I definitely don’t want to downplay a crisis, but I feel like I’ve been seeing headlines saying “all the bees are dying and we don’t know why” every year for nearly 20 years now.

I’m no bee expert. Just seems to me, based on the headlines, bees would’ve been extinct 10 years ago.

Some cursory searching led me to Colony Collapse Disorder which seems to have no agreed-upon cause. It appears devastating losses to honey bee colonies started being reported around 1900. But it also mentions:

In 2024, the United States Census of Agriculture reported an all-time high in commercial honey bee hives (mostly in Texas), making them the fastest-growing livestock segment in the country.[38]

Link to the source cited there: https://archive.is/nfeb2

Apparently last year saw the largest honey bee populations in US history. Though they write that huge boom in honey bee population is a threat to other native pollinators, so I guess that presents its own unique problems.

Reminds me of this old gem:

I managed to inadvertently cure myself of this problem by recording a lot of music in my early 20’s. I became accustomed to hearing what my voice actually sounds like and got a lot better at controlling it as a result.

Those first few months of recording were rough though, lol. I hated listening to all of my recordings.