truck in my life. He runs the staff, maintenance, land management, security, the illegal pickers, and tasks where speaking Spanish is part of the job. Sure as hell not going to learn to talk E-spain-ol. Every once in a while, I have to go out to the actual trees, but rarely. Most of what needs to be done is coordinated between the Farm Bosses like Jose and my Business Managers. Thank God for that, too, because I tell you what, it is getting hotter and dustier out there in those fields every year. As I get older, I don't much like leaving the AC and getting sunburnt or sun-stroked, all to sweaty hell and back in the hot sun.

Anyway, back to three years ago, they set up like usual, left, and we waited for the nuts to come. Well, they never did; we only had %15 of the yield we would have typically had. The flowers weren’t pollinated, so we didn’t get nuts. I was pissed. I called up the guy at the bee company and screamed at him for about an hour. Eventually, he got me calmed down and told me he would investigate it and call me back. I was lucky I didn’t have a damn heart attack; I was so worked up. Well, about three days later, he called me up and said he sent me an E-Mail. The nuts and bolts of it were when those bees showed up at the next farm, they were all dead, and what their ‘scientists’ came up with was they must have colony-collapse disorder. They had to send out an emergency truck to that farm. I asked why I didn’t deserve an emergency shipment. He said no one had complained to him until now. In fact, he said, it would have been a lot better for everybody if I had let them know about the bees before the situation got so out of control as if it were my damn fault. He said whatever ailed the bees passed on to the replacement shipment and, from there, contaminated a bunch of their hives back at their headquarters. I don’t see how any of it is my goddamn problem. My problem was the low yield.

So, anyway, the guy from the bee company had all this GPS data from the trucks he was sharing with these scientists who were taking genetic samples, bacteria cultures, pollen, everything. Some college kids were using this data to work on some climate projects. They were all trying to figure out what was causing the hives to die. I wanted my crops to be pollinated the following year. So, when they asked me if they could send a team to take measurements of our fields, I said, ‘Fine.’ They could measure anything they wanted; I was on board as long as it went into fixing the problem.

Well, I should have checked with Jose. I had forgotten we were using some banned pesticides out in those fields. As luck would have it, they were spraying down our trees with this federally banned pesticide on the same day these hippy environmentalists were out there taking measurements. They got sprayed themselves. They were pissed off, to say the least. I tried to talk my way out of it, but they turned me into the EPA.

The whole crop was deemed unsalable. I was going to lose that entire season. I was already in the red from the low yield of the year before. It looked like I was done for. I was going to lose the family business to the fines and the banks, and the whole goddamn weight of the government was behind these bee-loving ‘scientists’ who were intent on breaking my back.

Before those ‘scientists’ were sprayed down with agent orange or DDT or whatever, it was what we were spraying; the fact we were spraying at all got them so pissed off. Back when I had hope, one of those college kids showed me on my laptop how to use the real-time tracking system they had worked up for damn near every hive in the United States. It was easy to use, available to anyone with an internet connection, and updated once a minute. There was a database you could query, with a big graphical map with dots representing the positions of the hives. You could click on the dots, bringing up a window with stats for the hives at that location. They were colored blue if they were stationary and red if they were in transit. Another click, and it would give you the exact longitude and latitude, temperature, wind speed, all kinds of shit. They never could figure out what was causing all the trouble. I wasn’t going to give them a chance.

It is the end-times; I know it is. I mortgaged the hell out of all our properties. Shit, they were all going to start costing me more than they earned soon anyway. In some cases, they already had. I got me a bunch of cash. I got together with my brothers Del and Mit and Boo and Cal and Joe and Lem, and we all agreed to a plan. First thing, we got some crews to put up a bunch of those aluminum buildings out at Del’s ranch. He had the most sustainable land. If it was planted differently, it could feed a lot of people, it’s remote, it’s defensible. All our families began the process of moving out to Del’s. I bought each of my brothers a brand-new truck, a decent hunting rifle with a scope, an SAT phone, and a laptop. Got six more for my sons, twenty-three more for my grandsons. I also got a whole container truck full of US Army surplus twenty-liter ‘Jerry’ cans. I gave everyone gas cards and set up an account with which my brothers could outfit their kids and grandkids. Everybody, all my kin, each God-loving man, got a vehicle, a rifle, a laptop, an SAT phone, and a link to the colony-collapse database. Boo, a little to the left of the rest of us, if you know what I mean, even bought some for his daughters and granddaughters. It doesn’t bother me as much as it would have before the trouble. Still, all my wives, daughters, and granddaughters are at home where they are meant to be.

Well, we washed out our holy undergarments, got ready for holy war, and went and dispersed ourselves all across this once great nation. We kept in constant contact with each other. We knew once we started, they would start trying to stop us pretty soon, so we made sure we could hit as many targets over the most territory as quickly as possible. One of Boo’s daughters wrote a fine application using computer math and AI and all that shit she learned at the Community College to optimize our targets and routes for us. It updated once a minute, just like the fancy shit from the scientists. She said that since it was all Open-Source, it was able to borrow most of the complex parts and get at the underlying data directly using their algorithms and the API they published. She set it up so we could click on the screen to indicate which hives we had taken out, and it would re-optimize our targeting based on the new information we plugged in.

Mit’s job is to hi-jack one of the bee loads for our compound. He was chosen because of his military experience. He used to be a Navy Seal; he did a lot of stuff in Central America, most of which he doesn’t talk about. The stories I have heard are pretty gruesome. I can’t imagine what the other stuff is like. In any case, he has the skills needed to finish the job without drawing too much attention. We will have the only bees around.

Now, we are all in place, and tomorrow, I will give the signal; a trump will sound, just like in the good book. Pretty soon, there will be a big problem getting fresh fruit, grains, nuts, or vegetables in this great nation of ours. Feed rations for livestock will be pretty low, so -poultry, -dairy, -beef, -pork, -all are going to be hard to come by. There is what people already have on hand that won't last long. Of course, there is seafood, but fish gets old quickly. I suppose it is better than starving to death for those who will be able to get it, not by much. I hate seafood. We are an awfully efficient bunch of holy warriors or terrorists. It is what they will likely call us. We will overcome. We’re disciplined, close-knit, determined, bound by faith and family and ideology to a common cause. I credit our faith. We all learned how to face tough odds in a hostile environment when we went on missionary adventures before becoming men. Spreading the faith gives you the kind of guts and determination to do the right thing against fierce opposition. It teaches you with faith and determination, miracles are possible. The table is set. It is time to say grace.

God, we thank you for your guidance. Those who do not partake of this prayer with us, we pray, will from now on go hungry, so those of us chosen few, the faithful, shall repopulate this land once it has been cleared of the heathens. Let them starve and fight amongst themselves so that we will prosper; let us bury all of those who oppose us; let them that are brown like the dirt compost so that the earth may be fruitful again. Bring back the bees once the sins of man’s lust, greed, and pride have been bleached from our souls, minds, and hearts through the cleansing fires of famine, pestilence, war, and death. Let us become the new Adam’s and Eve’s of a new clean, pure, white world. We thank you for this bounty we are about to receive.