Don't worry about the so called "bee disappearance" story. If honeybees are absent, other pollinating insects will quickly take up the slack. Few people seem to remember that honeybees are not native to either North or South America. They were intentionally brought here by European settlers. Indian corn, beans and squash and wild fruits and nuts were pollinated for many centuries before the introduction of the honeybee. In my part of the country, a bee mite infestation almost wiped out the wild honeybee population and for several years, I rarely saw a honeybee but I noticed no decline in the production of my large vegetable garden. Honeybees are useful in some types of commercial fruit orchards (citrus in particular) where growers need to make certain that every possible flower is pollinated. But rest assured that flowering plants will continue to produce fruit in the U.S. even if all honeybees disappeared, which I believe is a very remote possibility. So the mysterious bee disappearance phenomenon is more of a problem for the honey producer than for the gardener or survivalist.