Extinction Of Bees

Since the late 1990s, beekeepers around the world have observed the mysterious and sudden disappearance of bees, and report unusually high rates of decline in honeybee colonies. Bees do more than just make honey! Bee transfer pollen and seeds from one flower to another, fertilizing the plant so it can grow and produce food. Cross-pollination helps at least 30 percent of the world's crops and 90% affects our food. The sweet fruits humans eat such as, strawberries, mangoes, grapes, apples, and bananas would not be the same taste wise as they are now. We simply couldn’t live in the same world if it weren’t for the bees.

Bees provide us with pollination services for our agricultural crops. “Bees are the most important pollinators of our fruits and vegetables and flowers and crops like alfalfa hay that we feed our farm animals.” (Spivak) We rely on them so much that more than one-third of the world’s crop production is dependent on bee pollination. Without bees we wouldn’t have specialty crops like: asparagus, cantaloupes, cucumbers, pumpkins, cherries and blueberries. We also rely on the bee’s honey, “Made by bees regurgitating nectar and passing it back and forth in their mouths to one another before depositing and sealing it in a honeycomb, it’s intended use is for the bee’s winter food stores.” (Tucker) Honey is also valued in our economy, “Humans are quite fond of this amber liquid as well- the 2013 honey crop was valued at $317.1 million.” (Tucker) We need bees for their economic value just as much as we need their pollination for our crops. Honey

Bees are vital to our very survival, pollinating the plants our food and we ourselves consume daily. Their pollination is worth billions of dollars each year, and are imperative to subsistence farmers who have no other way to feed their families and villages. Commercial farmers depend on the bees to pollinate their large crops, worth uncountable amount of money.

Adopting safer actions to how farmers conduct their crops, we can guarantee that they will reduce and lower the chemicals on our crops. This will bring effective change to the honeybees and with this will improve the growth of our crops. Creating harsher and stricter policies for farmers to lessen the amount of pesticide being release. Enabling better practices that ensure the survival of the honeybees by having restrictions set on the amount of chemicals being added onto those crops.

Bees are some of the most hardworking insects on the planet, but unfortunately, their diligence is often overlooked, leaving these creatures extremely underappreciated. Not only are bees the sole producers of honey, they also responsible for pollinating around one-sixth of the flowering plant species worldwide and approximately 400 different types of plants. Without the pollination of bees, a large portion of the world’s food supply would vanish; different studies have shown that between 50-80% of the world’s food supply being directly or indirectly affected by the honey bee population. From the pollination of apples, or of the seeds used to produce grain for livestock, the food chain is strongly linked to honey bees. Furthermore, bees also provide us with beeswax, propolis, pollen, royal jelly, apitherapy, and an income for bee keepers; they certainly have a lot to offer. This paper will discuss the mysterious decline of the bees over the past few decades and why they are disappearing.

Another research, conducted by Simon Potts, is also critical about the disappearance of bees, claiming that they are responsible for 80% of the fruits pollination and 75% of the crops around the world and that a possible extinction is dangerous because pollination would totally rely on butterflies. However, the latter states that there are no clear studies on the impact of pollination on crop yields so it is not possible to claim that crops growth will become unsustainable if there ever is an extinction. He finally qualified the economic value of bee’s pollination, by estimating their production to 253 billion of euros. Therefore, an extinction would lead to a global market crash and influence the economy of many countries that rely on agriculture as a predominant economic activity. Potts’ work allows understanding that the current honeybee crisis is not only dangerous for mankind because of its environmental consequences, but also for the economic impact that would occur.

The honeybee as a pollinator has a huge influence to not only the agriculture, but the agriculture around the world as well. These bees play a huge role in food production, although the decline in pollination will take a huge toll on not only food production, however the human race as well. The believed cause of this decrease is believed to be from the insecticides farmers use on their plants and a deadly parasite that kills bees in their own hive.

Bee decline is a significant sustainability issue of today’s environment. Bees are in decline due to multiple interacting causes. These causes are diseases and parasites, use of pesticides, monoculture and flowerless landscapes (Spivak, 2013). The diseases and parasites cause bees to become ill. This makes it harder for bees to access food, as they are required to travel large distances due to large monocultures and flowerless landscapes, since changes in farming practices after WWII, when cover crops of clover and alfalfa, which are nutritious for bees, were no longer used (Spivak, 2013). The increased use of pesticides also causes bee decline, due to bees consuming them, causing death, or not finding their way back to the hive due to intoxication.

