Story highlights Marla Spivak: Honeybees, wild bees and bumblebees dying at frightening rates Bees pollinate majority of our crops, she says; fewer bees will cause food supply to shrink Spivak: Use of herbicides, pesticides are killing off flowering plants, poisoning bees Spivak: Try not to use herbicides, insecticides; put out flowering plants

Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock looks into the mysterious disappearance of bees on a new episode of "Morgan Spurlock Inside Man," on Thursday, March 5, at 9 p.m. ET/PT.

As thoughts turn to warm weather and gardening, it's a good time to consider planting flowering trees, shrubs and other plants that are attractive to bees, butterflies and other pollinators. You can beautify your yard, diversify the landscape and feed and protect pollinators, all at the same time.

The bees need you.

Honeybee colonies are dying at frightening rates. Since 2007, an average of 30% of all colonies have died every winter in the United States. This loss is about twice as high as what U.S. beekeepers consider economically tolerable. In the winter of 2012-13, 29% of all colonies died in Canada and 20% died in Europe.

Marla Spivak

Wild bee species, particularly bumblebees, are also in peril.

Anyone who cares about the health of the planet, for now and for generations to come, needs to answer this wake-up call.

Impact Your World: What you can do to help save bees

Honeybees and wild bees are the most important pollinators of many of the fruits and vegetables we eat. Of 100 crop species that provide 90% of our global food supply, 71 are bee-pollinated. The value of pollination of food crops by bees in the U.S. alone is estimated at $16 billion and insect pollinators in general contribute $29 billion to U.S. farm income.

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Opinion: What will happen if the bees disappear?

By Erin Kolstad | Published 16 hours ago

Bamboo: a pandas favorite food source and at least one homeowners worst nightmare.

Chapel Hill resident Gregg Marcellus said bamboo is invading his yard. The bamboo forest in his neighbors yard has roots that grow underground and spread onto his property.

Marcellus has lived in his house for nine years, and he has been dealing with the neighbors invasive bamboo since he moved in.

He sent an email to the Chapel Hill Town Council asking about any ordinances that would deal with the bamboo invasion and require his neighbor to put in a barrier to prevent spread.

I usually just knock it down, but eventually you have to dig the roots out, Marcellus said in a telephone interview. I probably dug about 15 feet to dig underneath the roots, but then there are extensions you have to dig around. It was a day of back-breaking work.

Bamboo is one of the fastest growing plants, with some species growing 24 to 36 inches in a day. Marcellus said his neighbors yard is filled with bamboo stalks that are 50 to 60 feet tall.

It is just a wall of bamboo when I look out my window towering in the air, he said.

In Long Island, N.Y., invasive bamboo is such an issue among homeowners that one municipality charges a fine of $350 and up to 15 days in jail for planting the bamboo. Another town in the area will charge up to $2,000 for a first offense and $3,000 for subsequent violations.

Mike Klein, a zoning enforcement officer for Chapel Hill, said bamboo is not specifically listed on the schedule of invasive species, so there is not an ordinance in place to address Marcellus complaint.

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Chapel Hill residents spar over bamboo forest

FAIRFIELD TWP.

What may have been the third-largest tree in Butler County fell Tuesday night, as a five-foot wide oak tree crashed inches away from a backyard swimming pool.

No one was injured, but residents of the area mourn the loss of the giant oak, which had become a familiar part of the landscape. The tree, measuring about 60 feet tall with a 59-inch circumference, stood behind a home in the 3900 block of Carrington Way in Fairfield Twp.

Residents werent sure exactly why the tree fell at about 9 p.m. Tuesday, but the tree appeared to be rotting from the inside, said resident Bob Holion. Branches and fragments of the oak tree littered his backyard, but they didnt cause any damage except for crushing part of a neighbors fence.

The trees demise hit Randy Harper harder the tree was in his yard on Stony Brook Drive.

Ive got to be honest with you its like losing a family member, you know what I mean? Im in grief right now because its gone, he said.

Holion said the tree had been budding last year, so its fall was unexpected.

Im not sure there was a branch that didnt have leaves on it never thought it would fall, he said. There was no reason to think it was going to come down completely.

Susan Nordland lives in a home with a pool in the backyard a pool the tree just barely missed.

I heard a loud kind of noise. I thought it was thunder. And I said to my family, Theres the thunder they said we were going to get tonight. (But) I didnt see any lightning. So then I thought it was a big piece of ice that rolled off the roof and fell to the ground, she said.

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Massive oak tree topples over in Fairfield Twp. neighborhood

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The markets opened up by our free trade agreements will simply go to rivals if we allow land clearing and water use rules to kill productivity growth on our farms, says ALAN OXLEY.

The government's new free trade agreements (FTAs), especially that with China, have underlined the huge market for food growing in Asia. However, if Australia's farmers think that bounty will just drop into their laps, they are wrong.

There are two problems. One is an ominous decline in the capacity of Australia's farm estate, once of the world's most productive, to supply. The other is the "farmgate" mentality in the farming community - what's beyond it is someone else's problem.

The Asian FTAs include valuable commitments to open markets for Australian agriculture. But the timetables are long term. The rapidly expanding middle class in Asia, particularly China, is creating new, huge demand now. Is Australian farming positioned to supply this rapidly expanding market?

An overview of the performance of our agricultural industries in the last decade is sobering. Productivity over the last decade has averaged 1.3 per cent. This is below the global average, certainly lower than in the US and New Zealand where productivity has been above 3 per cent. Another ominous statistic is that the volume of production was static between 2001 and 2011. What is the cause? There will be several factors but one stands out. Land available for farming shrank by 15 per cent.

Some might say the record drought in the 'noughties' brought all these indicators down. It did not strike the entire continent. Productivity was twice as high in the west and north as the rest of the country.

We do know for a fact that during that decade state governments imposed significant restrictions on clearing of native vegetation and reduced the flexibility by farmers in the use of their own land. In 2004, the Productivity Commission found this devalued property rights and reduced the capacity farmers to expand production.

Water entitlements for farmers from the Murray-Darling system were also reduced by a third, ostensibly to save the environment from what was envisaged as continuing drought. As predicted, the water flows returned; but farmers have not been invited to buy back the water rights. Limits on conversion of forest land (outside conservation areas) to other purposes, such as farming, were also extended.

It has not been a declared policy of any Australian government to reduce the farm estate. This has been the incidental impact of creeping environment policy. Unless there are changes, this process will continue. The Nature Conservancy, the world's biggest conservation organisation, has plans to limit land for cattle grazing in the North. WWF also supports this. Its core policy is to reduce the farm estate world wide - because we eat too much and there is too much farming. Both also plan to turn a huge area in south-western Australia into a nature reserve.

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Green shackles could bury farming's future

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