The Influence Of Honey Bees

Pollination, produce, honey, bee´s wax, life wouldn't be the same without some of the few products bees create and work their whole lives doing. Bees are dying off, over the past few years the bee population has decreased which means some of our very beloved products have either increased in price or may be hard to find. We as humans that have so much control over this planet should help the bees so they can help us. Honeybees are an essential part of humanity.

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.

During ArtSmart, the students created bumble bees and lady bugs. Since our theme of the week was bugs, we thought it would be rewarding for students to get the opportunity to paint their ladybugs and bumble bees.

According to savebees.org, a corporation trying to spread awareness and help raise awareness, one in three bites of food we eat is thanks to bees. Think coffee, nuts, seeds, berries, fruits and vegetables (and even many of our oils). The honey bee population is decreasing and the effects are changing the world as we know it and one part that is being majorly effect is agriculture. Honey bee populations have been declining all over the world. Without honey bees the world as we know it would be totally changed.

The Apis mellifera, or Western Honeybee is responsible for 1 in every 3 mouthfuls of food in the United States. The honeybee has become the unpaid laborer in the agricultural system, by adding more than $15 billion in value farming each year. Bees are so important that a Whole Foods store in Rhode Island, as part of a campaign to highlight the importance of honeybees, temporarily removed from its produce section all the food that depended on pollinators (of 453 items, 237 vanished).

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:

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,

Not only are bees important for food, bees are also important for our economy as annual global crop pollination by bees is estimated to be worth 170 billion dollars. Just to put this into perspective If you had 170 billion dollars, you could buy 5,666,667 cars at $30,000/each.

As little as they may be, bees are essential in the production of well over half of the world’s crops. For example, environmental scientist Jessica Tucker states in “How Bees Benefit Other Living Things” that bees are responsible for pollinating over 90% of humans’ flowering produce. That can be approximated to about one third of everything that we consume! Furthermore, the estimated value of just the total honey crop alone in 2013 was over $300 million, according to Tucker. The total value of everything produced by the labor of bees can be approximated at about $15 billion.

Where did all the honey bees go? Honey Bees pollinate crops, and fruits and vegetables. Crops feed livestock, Humans eat both fruits and vegetables and livestock. Therefore humans along with all other living things need honey bees. But where have they all gone? Nationally honeybees are disappearing all over the United States for many reasons such as pesticides, Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), and other issues still being investigated but here in the Chicagoland area the colonies are dying off due to the freezing weather. “Head beekeeper for the Morton Arboretum and the rooftop hives at the Chicago Marriott, he doesn’t want a repeat of last winter’s massacre, when 80 percent of his colonies perished” (Lauren Williamson). Bee keepers here in

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.

This colorful bees and hives shows how protective they can be when it comes to their hives. The picture suggests that the bees are on guard and ready to fight because their home is being destroyed. Sadly bee numbers are declining so please won’t you help by planting flowers this summer.

Bees are important to our ecosystem because they are pollinators. Pollination assists with plant reproduction, those of which provide food for multiple different species on the planet. According to the article “Why Bees are Important” on Our Green Planet, bees are responsible for pollinating one-sixth of the flowering plant species on earth. Honey bees and other pollinators have helped the United States produce $19 billion worth of agricultural crops in 2010 alone. Without bees, food sources would be limited as well. Bees are responsible for pollinating plants that aid the production of broccoli, asparagus, cantaloupes, cucumbers, pumpkins, blueberries, watermelons, almonds, apples, cranberries, and cherries (Our Green Planet).

The bees are pollinators vital to our food chain. In addition to making honey, one third of the food we eat depends on their pollination.

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.