Oh, the things there are to worry about in this scary old world of ours! writes Emma Suddaby

There’s our climate worries with the planet getting (apparently) hotter and hotter. Then there’s the long-running debate on whether red wine is good for you or not.

We’re bombarded with foody-scare stories too, additives, obesity, anorexia, and not forgetting our enduring panic over giving our children the MMR vaccine.

And as a result of that one, we now have another thing to worry about . . . measles epidemics!

While everyone runs around in circles over that lot, there is a growing crisis worldwide that really does pose a huge and imminent threat to mankind, but it’s bees, not humans, that are the focus of this one.

Bee Scientists around the world are desperately trying to solve the terrible mystery surrounding Colony Collapse Disorder, where for no obvious reason entire colonies of bees just disappear from their hives leaving only the Queen and her unhatched young behind.

In some cases, hundreds and thousands of dead bees are actually found near the hive, with no obvious cause of death.

This alone is bad enough – just think for a moment of the far-reaching implications for mankind were bees to die off. Tiny though they may be, they are a vital link in the chain of our survival on this planet.

But in case the poor little blighters’ problems weren’t bad enough, they now have a secondary crisis, entirely of man’s creation this time. Greed.

What with the shortage of honey and growing winter losses down to CCD, the value of the dear old honey bee has been pushed up to the point where they are now a very profitable target for thieves indeed, thank you very much.

Local Beekeeper, Richard Lindsey of The Great Little Honey Company, already has first-hand experience of “bee rustlers” after they sneaked off with 18 of the 600 hives he has dotted around local countryside. They were worth around £5,000 and contained thousands of his bees at the time. Another beekeeper in Shropshire has lost 100 hives and in Hampshire, four farms have been hit in the last month alone.

So now our beleaguered bees not only have to fight their way through our famously wet and useless summers, and the attacks of the Varroa mite (thought to be at least partially responsible for CCD), now they’ve got to be on the lookout for late-night callers with large-trucks and even larger supplies of anti-histamine ointment.

My point? However bad the catastrophe nature throws our way, you can always rely on the human race to make it just that little bit worse!