This series explores aspects of America that may soon be just a memory -- some to be missed, some gladly left behind. From the least impactful to the most, here are 25 bits of vanishing America.

Perhaps nothing on our list of disappearing America is so dire; plummeting so enormously; and so necessary to the survival of our food supply as the honey bee. 'Colony Collapse Disorder,' or CCD, has swept beekeepers throughout the U.S. and Europe over the past few years, wiping out 50% to 90% of the colonies of many beekeepers -- and along with it, their livelihood.

Commercial honey bees have a hard life in today's agriculture. They start with almonds in the early spring and spread throughout nut and fruit crops, ending with pears and apples in Oregon in the early fall. They travel from crop to crop with their overworked keepers, a group of modern cowboys essential to the very survival of the human race. Without bees to pollinate the crops, we and much of the ecosystem would be required to survive on a fraction of the produce we now enjoy.

While the exact quantity of bees lost in the past year is not known for sure, an extensive survey conducted by the Apiary Inspectors of America in February 2008 estimated that a third of colonies were lost, on average, compared to the year previous. Thirty-three percent losses in the past 16 months? Those are huge and devastating numbers, indeed. Due to the publicity of the losses, more extensive studies are underway; in Europe and in North Dakota, mis-application of pesticides has been blamed for a subset of honeybee deaths, and The Great Sunflower Project is gathering bee observation data from thousands of Americans.

Corporate America is hopping on board, too, with Haagen-Dazs' "Help the Honey Bees" project and Burt's Bees community initiative.

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No need to panic yet, but you may have heard the buzz that honeybees have been disappearing from the Earth.

This is a problem for a variety of reasons. For starters, we have a lot of crops that depend on honeybees. The United States alone has 130 crops that are dependent on honey bees for pollination, including carrots, onions, squash, blueberries, apples and almonds. Honey bees are basically in charge of seeing that $15 billion in food crops are nutritious and edible and able to go to the grocery store. Or put another way, the honey bee is given credit for 85% of the pollination necessary to supply about one-third of the nation's food supply.

Nobody really knows the cause, and lately it's suspected that it's a variety of causes, but there are the current crop of suspects.

Today (May 13) from 4 pm to 8 pm, Häagen-Dazs is offering a free scoop of its new Vanilla Honey Bee ice cream at participating shops. The new flavor combines creamy vanilla with just a touch of real honey. Häagen-Dazs says that honey bees are the key to creating 40% of their flavors, but that they are disappearing and no one knows why. The company created this flavor to bring more attention to the plight of honey bees.

You can find a shop participating in todays free scoop promotion on this page. Enjoy your free scoop and let us know how you like the new flavor.