Surely honey, a sweet, golden, and delightfully sticky treat, is harmless?  After all, Winnie the Pooh salivated over it, ancient Egyptians embalmed their dead with it and Romans paid their taxes with it. In actuality, venom from honey producers, Apis mellifera, is toxic. Bee venom, known as apitoxin, can be deadly to  predators and to the one to two percent of the human population.

Four years ago, a commercial beekeeper, who had trucked thousands of his honeybee colonies to winter in Florida, discovered that all the bees had disappeared. There were no skeletons, so to speak. The bees were just gone. Given the importance of bees in the pollination of apple trees, the local apple industry must confront this new mystery.