The honeybee is often one of the most overlooked insects that we commonly see, often people associate the honeybee with more aggressive species of slightly similar looking wasps. For this reason, people seem to dislike or even fear stingless bees such as honeybees, bumble bees, and orchid bees. These harmless pollinators are essential to our survival, as Allison Benjamin and Brian McCallum state in their book “A World Without Bees”:
“The majority of flowering plants need animals to pollinate them, and the honeybee is perfectly engineered to perform the task, with a body designed to trap pollen and a work ethic that leaves no petal unturned. Without the honeybees, the vitality and color of the planet would be lost.”
The reason the world’s color and life would be lost without the honeybee is that they are an essential key to the pollination of crops and flowers throughout the entire world. Especially in a world
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Some of the harvests that rely on bees include nuts, soya beans, onions, carrots, broccoli and sunflowers to apples, oranges, blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, melons, avocados, peaches. Including cotton, the entire industry of pollination brings in about $60 billion a year, an average $15 billion of which in the United States alone. (Benjamin and McCallum, 4) An industry this crucial, that which is a foundation for several other industries to thrive, should be maintained and studied to prevent a snowball effect of the decay of industries. Unfortunately, the honeybee industry has been dying at an alarming rate.
This project was chosen to investigate the decline of the honeybee and the impact on Australian agriculture. The honeybee decline is interconnected with environmental sustainability with key environmental challenges threatening the future of the honeybee and the industry of beekeeping. Some of these factors such as land degradation, limited water availability, loss of plant biodiversity, climate change, pests and pesticides loss of public lands such as National Parks, State forests and reserves, all impact on the sustainability and ecosystems which the honeybee depends and likewise, the ecosystems depend on the honeybee. With the disappearance of land to urbanisation and government restrictions on access to public lands some 70% of Australian
“Like the rest of us, scientists gravitate toward the huggable” (Begley 257) says Sharon Begley as she refers to animals in her article “Praise the Humble Dung Beetle”. Begley, an accomplished and award-winning science journalist, informs people of the threat on the plants and animals going extinct. In this article published in Newsweek, she persuades her audience that this is harming the environment and humankind and why this is so detrimental. In “Praise the Humble Dung Beetle,” Begley’s use of rhetorical appeals, her organization and syntax, as well as her tone, help inform her audience about the importance of insects in our ecosystem. With her knowledge of journalism, Begley utilizes the resource she knows best, expert opinion.
“Beekeepers across the United States lost 44 percent of their honey bee colonies during the year spanning from April 2015 to April 2016” (“Nation’s Beekeepers lost 44 percent of bees in 2015-2016”). Many famers today plant their cops in sections farther apart depending on the plant. When the bees go to collect nectar they cannot get as much food without getting tired. This has had an effect on bees because they die faster from having to fly so far. Many beekeepers think that this reason causes bees to fade away.
The Secret Life of Bees was written by Sue Monk Kidd and is considered a fictional novel filled with young romance and adventure. This novel was published by Penguin Books and when released in 2002 it received critical acclaim and was on the New York Times bestseller list. This 302 page novel challenges the mind to think back to the past when the color of skin determined the number of hardships one would have. This novel is read by millions and relates to many when the were young. This novel takes place in Tiburon and Sylvan South Carolina in 1964.
In Annie Dillard “Living like the Weasel” she portrays the weasel as a cute little critter. But in reality, they are a murderous little critter. The weasels are a creature that she describes “can kill more bodies than he can eat warm.” (Dillard, Par. 1). The weasel are predators to their own set of preys like the rabbits, mice and birds.
Pollination is required by the bees and a pesticide that is less harmful to bees, but is also effective at protecting other fruit and vegetable, needs to be created. Secondly, there needs to be a reduction in the human activities that cause stress to honey bees. One way to solve the stress of human activities is to create bee habitats that are located in isolated areas from human activity. These should still be privately- owned and operated, but function so that the bees are removed from harmful activities. Finally, the third cause for the Bee Colony Collapse Disorder is the small beetle that is invading the bee colonies and killing the bees.
