This episode is presented by eBay.

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Then when you're buying, you can discover loads of hidden gems. There's so many items where you think I would have never found that anywhere else. Then when you're selling, it's so simple and most

importantly, free. It's free, Rob. When it's this easy to sell for free and there's great deals

on things you love. You can't help but say when it's eBay. It excludes vehicles and business

sellers.

Welcome to Science Talk, the weekly podcast of Scientific American, posted on August 14, 2009. I'm Steve Merski.

This week we'll hear about bees and what's ailing them with renowned entomologist May Baronbaum.

She's on the faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and has written many popular books including bugs in the system, the earwigs tail,

and 99 gnats, knits, and nibblers. She and her student, Reed Johnson, have also been trying

to figure out what's behind the mysterious disappearance of honeybees known as colony collapse disorder. In part one of the podcast, you'll hear a talk

that Barronbaum gave to a group of students at the annual meeting of the American Association

for the Advancement of Science back in February. Now, May did not know going in that the students

were going to be little kids.

So on the fly, sorry, she revised her talk to be more understandable to the grade school students,

which worked great for me, and I hope well for you too.

Next time in part two, I'm going to play an interview I did with Baronbaum after her talk.

And I'll also share a conversation I had in England in early July with an uncommonly charming

gentleman with the common name of John Williams.

He's the beekeeper at Downhouse, Darwin's home.

But right now, without any further ado, here's May Baronbaum.

Music home. But right now, without any further ado, here's May Baron Bow. The organizers asked if I would talk about an entomological mystery and how entomologists and other scientists go around solving mysteries,

...