America's bees are losing a vital refuge, threatening our food supply

The Midwest is America’s food basket, but few realize it’s also a prime refuge for bees. Each summer, beekeepers truck more than a million commercial honey bees to the region — about a third of all colonies in the U.S. — drawn by one of the richest flowering landscapes in the country. Now that oasis is under threat — and since bees pollinate a third of every bite we eat, this loss could affect us all.  For decades, conservation grasslands, native prairie and cattle rangelands teeming with…