by Lisa Barnard

I try to be a good, responsible human being. Some examples: I recycle. I support local and used book stores. I try to buy my fruit at a farmer’s market, but when I do go to a grocery store, I always pick out the organic fruit.

It’s this last point I’d like to discuss.

It would be easy for anyone to create a quick, common sense list of things you’d think I probably wouldn’t want to find in my fruit, or really in any of my food, ever. Let’s try.

1) Mold
2) Pesticides
3) Bugs of any kind

Pretty simple, pretty standard, pretty predictable. Not asking for much here.

Now let me show you how it’s gone the last few times I’ve bought organic raspberries.

Every. Damn. Time.

I mean I guess that’s a bit of a dramatization — the bee is actually *frozen* inside the raspberry, not angrily flying out into my face. But either way, I think it’s clear that the real point here is that there is always a BEE inside my raspberry. Always.

I have never found a bee inside a non-organic raspberry. I’m sure because of all the pesticides. And I appreciate that this must mean there really are no pesticides in the organic raspberries.

But why is there ALWAYS a bee? I’m not even kidding you, in every single box I buy there is one bee tucked inside a raspberry. I love you, nature, and I want my food to be organic – but all these dead bees are getting to be a bit much. Can’t the raspberry companies put up a fan to shoo all the bees away from the boxes or something? Or how about luring them away from the fruit with a trojan horse made of pollen? I can keep going here, I’ve got a lot of great ideas that don’t end with a bee floating in my cereal.

Anyway, I remember a few years ago, everyone was freaking out, like, “where have all the bees gone,” and it was this big national tragedy about the disappearing bees, and it was going to have all these unforeseen consequences and end up killing us all. They thought the bees were going extinct because of cell phone towers I think, or avian flu, or Justin Bieber? I don’t know.

But guess what haters? You were all wrong. Apparently I’ve singlehandedly figured out what happened to all the fricking bees. I swear to the gods, there is a bee in my raspberry. Every. Damn. Time. And I cannot be the only person in the world buying organic raspberries.

So there you go guys, mystery solved. The bees are in the raspberries. Wow, I feel like Columbo… if Columbo had eaten a bee this morning.

I’m never buying raspberries again.