Albert Einstein said "If the bees die, humankind has four years left to live," and now experts, the world over, are crying out for danger!
This isn't something one really thinks too much about in daily life, yet it will affect us all if the problem isn't solved! Bees are dying at an incredible rate world wide, and the experts agree it's getting critical.
Well, what's the problem with bees dying, you say? Isn't it good? I mean, no one likes bee stings, right?... Noooo! I think the best way to understand the issue is to step back and look at what they told us in elementary school about the flowers and the bees...remember?
We humans are a part of the world's big ecosystem. Species live in harmony with one another. We eat plants and animals... Animals eat mostly plants... Plants get their "food" from the soil. But for this to go on, a kind of reproduction is necessary. Like humans have babies, animals have them, too, and for that to happen, we need breeding. Flowers use pollen to reproduce. They produce nectar to "look good" to attract bees to "do the job for them" by taking pollen from one flower to the next and to the next, in their search for food since flowers can't move. See? A mutually beneficial relationship: Food for the bee, "breeding" for the flower. If this doesn't happen, the whole apple tree will bare no fruit. It will simply be a tree. And inside the apple are its seeds that should've fallen to the ground and maybe eaten by an animal which poops and then an apple tree grows in another place. And without the fine job of the bee, none of this happens!!
The job the bees do is worth millions, if not billions, of dollars world wide... Talk about a valuable employee! For the farmers, the bees are enormous helpers. If the wild bees were to die, it would be quite disasterous for humankind. As much as 75% of the greens and grains we eat are pollinated by bees. If they vanished, we would be back to what we ate in the Stone Age. Without bees, 1/3 of the world's food would "go missing" with them!!
The large-scale bee death is called «colony collapse disorder», or CCD. The bees disappear without a trace! There are many factors, but human actions are the biggest problem.
In our transfer from small-scale agricuture to the industrialized process of today (especially in the west), we see monocultures all around. That means only one sort of production, like the almonds I told you about at Christmas time. The reason that's a problem is that when there's only one sort of crop, it will only blossom at a certain time, and then there's no more food for the bees.
The other main reason for this is the chemicals being used to spray the fields. An international group of scientists recently gave a report with very negative outlooks on the bees' future. It claims the spraying is to blame, and asks all countries to ban the use of them. They are called neonicotinoids and are said to be up to 10,000 times more poisonous for bees than the hated DDT.
The spray acts like a nerve gas on the bees and makes them confused. According to the bee keepers, this affects the way the bees communicate to each other about where "home" and food is. To top that, a lot of bees are infected by a parasite. Already weak, with little food to find, they loose their sense of direction to return home, and simply die. This is a very simplified way to explain it, but google more if you want deeper information...Like this Ted talk with Marla Spivak here.
But what can you and I do about it? We can plant bee-friendly flowers in our gardens and NOT spray them with chemicals. We can make "insect houses". We can have bee hives, or support someone that does it. We can sign petitions against the bad spraying, and support organic farming. "All small streams, together make a large river! " So let's get busy to save the bees!
The moral of the story is that when bees live well, so will we.
