“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight! Schlemiel! Schlemazl! Hasenpfeffer Incorporated!” That opening hopscotch tune, sung by Laverne DeFazio and Shirley Feeney, set the tone for their namesake show that followed two single Shotz brewery line workers in Milwaukee as they lived through seemingly endless goofy situations. The “Happy Days” spinoff was a good-natured working class sitcom, a genre that has recently become an endangered species. Of Nielson’s top 20 shows this season, none feature working class characters being harassed by managers and plagued by wacky high jinks. The disappearance of small-screen workers mirrors a larger disappearance of working class folks everywhere in the United States. Shifting markets and outsourcing of manufacturing jobs have severely impacted domestic labor. But the proletariat recession is not simply limited to humans. Another dramatic decline of workers is occurring now with honey bees.

Colony collapse disorder, or CCD, is characterized by a sudden decline of worker bees in a hive. Like Laverne and Shirley, bee colonies are being canceled. The problem has affected Canada, Europe and 24 states, so far. Experts believe that it will arrive in New Hampshire, if it is not here already. Mysteriously, beekeepers checking their hives in spring find only immature bees and a Queen wondering where the hell the wait staff went.

A hive’s decline follows a pattern similar to the destruction of the sitcom “Roseanne.” On that show, the well-run “hive” of actors produced funny season after funny season as Dan and Roseanne worked hard to raise an average brood of kids: Becky, Darlene and D.J. But soon the cast began to disappear. Becky’s physical appearance radically changed, Dan died, and D.J. grew out of his boyish charm and somehow became more boring. All that was left was a shell of a show and the Queen.

Although it may be apparent when a TV show jumps the shark, no one knows for sure why bee hives are being canceled. There are numerous theories. Some think the bees are being affected by pathogens or chemicals that cause them to lose track of the hive. Others blame genetically modified crops and the loco pollen they produce for giving the bees a bad trip.

Two theories have particular relevance to their sitcom counterparts. Some entomologists think that parasites, such as tiny mites that live in the breathing passages of bees, may be causing them to call in sick.
This is just like the sitcom phenomenon that appears at the end of a show’s run. It involves the addition of a weird new kid character that sucks the life out of scenes. It is also called the Oliver Syndrome. In “Roseanne,” it was the late-season birth of Jerry Garcia Conner, who was Dan and Roseanne’s baby conceived during a Grateful Dead concert. This paved the way for the show’s ninth and last season, featuring a bizarre, surreal ending that was everything but funny.

The other theory for CCD is based in technology. Media coverage recently has focused on German research published in 2007 that suggested that bee navigation may be disrupted by cell phone electromagnetic radiation. It made great headlines, but researchers quickly noted that a link between mobile phones and CCD is entirely speculative. However, technology has had a significant impact on television characters. Today we would not have a show featuring cute beer bottle cappers in Wisconsin, because it would now have to be about a factory line robot with a letter “R” sewed on its housing that is lubed with milk and Pepsi. How could Lenny and Squiggy get excited about that?

Not all hives have been wiped out, though. In the last three decades, approximately half of the U.S. honey bee colonies have disappeared, but this decline includes losses due to some major commercial beekeepers going out of business. Since honey bees are not native to the New World, there are not necessary pollinators of native plants. Their pollination function is only needed for intensive farming of cash crops, such as peaches, soybeans, apples, watermelons, cucumbers and strawberries. Likewise, not all working class sitcoms have been canceled. Doug and Carrie Heffernan of “King of Queens” still have good blue collar fun on CBS, but the couple has entertained having a baby—so the show’s days are numbered. “The George Lopez Show” is also airing on ABC, but George plays a plant manager at an L.A. airplane parts factory, so he is not truly a worker bee but really “The Man.”

Recently, doomsday media sources have erroneously attributed a grim quote to Albert Einstein: “If the bees disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.” Since there are many different kinds of bees other than honey bees, as well as numerous other pollinators like bats and birds, life on earth will go on. Likewise, television sitcoms will survive this recent surge of doctor, lawyer and interior designer dramadies.

Perhaps the answer to CCD is that the workers are fed up and have simply gone on strike. Unsubstantiated reports found that large numbers of honey bees were present at International Workers’ Day events across the globe this year. Many street demonstrations on May 1, celebrating the social and economic achievements of the international labor movement, were reported to include swarms of bees who, in one case, effectively pushed back police lines. An Internet blogger talked to one bee who said that her and her fellow comrades were from a hive in “oppressive Pennsylvania Dutch Country,” and flew to a protest in Chicago to commemorate the Haymarket protests of 1886, where they chanted “Worker bees of the World Unite! Down with Monarchy!” Earlier this year, NORAD identified large swarms of worker bees heading south the Venezuela, apparently to ask Hugo Chavez for citizenship.