Sometime during the fall of 2006, something strange began to happen across North America. Beekeepers—farmers who raise bees in order to make honey—began to notice that large numbers of bees had simply disappeared. Some farmers reported losing up to 90 percent of their bees. Small family farms have been declining for years because larger farms are taking over. Even stranger, the bees disappeared very suddenly. The mystery of the vanishing bees is known as Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD. The reason for the disorder is still unknown