Bees Global Wealth

The United Nations reports that approximately 70% of the world’s crops, valued at close to $US200 billion, are dependent on bee

What you may not know is that honeybees play a huge roll in America’s agriculture, whether it is pollinating alfalfa hay to feed your horse or pollinating that apple you eat every morning for breakfast. Honeybees pollinate about one-third of crops species in the U.S. (Vanishing Bees, 2008). Bees pollinate a lot more than you would think a few more examples are almonds, avocadoes, cucumbers and peanuts.

Of particular interest is the fact that, despite the risk to native fauna and flora, honey produced by the European honey bee is a major industry

The economic worth of global food production supported by animal pollination is at a whopping $265 billion dollars. Bee’s themselves are responsible for the harvest of crops such as nuts, melons and berries, and plays varying roles in the production of citrus fruits, apples, onions, broccoli, cabbage, sprouts, courgettes, peppers, aubergines, avocados, cucumbers, coconuts, tomatoes and broad beans, as well as coffee and cocoa. ( Yes, that’s right without bee’s you wouldn’t be able to relax to/enjoy the sweet taste of, of a hot cup of chocolate after a long winter day). but with bee’s in consistent decline what does this mean for a growing population. Fewer bee’s would mean most likely result in higher prices for fruits, and vegetables. Less food available for mass consumption. So what can we do? In order to reverse the damage done to our bee populations, it is important that we now as a community make steps to encourage ecologically safe farming practices. That means start grocery shopping regionally, and locally and when the holiday/winter season is over and spring rolls around reduce the everyday use of pesticides, and other stuff while

A juicy apple. Pumpkin pie. Crisp almonds. Tangy oranges and grapefruit. None of these foods would survive without the hard work of honeybees. Unfortunately, in the last two years, United States beekeepers reported a loss of over 44% of honeybee colonies. Similarly, Europe has experienced a 25% loss and the United Kingdom has experienced a 45% loss. These numbers are staggering. What is causing this sharp decrease in the honey bee population? What are the long term impacts of a declining honey bee population? These questions must be explored because, like Albert Camus’ absurd hero, Sisyphus, and J. Howard Miller’s iconic hero, Rosie the Riveter, honeybees are vigilant in their tiring, though inspired, efforts toward a particular goal—in this

In “Why Bees Are Disappearing,” Marla Spivak, an American entomologist, sheds light on the importance of bees in the pollination process as well as the decline in bee population. Spivak claims that “bees are the most important pollinators” because over one third of crop production across the world depends on bee pollination. However, bee populations have decreased since the end of World War II due to “multiple, interacting causes of death.” These causes are monocultures, pesticides, diseases, and flowerless landscapes, and they all pose a threat to plant diversity and food production. In order to prevent significant consequences and reverse impacts already made, Spivak encourages the audience to plant bee-friendly flowers without pesticide contamination so that bees, and therefore people, have access to better nutrition.

Bees are the reason we have jelly, fruit, nuts, coffee and so many other vegetation (Lecture 09/27). Without these creatures we would lose so much more of our biodiversity, which is already suffering from other anthropogenic actions. Our society has a habit of finding the most cost efficient methods to produce goods that please the consumers without considering all the consequences of these actions. More importantly, we do not recognize the harm that we have caused until the damage is outrageous and requires a solution. But, this problem cannot follow those footsteps because it is essential for our ecosystem to thrive. These solution would not only save millions of dollars by being proactive, but would allow us to sustain food sources, biodiversity, and the survival of

In October 2006, U.S. beekeeper David Hackenberg discovered that about 400 of his bees out of his 3,000 hives had completely disappeared. No bees were found dead inside or outside of their hives, they had just simply disappeared. Now this disappearance was not due to some funny magic trick, but still the questions remained, where did the bees go and what happened to them that caused them to leave? Over the last decade “this sudden diminution of bee colonies has been brought to the forefront of people’s minds and surpassed the realm of beekeepers, academia, industry and regulatory agencies and now encompasses non-governmental agencies, media, fiction writers, and the general public” (Barbosa 1049). This however, does not answer the ongoing question

