You live in Southern California? California has some of the strictest law on pesticides.
Therefore if there are no bees where you live, they must be gone because of natural predators.
I watched a documentary a while back on the extinction of bees. It was pretty scary actually.
My relative/beekeeper has a crazy theory. He is convinced it has to do with Monsanto. (we are French
)
I am not sure what to believe myself but I must say that there were more bees before.
Your uncle is not crazy. Your country has banned Monsanto's genetically modified crops (GMOs) until 2013, and stands with many EU countries in this, as well as China and India and others. Lots of problems with these crops and particularly the herbicide ready GMOs, which are designed to allow herbicides to be sprayed freely, including at harvest time to help drydown the fields.
The loss of the bees in the last 6 years, some estimates are 30-80% of the bees in the northern hemisphere alone, is called Colony Collapse Disorder, and while there are indeed predators like the small hive beetle and the mites and other things (that leave evidence in the hive), the bees are also simply disappearing....going out to forage and not returning, leaving the queen and brood in the hives uncared -- ultimately, they die.
This is not due to predators, scientists believe many factors have come into play to create this perfect storm but if it is not stopped, a 15 billion dollar food industry in the US alone will suffer.
One third of our food is directly linked to crops pollinated by bees.
The "domestic" honeybee has been bred to 1.be docile, and 2.produce honey. Where I live (not california) beekeepers are looking at their bees now to see if they are aggressive with the small hive beetle, and if they are proficient "groomers" which helps dislodge the mites. I am sure all beekeepers are doing this, and from these hives they manipulate the environment in order to breed more queens to pass on these good traits and replace hives/colonies that have been lost. My beekeeper mentor has been doing this for a long time and he has lovely hives with few beetles and mites, and yet his bees are still docile and you dont need to even smoke them!
Anyway, you are so lucky to have a beekeeper in the family, and believe me, he is not crazy. There are groups all over the world standing up against giants like Monsanto, Bayer, BASF, ConAgra, and others.
Hopefully France will renew its opposition after 2013, but BigFood is strong and its lobbyists are in powerful positions in many governments around the world.