Honey where are your 'Bees' !

The White House unveiled a plan to reverse an alarming decline in populations of bees and other pollinators that play a crucial role in agriculture and the environment.Honey bee pollination alone adds $15 billion in value to US crops each year, wrote John Holdren, one of President Barack Obama's main science advisors.But pollinators are struggling, for a variety of reasons, and beekeepers last year reported losing 40 percent of their honey bee colonies, mostly in winter, Holdren wrote in a blog on the White House website.Scientists point to a series of factors as causing the decline: sickness, parasites, dwindling food sources and pesticides.Holdren said the plan also seeks to rebuild populations of Monarch butterflies. Over the past two decades, the number of them that migrate south in winter to escape the cold, mainly to Mexico, has dropped by 90 percent.