The article begins with the statement of how falling population in bees will lead to a decline is crop production for the united states of America. This statement was announced at the American Association for the Advancement of Science or for short the AAAS. The United States relies on these bees for pollination as it is a big part of the economy bringing in over 3 billion dollars annually. It is mention how it is possible to reverse the decline in wild bees by habitat restoration. Bees are a huge part of the crop production in the united states which helps with the income and rotation of crops. In the article maps of troubled zones where placed in over 139 counties in agricultural regions of California, Pacific Northwest, the upper Midwest and Great Plains, West Texas, and Mississippi River Valley. All those places are known for their specialty crops such as almonds blueberries and apples. Those specialty crops

Furthermore bees specifically are particularly efficient with it being estimated that they are the sole pollinators for 50% of the approximate 80% of flowering plants which rely on insects for pollination (Bradbear, 2009). Their efficiency is further illustrated by the fact that a single colony containing 25,000 forager bees is able to pollinate 250 million flowers per day (Bradbear, 2009). As a result of this it can be seen that bees are hugely important as pollinators with many species of flower being completely dependent on them. Furthermore, the importance of bees extends beyond ecological diversity; certain types of bees are hugely important economically. In addition to pollinating a large variety of fruit and vegetables, bees produce Honey; together this results in them having an estimated value of service of £200m a year in the UK (National Audit Office (NAO), 2009). Overall it can be seen that bees are of significant importance that any decrease in population should be treated with concern, as a result of this a large quantity of research has been conducted into identifying possible

The purpose of this report was to determine why bees are disappearing and the effect on the world if they disappeared, like pesticides and fungicides role in their disappearance, the role Colony Collapse Disorder has on their disappearance, the knock on effect on pollination, the knock on effect on crops, can anything take up their role, can humans take up their role and is life possible without bees. It was determined that a combination of pesticides and fungicides that contaminates the bees pollen leave the bees three time more likely to be infected by a parasite, allow not enough evidence is available some evidence shows that a combination of factors lead to CCD where the adult bees leave the hive, the queen, the baby bees and some worker bees this is not enough to support the hive in the long run so they die. Insects’ pollination accounts for one third of the human diet of which eighty percent is done by bees, so see a fifty percent decrease in pollination levels over twenty years could crop yields fall dramatically. Climate change which is thought to play a big role in when the bees immerge from hibernating through winter and loss of habitat also has an effect on how much the bees pollinate. One in every three mouth fulls of food of the average person is directly or indirectly linked to honey bee pollination, the effect of bees disappearing would cause plants that solely rely on bees to pollinate them to die out, out of one hundred crops which provides nighty

In the U.S. , bees pollinate over $15 billion worth of crops. This includes favorites like apples, berries,

During the past decade the presence of bee diseases, droughts and other variable weather conditions has reduced the supply of bees worldwide. In the United States for example, the past few years have seen bush-fires, droughts, the killer mite (Varroa destructor) and the Colony Collapse Disorder wreck havoc with U.S. honey crops by destroying nearly two-thirds of their colonies. This has lead to a market opportunity for other countries to sell their honey to the U.S., which happens to be the largest consumer (and 3rd largest importer) of honey worldwide.

Bees pollinating crops produce every third mouthful of food we eat. Bees contribute to thirty- five Percent of global food production, 87 of the leading 115 food crops are dependent on animal pollinators, including bees. (The United States White House, 2014). Without bees pollinating plants, there would not be very many fruits or vegetables to eat, Bees transfer pollen between the male and female parts, allowing plants to grow seeds and fruit. In the last decade scientist and beekeepers have observed remarkable decline of bees, in the US alone 30% of the national bee population has disappeared and nearly a third of all bee colonies in the U.S. have

In a statistical study done it was found; “The economic value of U.S. crops that benefit from honeybee pollination has been estimated at $15 billion annually. In 2006 the California almond export crop alone was valued at $1.9 billion and required more than one million bee colonies for pollination”. (Dainat) With keeping the fact that plants that need honeybees into in mind, the impact of honeybees in modern agriculture is significantly large as many places around the world rely on beekeepers for honey, as well as pollination services (Dainat). A main statement often brought up regarding CCD is Einstein’s assumption about the human race eradicating shortly after the bees. A lot of what humans eat consist of many items that are only produced due to pollination. A Canadian committee regarding agriculture stated; “Approximately a third of the human diet comes directly or indirectly from insect-pollinated plants, with the annual value of bee pollination in Canada an estimated $2 billion. The majority of flowering plants require pollination to reproduce, and bees are responsible for about 70 per cent of that pollination.” In regards to the whole world, it is estimated from the same study that the bees contribution to food production worldwide stands at about two hundred billion. (“Save the bees, save