Harmful monoculture, irrigation, tillage, and pesticides have stricken the bees for too long and need to be eliminated to solve the bees’ conundrum. The solution is to implement the practice of ecological farming as the most common method of farming around the world. Greenpeace, an organization dedicated to creating a more environmentally friendly planet, defines ecological farming as “Farming that ensures healthy farming and healthy food for today and tomorrow, by protecting soil, water and climate, promotes biodiversity, and does not contaminate the environment with chemical inputs or genetic engineering.” (Greenpeace.) In other words, ecological farming would eliminate harmful irrigation, tillage, monoculture, and pesticide practice. Biodiversity would be maintained in food production through decreased use of monoculture (Greenpeace). Hives and nesting sites would be rescued from destructive tillage and irrigation practices. Also, pesticides would quit indirectly killing the bees. All of this would promote the bees’ wellbeing and benefit the reestablishment of the bee population. However, the transition from industrial practices to ecological farming would be difficult. It is quite possible that most farmers would not want to make the transition. In order to make the largest impact towards the

There are over 1500 insect species that are thought to help with pollination in the UK. Virtually any insect that visits flowers can carry out pollination. This includes the best known, the bees along with butterflies, hoverflies, a few beetles and moths. Bees are a massive component in ecological systems with 78-94% of wild plant species and 75% of crop species pollinated by animals and provide important social and economic aids to humans through crop pollination and maintaining the biodiversity and character of the British landscape. It is generally accepted that pollinator figures are in deterioration. Most Garden plants and agricultural/horticultural crops rely on bees to bring about fertilisation by transferring pollen from the flowers’ anthers to the stigmas. These include most tree and soft fruits, and many vegetables including marrows, courgettes runner beans, tomatoes and broad beans, Allowing the decline of pollinators means that plants that are not pollinated will not produce seeds or fruits, this is a problem if not remedied will affect the whole of the world and civilization as we know it as an abundance of unfertilised plants could eventually lead to food shortages and environmental destruction through the loss of vegetation. (Rhs.org.uk, 2016)

Bees are an integral component of every day life on Earth. Bees act as the main aid in pollination and the growth of crops worldwide. Thousands bee species are used to pollinate crops which account for 70% of agriculture production. Without bees, there are hundreds of essential food products that are taken for granted that would be gone. The loss of bees would result in a $15 billion loss for the United States alone. For an inexplicable reason, bees have become diagnosed with colony collapse disorder (CCD). Due to this disease, millions of bees have been disappearing since 2006. While there is many speculation as to what is causing this such as, malnutrition, pesticides and etc, a solution cannot be made in the meantime. A solution to the rapid loss of bees must be found quickly or the entire world will be faced with a wave of problems. Bees are not

Many people are concerned about the agricultural industry due to the decline of bees. An article posted on the Yale website states that: “For much

All humans are born with a genetic code to survive. We all need food and water to survive. As the years go by and population increases our demand for food and water also increases. “We rely on bees to pollinate 71 of the 100 crops that provide 90% of most of the world’s food” (Jones) It's safe to say that bees are very important to the ecosystem and our food production. Beekeepers across the United states lost at least 44% of their bee colonies form April 2015 to April 2016 and is still declining fast causing a major problem in our ecosystem. We need to get the word out to as many people as possible so we can start making changes as fast and effective as possible to help save the bee population before it's too late.

Insect pollinators play a vital role in the majority of terrestrial ecosystems and the survival and productivity of many wild and agricultural plants depends upon successful pollination by insects [1,2]. In a 2005 assessment of the potential impact of pollinator decline, it was estimated that the total economic value of insect pollination worldwide amounted to €153 billion annually, representing 9.5% of the total value of world agricultural production of human food in that year [3]. The European honey bee (Apis mellifera) is the world’s most economically

A bee is an insect that lives in every part of the world except the North and South Poles. Bees are one of the most useful of all insects. There are 20,000 species of bees in the world (154, B: Bees). Bees get their food from flowers through pollen and nectar. They collect tiny grains of pollen and nectar from flower blossoms. Sticky nectar gets attached to the tiny hairs that cover their bodies and is distributed when bees travel from flower collecting nectar (201, B: Bees). Bees make their honey from nectar and use both honey and pollen as food. When bees are collecting nectar for food, they spread pollen from flower to flower. The process of pollination allows plants to reproduce as well as feeds the bees. Bees have become completely dependent on flowers for food. Flowers, in turn, rely heavily on bees to