If bees were to become completely extinct, the world would be facing a major food epidemic. In Figure 2 below, it shows a Whole Foods market campaign that shows what the world of produce looks like without the bees contribution. Industries relying on bees are starting to be more aware of the growing issue, in an article from Business Insider it discusses, “Whole Foods recently imagined what our grocery store would like in a world without Bees by removing more than half of the market 's produce” (What Our World Would Look Like Without Honeybees, Dina Spector). It is said to imagine that the world of food could look so empty, the contribution that Bees have are irreplaceable. Here’s one for the groups of people that believe the world will be okay without our sweet little stripped friends, we won’t be.
The Agricultural Research Service (ARS), the USDA’s internal research agency is leading several efforts to find the cause of Colony Collapse Disorder, and ways to stop it. The ARS has been striving to enhance honey bee regulation and health as well by improving bee management practices and studying honey bee diseases, vectors, and how to control them. Plus, a number of Federal agencies and state departments of agriculture, private companies, and universities have all started to seek the source and treatment of Colony Collapse Disorder. This is not the first time that bee population has declined drastically. There have been several periods in recent history that bees have been documented to have severe population loss, the 1880’s, 1920’s, and 1960’s.
10 May 2017. It's hard to imagine that an animal as small and inconspicuous as a bee, could be our greatest ally in providing food, but approximately one third of everything we eat is a direct result of their hard work. Khouri, Nabila. "Bees are dying -- what can we do about it?"CNN.
In the winter they are expecting to lose around 40 to 50 percent of their average beehives. Farmers haven’t necessarily noticed a decline in pollination of crops, because the decrease isn’t as apparent yet, but the Californian almond fields have. The fields usually require around 1.8 million bees to have a successful harvest, but since the incredible amount of bee losses in the last decade or so, farmers have had to export healthy bee colonies nationwide (). If the problem persists farmers of all sorts of plants that need pollination will have to export bees or not even get the amount of bees for a full successful harvest. This problem will get worse and worse overtime, and could eventually kill out those beautiful colored springs that the world is used to.
Bees do not go far, so they pollinate local areas rather than an extended amount of land. Patricia E. Salkin says, “Small-scale beekeeping has proven to be especially popular among people looking to obtain more of their food from local resources.” Not only does it help the people and the wildlife in their surrounding area, it supports producers who raise and sell their crops there. Patricia E. Salkin states, “Urban bees provide important pollination services to community gardens, home vegetable gardens, and fruit trees.” Not only will it help neighbors’ goods and plants, but it will help others’ gardens and plants as well.
In Canada , a third of the human diet comes directly or indirectly from insect-pollinated plants . The benefits of pollination in Canada is 2 billion dollars each year . that the contribution of bees worldwide to human food production stands at an estimated $200 billion annually. Image if bee decline was a worldwide problem , it would be a catastophe. Albert Einstein once remarked, if the bees disappear, the human family would follow close behind (Save the bees, save ourselves).
This again stops the bees from doing their job of pollinating and stops them from getting the food they need to survive. The community can help bees survive by employing a few tactics. One tactic alone will not cure the bee population degradation but it can help boost the bee population. One local and more personal tactic would be to have a “bee garden” that consists of flowering plants that bees like which include apples, oranges, lemons, limes, cucumbers, carrots, and cantaloupes. Another tactic would be do be more environmentally conscious.
Bees are major factor in our environment. But recent studies show that we are to blame for the decline in the Bee populations. The main reasons are industrial agriculture (pesticides), mites and climate change. And we should care about them because they provide us with honey and beeswax, and provide a major ecosystem service in the form of pollination. Bees pollinate a lot of crops like apple, citrus, strawberry, blueberry, tomato, melon, oilseed rape, carrot, etc.
Imagine entering your local food store and seeing that items most people eat everyday have been discontinued. Items such as coffee, apples, cucumbers and honey are no longer available to consumers. This may not be possible in our generation, but one day it could very well happen. My name is Matt Shaw from the Millsap FFA, and I am here today to talk to you about a major issue that is facing agriculture, the honeybee population.