I can't wait to see Cramer get worked up over this. ("I'm too old ... I know too many almond growers, too many pumpkin growers, ...")

Not long ago, I found myself sitting at the edge of a field with a bear and thirty or forty thousand very angry bees. The bear was there because of the bees. The bees were there because of me, and why I was there was a question I found myself unable to answer precisely.

"One bear will teach another bear, and then that bear will do it," he said.

When he called for questions, the discussion quickly turned to bears. Practically everyone had a story to tell. Ordinary fences, it was agreed, were useless, and even electric ones could be breached [*]. One man said that he draped his electric fence with bacon; this enticed the bear to stick his nose against the wires and get zapped. Another recommended driving nails through plywood, then laying the plywood around the hive, nail-side up.

“It definitely keeps the bears out,” he said of the arrangement.

“It’s not too good for the inspector who steps on a nail,” the inspector said.

“Get a tetanus shot,” a second man suggested.

Think of the watermelons:

The honeybees seemed to be suffering not so much from any particular ailment as from just about every ailment.

It was as if an insect version of AIDS were sweeping through the hives.

Decius is vindicated! Rattle is wrong again! :)

Homer: Not a bear in sight. The "Bear Patrol" is working like a charm!
Lisa: That's specious reasoning, Dad.
Homer: [uncomprehendingly] Thanks, honey.

From the NRC report mentioned in the article:

“Pollinator decline is one form of global change that actually does have credible potential to alter the shape and structure of the terrestrial world.”

See recent coverage in Science News.

Also: the magic method of Dr. Lipkin's team is metagenomics ("the greatest [scientific] opportunity since the invention of the microscope"), which has been recommended previously.