The community flourishes when all parts work together. Doctors help heal sick patients, police officers maintain order, and farmers grow food to nourish the remainder of the community. These relationships are well-understood. Working together as a community keeps us thriving.

However, we frequently forget that our relationship with the environment -- and organisms in the environment -- are just as crucial to our success and our actions.

Take honeybees, for example. Bees not only provide us honey, but more importantly they pollinate flowers. According to the USDA, roughly 80 percent of crop insect pollination is achieved through honeybees, and more than one-third of the human food supply depends on this insect pollination. Bees are crucial.

With that being said, within the past year the bee population has experienced a rapid decline. This deterioration of bees has been called a "potential ecological apocalypse." Without bees, crop pollination will significantly decrease, causing a drop in agricultural production, driving up not only crop prices, but honey prices as well.

In order to stop this species regression, it is essential to understand what is causing this ecological distress.

Scientists around the world have been hunting for the source of this bee decline, and according to studies conducted by the Organic Consumers Association, genetically engineered crops may be to blame. Many genetically adapted plants have been modified to contain b.t., or Bacillus thuringiensis -- a naturally occurring bacterium that produces crystal proteins that are lethal to insect larvae.

When a honeybee interacts with pollen treated with b.t., the immune system of the insect is shut down and the bee is then much more susceptible to bacteria and viruses. In addition, b.t. has proved to affect the bee's fertility, resulting in fewer offspring. In some parts of the country, the bee population has decreased as much as 35 percent within the last year, and almost 50 percent in the last 10 years, according to the USDA.

This bee decline has been classified as a CCD or Colony Collapse Disorder. A Colony Collapse Disorder is defined as "a little- understood phenomenon in which worker bees from a beehive or Western honeybee colony abruptly disappear." In hives affected by CCD, adult worker bees abandon their hives, leaving few, immature bees to tend to the hives themselves. The remaining bees cannot provide for an entire hive, and they perish, whereas the bees which left the hive are now homeless.

This recent disorder will affect the bee population drastically and further affect the pollination attempts made by honeybees. If the bees don't pollinate the crops, the bee species won't be the only one affected by this population decline.