Why we cannot simply let it “Bee”
Perhaps you can recall one of those sunny Summer afternoons, where you would kick back and enjoy an iced beverage before being swarmed by several bees hoping to share your drink. Back then, bees almost seemed like trouble – now they are in trouble.
The Honey-Bee is one of a myriad of fascinating creatures that populate our world – yet as small as they are we often overlook their vital significance to the very fundamentals of life – and this is a plight we can no longer ignore.
The bee population – which has regrettably dwindled to a record twenty-year low – has become a major global concern, as a staggering 70% of the world’s crops are pollinated by bees and thus an estimated $500-billion-plus stands to be lost in the food industry in the short-coming years. Don’t believe us?
Economic revenue generated through the pollination and subsequent sale of crops reaches up to $40-billion, annually.
Half of all global bee-colonies have been lost in the last sixty years.
One third of that remainder has been lost in the last five.
In a reported consensus, conducted from April of 2015 to April of 2016, 44.1% of all farm-based bee-colonies have been lost in the United States alone.
In South Africa – solely in the Western Cape – 40% of all bees have perished in the past twelve months.
Now consider that one-in-every-three bites of food you consume is owed to bees.
This dire crisis – known as Colony Collapse Disorder – wherein worker-bees abandon their hive and their queen due to poor health, is largely owed to the contamination of pollen and our old-foe: climate change.
As the bee-populations decline, it has a direct correlation with how our own population inclines. The increase in the number of people alive today equates in a need for a greater agricultural yield. In order to harvest as many crops as possible we have begun using more virulent pesticides and ventured into genetic-modification, which have in fact bred parasites such as varroamites and polluted crops with chemicals such as neonicotinoids – both of which have massacred millions of colonies.
We must be conscious of the fact that like humans, plants reproduce. The male cells of one plant produce pollen-grains, which are then stuck to the fibres along a dutiful bee’s body as it collects its nectar, to be transported to the receptive female-cells (known as stigma) of another plant. I suppose that is why they call it the birds and the bees. Fertilisation then allows the plant to reproduce and all the while crops grow for the animal-kingdom’s consumption. Our live-stock may graze, and we may sit our children down to force them to eat their fruits and vegetables. Truly, we owe an unfathomable debt to the bees, which we may never be able to repay. Yet…
One of the sole paragons still staving off the extinction of the Honey-Bee is the bee-keeper. Apiculturists are among the few things that are keeping bees alive – and even they are concerned. It is typical of a bee-farmer to lose up to 14% of their bee-colonies a year, but as of 2016 that statistic has more than doubled. There exist few mitigating methods at present, but the bee-keepers have devised two primary methods of conservation in which they either separate a single healthy colony into two or invoke a purchase bee-packs to replenish the lost colonies.
This requires money. By supporting the honey-industry or purchasing and cultivating wild-flowers, and also by making donations to environmental organisations to mitigate the change in temperatures, we are able to begin paying back that aforementioned debt. We are able to make a difference.
We must each of us realise that it is inescapable. Our food prices increase. Our nutrition dwindles. Our health deteriorates. It is not however, incurable.
It all comes back to the certainly significant Honey-Bee.
It is time we start getting buzzy saving our future.