If you haven't heard, word is the population of honey bees has been declining in the last year or two.  I'm not sure how this is measured, or what the latest ideas are on the causes and cures (here's an article in the MSU State News with more), but what I do know is that the price system in a free market is crucial to preventing a long-term shortage of anything.

Communist countries, like the former Soviet Union, had chronic shortages and surpluses because they attempted to centrally plan out how much of what would be produced.  Because no one was free to produce, buy or sell in the market, but had to rely on decisions made for them by bureaucrats there was no functioning price system.  Prices in a market are an indicator of what buyers are willing to pay and sellers are willing to accept, and they freely fluctuate with changes in wants, needs, tastes, etc.  It is these freely fluctuating prices that prevent socialist-style shortages and surpluses in free markets.  Have you ever worried that if you didn't make it to the store on time all the bread would be gone?  Thank the price system.

By letting people make their own economic decisions and negotiate their own prices the result is a highly effective mechanism for communicating the needs of society to the world.  When the price of a good rises, it signals producers that there is money to be made in supplying that good.  When prices drop the opposite signal is sent, and producers cut back and switch to other activities.

If the honey bee population is declining and reducing the supply of honey, fruits, vegetables or other products for which bees are a factor of production the price of these goods will rise.  A rise in price will make bee farming more profitable and induce more people to engage in it.  It will also send a signal to researchers to focus more on bee studies, etc.  While I don't know the causes of the apparent bee shortage, I do know that it couldn't be solved in a government planned or heavily regulated market.  We need the price system that only a free-market can provide to send the signals necessary to sustain us; like the nervous system of the economy.