Strange you should mention Chestnut trees GJ...was just thinking yesterday when walking home, that there aren't nearly as many conkers on the ground as previous years!
I guess that could be considered a good thing by many Mums 
I watched a programme on American Beekeepers t'other night...their colonys were dying en mass in a matter of days! 
We Need our bees!
TNNOct 6, 2012, 03.27PM IST
(The village of Ribeauville&hellip
Bee keepers in north-eastern France were aghast to find that their bees had produced a bizarre blue colored honey. Some hives had greenish tinted honey. They were even more horrified when they took the honey out of the hives.
The honey turned out to be tasteless and runny, they told regional TV channels. It was just invert sugar and water.
Scientists and experts converged on the area and soon the cause was located. A Mars chocolate factory, some 90 kilometers away was the culprit. They were using bright colors to make M&M's - the small chocolate tablets coated with a hard bright sugar shell. The waste products from the factory contained these colors.
This waste was carted away by another company to a biogas plant near Ribeauville in Alsace province. It was in the storage of this plant that the roaming bees got to see the vast amount of free sugar lying around. So they took to collecting it - instead of the usual nectar from flowers - and storing it in their hives.
The biogas plant owner regretted the incident and assured that henceforth they would keep the wastes in covered containers, according to BBC.
The bee keepers said that the honey was unsellable and this year's honey harvest was a total write-off.
In 2010, Brooklyn, New York, residents had reported that their bees were producing a cherry red gooey stuff with a metallic taste instead of regular honey. Chemical analysis revealed that the red color was caused by a commercial dye called Red Dye No.40. Further sleuthing showed up the culprit: Dell's Maraschino Cherries Company located nearby, the New York Times reported. They used the dye for making their cherry juice and coloring cherries.
""Bees are clever enough to know where the best sources of sugar are, if there are no others available,"" Gill Maclean, a spokeswoman for the British Beekeepers' Association, told BBC.
In all probability, the French bees' hives will be damaged and their egg laying cycle disrupted because of the contamination, local beekeepers said.
Bee populations in Europe have plunged in recent years due to increased virus and fungal infections and contamination with chemical pesticides.
