Save The Bees
Extinction of Bees… gardening comes to an end!
Most people know bees are very important, I just don’t think people understand just how crucial to society they are. Bees are pollinators… meaning they carry pollen from one plant to another, this helps the production of seeds and to help plants to reproduce. So, what would happen if bees wen extinct today? Bees are the probably the most beneficial species on the planet today… without them you can say goodbye to your polytunnel. The only way a plant will bare fruit or vegetables is if it has been pollinated, bees pollinate 70% of the crops consumed by humans today. Within the first few months worldwide crop production would plummet, causing devastation for farmers. Supermarkets would become bare, loosing over half of their produce. It doesn’t stop there either, beef, milk, cheese would disappear… cows need to eat alfalfa to maintain a healthy diet, bees pollinate alfalfa. If cows aren’t getting the right nutrition they wont produce milk and eventually could die out. Food chains would collapse… after about 6 months farms would have to convert to wheat and corn fields, this is because they are wind pollinated and don’t need help from pollinators. The human diet would suffer dramatically… only rice, bread and other wheat products would come from farms. Health problems would increase due to malnutrition… the NHS wouldn’t be able to cater for all the sick, meaning it would collapse… essentially meaning we would receive medical bills. As the price of food and medicine would rise the economy would tumble. Currently bees account for roughly 200 billion in global agricultural revenue per year. The clothes you wear would stop being produced… after all cotton needs pollinating too. The United States alone brings in 25 billion a year from cotton exporting, not to mention it employs 200 thousand people, countless businesses would crumble, and millions of jobs lost causing global poverty. Canola oil, which you may only know as a cooking oil… is brought to you from a plant pollinated by bees. Canola oil is also a very important biodiesel, without it we would need to use more harmful fossil fuels. This would increase the strain on global warming and our environment. Fresh water would start to disappear, since trees are needed for water retention. Severe droughts would occur across the globe. All this would lead to shrinking food resources, plant and animal… this would surely lead to mass malnutrition, wide spread famine, declining human fertility which would sadly lead to human extinction. Unfortunately, bees are rapidly declining… millions of hives have died over the past few years. In 1988 there were 5 million bee hives in the united states… today only 2.5 million. The reason so many bees are dying out is due to a horrible parasite that plagues hives all over the world. These are microscopic mites, that affect the breathing tube in the bee… this is where they lay their eggs and feed from the bee, this affects the bee considerably. The female mites enter the hives and lay eggs on the bee laver, once the egg hatches, the mites feed off the bee… the bee is not normally killed at this stage. Once the bee leaves its cell in the hive, this allows the mites to follow and spread throughout the hive repeating the same process. It takes around 10 days for the hive to be overrun, and after a few months can decimate an entire hive. The mites also transmit viruses to the bees harming them even more, which lead to birth defects like useless wings. Not only this, but harmful pesticides also kill bees, pesticides used all over the world… today they are the most widely used insecticides used globally. Since we know what would happen if bees died it truly baffles me why this still goes on, especially when there are other alternatives. Bees come into contact with the toxin whilst collecting pollen… often bees go back to the hive taking this toxin with them, which can eventually kill the whole colony. If bees do die out, we need a solution… hand pollination isn’t enough to save this crisis. Scientists are looking into building robotic bees or pollinator drones to do the pollination for us. If you want to save the world, don’t use harmful pesticides! If you see a bee on the floor give it a solution of sugar and water… as it likely ran out of energy. We need to act now… gardeners unite!