Fuck The Bees

I remember a story my dad used to tell about an old friend of his--was it Skip? Skeeter? Scooby? his name had a "Sk"/"Sc" to it somewhere. Maybe a Ricky or a Dicky, but that's unlikely. Let's stick with Skip.

After a long day R. came home to a phone call from a deeply depressed Skip--Skeeter, I prefer Skeeter, and so sorry if Skeeter was/is someone else, but I'm using your name--a depressed Skeeter.
"I'm gonna do it tonight, R." Skeet said. To which R. replied something unusually tense and terse; not qualities I know him for. Let's say it was something like this: "I can't bail you out for ever Skeeter. If you are gonna do it just fucking do it." And instead of running to save his friend's life, R. hung up the phone and felt guilty. He felt guilty for an awfully long time, until a day came 10 or so years later when he got a phone call from a very much alive Skeeter/Skip/Scooby asking R. to be best man at his wedding.
"I thought you were dead!" R. said.
"Well, there's an interesting story about that. I was gonna do it. I had a razor in hand. I drank a glass of Jim Beam and ... I was ready, you know, but I noticed that the TV was on. There was an interview going on, an apiarist was showing a field journalist a hive. He pulled out a wood box that held a colony. 'Now, how many are in there?' she asked. 'A couple thousand in this hive' he said. Shocked that so many bees were being kept in such a small space, the journalist asked 'isn't it uncomfortable for them in there?' Then the apiarist said 'for who, the bees?' and his face went stern and hard. 'Fuck the bees.'"

The story always ended there. Skeeter gave no explanation as to why "fuck the bees" changed his mind about dying.

SO, why do I mention it ....
a.) has a strange way of cheering me up
b.) seems like the bees might really be fucked
c.) relevant, food/agriculture-related topic

I've been thinking about our nation's honeybee pandemic a lot. I've been trying wrap my head around a world without soy, cotton, cherries, peaches, apples, avocados, almonds, nectarines, pears, alfalfa, cashews ... I mean we're talking about 30,000,000,000 dollars in crops. How many farms would that put out of business? All the nation's almond farms for example (est. $3,000,000,000) in california between Sacremento and San Juaquin (and thats most of the nation's almond farms) add up to 6400ish farms.

Not to mention that whole cotton thing. Cotton would be an awful thing to lose!