Save the Bees
Bees are profound contributers to the ecosystem, but their population size is decreasing tremendously. Without them, key factors to everyday life will be negatively affected. The honey bees pollinates flowers. Pollination is when pollen is transferred to a flower’s reproductive organs and enables it to fertilize. When fruits and vegetables are growing, they start of as small flowers on the plant, eventually becoming whatever food they are. Pollination is how the flowers are able to grow into the fruit or vegetable. The natural, and best way, a plant gets pollinated is through bees.
Admittedly, some may argue that honey bees are not a necessity because there are alternate ways to pollinate crops. For example, other insects such as butterflies, beetles, flies, and wasps are able to pollinate (Gordon). Looking at this point of view, it may seem that bees would not be necessary for pollination. Bees are not the only pollinating animal, so there should be no need to protect them. These insects do not pollinate the same way as bees, so how do they do it? Active insects get covered in pollen when visiting flowers, which then rubs off onto the next flower visited (Gordon). Bees do essentially the same thing, except they do it purposely, making it the process more effective. In summation, because there are other insects that have the ability to pollinate, opposers of saving the honey bees think that it is unnecessary to aid them in survival. Bees however,
When we think of bees, we think of pesky, harmful insects. What we don’t know is everything they do for not just us, but the world. Bees influence our food supply greatly. Without bees, the would be absolutely no honey whatsoever and the amount of pollen could increase greatly without their presence. You might be thinking, “What does pollen have to do with anything?” but actually the amount of pollen not only influences our allergies, but also the plants. It is definitely possible plants we eat could become over pollinated and there would go another one of our food sources
The honey bee is vital to an estimated $117 billion annual production of crops through pollination within the United States more than a half of the food that humans consume has a correlation with the bee either directly or indirectly. The USDA reports the following food products would be immediately damaged if no bees were available to pollinate:
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.
It is important that we get our food, but bees also help fertilize different species and make it so we aren’t just eating one plant, but that we have hundreds of different types of produce to choose from.
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 recent years, many citizens have been pushing the idea that we need to “save the bees,” specifically the western honey bee. Advocates for saving the bees spread information on social media. These posts can show how to start a bee garden and list off the plants that would become “extinct” without honey bees and claim that without honey bees agriculture in the United States would cease to exist. Others have bees that say “If we die, you die with us,” and state that the ecosystem would fail without the honey bee. But are either of these claims true?
Bee populations are declining at an alarming rate all around the world, and daily life without bees would be detrimental. Without the bees around to help pollinate our food, 30 percent of which is grown using bees, there is an incredibly high chance that we would starve. “Mankind will not survive the honeybees’ disappearance for more than five years.” (Albert Einstein) By using harmful pesticides in our agriculture, and the excessive use of high fructose corn syrup, we are killing the bees at an alarming rate. One of every three bites of food rely on pollination for a profitable harvest. We must acknowledge everything that the bees provide for humans, then ban pesticides that hard bees, move away from industrial agriculture and put our focus
I chose this topic because of how important it is. Despite our fears and allergies to this species of insect, they have so much meaning and impact on our lives.Their appearance frightens many of us and leas to us shooing them away as if they have no affect on our world and the nature that surrounds us; when, in fact, that have a whole lot to do with not only what we eat but our society as well. Our strong usage of pesticides and insecticides have extremely harmful effects of the bees, causing for their population to decline.So, what exactly do honeybees do? The most commonly known and important job of these insects is pollination; the act of bees and other pollinators transferring pollen from the anther of the flower of a plant to the stigma,
Honeybees are very important insects, they pollinate flowers and plants. If the bees died out we wouldn't have a lot of the food or plants we have today. Bees are mostly dying out due to the fact that a lot of people use chemicals to keep plants free of plants. We need bees or much more people would be left penniless and starving.
Bees are beneficial to our environment. They help with pollination of crops, flowers, orchards as well as yielding honey (Ryde, 7). Because of these benefits, the beekeeper learns about the surrounding environment, land, and community, for which he can help. Pollination yields beautiful wildflowers, healthy crops, fruits and vegetables (Ryde, 7).
Bees pollinate one third of the world’s food, they do this by landing on a plant once on the plant the pollen is unknowingly transferred on the bee’s feet and between plants. If bees don’t pollinate it will put millions of farmers and beekeepers out of business, this will put a strain on the economic growth of Australia as the Australian economy is highly dependent upon agricultural exports.
One third of our fruit and vegetables are pollinated by bees, and they pollinate around 70 of the 100 crop species that feed 90% of the earth. To put it simply, the human race can barely survive without bees. Sure, we would probably find ways to pollinate some crops without bees, but humans will never be able to do their job as well as they
Are bees really that important? A world without bees means a world without vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds (What Our World Would Look Like Without Honeybees). Nearly one half of the produce consumers have available to them today could not be grown without bees (What Our World Would Look Like Without Honeybees). Bees play an extremely vital role in pollination and in people’s everyday lives in ways that individuals often overlook. However, pesticides are killing off bees by the thousands (List of Foods We Will Lose if We Don't Save the Bees). Without honey that is produced by bees, consumers wouldn’t have nearly as many modern medications.
Honeybees play a major role in some land ecosystems where there is green vegetation which are covered for 3 to 4 months a year. Many plants and animals would not survive in certain temperatures, deciduous woodlands, and tropical forests if bees were not existent. This is due to their crucial manufacture of fruits, seeds, berries and nuts which are very reliant on insect pollination and Honeybees are great pollinators. In different ecosystems honeybee’s main function is their duty of pollination. Pollination is the transfer of pollen from a male plant to a female plant. In many cases some plants can undergo self-pollination where the pollen transfers from the male plant to the female plant within the same flower (Cunningham 936). Flowers pollinated by honeybees comprise of various colors, but are infrequently red; they also blossom during the
There are several different species of insect pollinators, but the bees in general make up sixty-two percent of them. Honeybees make up thirty-nine percent of that number, and the other twenty-three is composed of several different species of bees. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, one-third of the homo-sapiens diet is insect pollinated and honeybees are accountable for eighty percent of the pollination of that one-third. The population of the honeybees in the United States has been noticeably declining from the late 1990 's, so the threat to the majority of the world food supply is slowly increasing as our pollinators population decreases.