A new way to save the honeybees: music videos, web sites and more

We've been hearing about this story for a year now. The nation's honeybees are mysteriously dying off. The situation is so grave that there's even a dramatic name for it: "colony collapse disorder."

Some time within the past two years, beekeepers started noticing that adult bees were not returning to their hives. At least a quarter of the nation's commercial beekeepers reported mass die-offs.

What could be the cause? Some speculated it was global warming. Others thought it might be caused by cellphone signals. And rumors also spread about genetically-modified crops causing the problem.

Scientists have reportedly rejected all those theories, but they still don't have a definitive answer.

Last year scientists reported that a bee disease called Israeli acute paralysis virus may be a cause of the problem, but those same scientists acknowledged it isn't the only explanation for the honeybee collapse.

"I hope no one goes away with the idea that we've actually solved the problem," entomologist Jeffrey Pettis told The New York Times last fall. 

So what to do?

Enter the ice cream industry. Premium ice cream maker Häagen Dazs has launched a "Help the Honeybees" campaign that hopes to educate the public about the disappearing honeybees.

And they've launched a web site called helpthehoneybees.com. "We rely on honey bees for one-third of our food supply, so when honey bees are in danger, we're all in danger," says the web site.

There's something about honeybees that seems to inspire creativity, and now a series of different videos have been created to draw attention to the vanishing bees. 

One video shows a group of humans dressed as honeybees doing dance routines to hip hop music. As the video progresses, all the bees eventually disappear.

Another video from Häagen Dazs, created by Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, shows an animated bee pollinating a flower in a brief scene staged almost as a love story and set to an original operatic score.

Another bee video from Attention Span Media uses humor, and a tad bit of bleeped out vulgar language, to make its point. The video -- that doesn't appear to be sanctioned by the official honeybee web site -- features actors dressed as bees talking to the camera and urging humans to save them.

See the hip hop video below.

See the Häagen Dazs ad below.

See the Attention Span Media video below.