White Man's Flies

This pun strikes even me as execrable: To bee or not to bee

The varroa mite, a bee parasite first found in Java a century ago, spread to America in 1987 and has recently taken hold (as it has in many other countries). It sucks the blood of both wild and cultivated bees, and has now become immune to pesticides. This year, the steady loss of bees—their numbers have fallen by about 50% in six months—has especially hurt the Californian almond industry, which accounts for 88% of the world's almond crop. Farmers think yields may fall by as much as 16%.

Honey bees landed in the colonies, from England, at about the same time as the Pilgrim Fathers. Soon "the white man's flies", as the Indians called them, generated a thriving industry.

Anyway, I thought it was interesting that bees were not native to North America.