"If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man." Albert Einstein, (1879-1955) Theoretical Physicist
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| Original artwork by The Girl Who Paints |
A young friend of mine sent me a painting she had made of a bee. I thought the bee had a thoughtful look on her face, and that made me want to tell the story of why the bees are concerned, and why we should be too.
The honey bee is one of the earth's most important creatures. Beside making honey, they pollinate over 80% of the world's crops. They live in complex societies. A single hive may contain as many as 80,000 bees, which together build the hive, gather food and feed the next generation. They find flowers to gather nectar by merging many sources of information including the position of the sun and the subtle nuance of a flower's scent. When they come back to their hive, they waggle out a dance to tell the other honeybees where to find the flowers.
Sadly it seems that the bees are disappearing. Over the past 30 years, various diseases and predators affecting bees have spread all over the world. Their environments are being manipulated by humans, resulting in the breakdown of their societal order. Stressed to their breaking point, the bees are leaving.
In many cases commercial bees are so domesticated, they can no longer live without human support. They are stored in air tight containers where diseases like viruses and funguses and pests like mites grow, destroying the hives from the inside out. They are artificially fed sugar-water and trucked about in big rigs, traveling thousands of miles in short periods of time, in order to pollinate crops for commercial farmers. Aside from the continual exposure to a hundreds of insecticides and pesticides, constant relocation creates enormous stress on the hive activity. And wild bees are disappearing too.
Bees are showing many symptoms that reveal a fragile state of health. Some bees cannot find their way back to their hive after leaving it. Others are rejected when they return because they are not recognized by the rest of the group.
Newer insecticides introduced in the 1980s are neurotoxins, which are applied when crops are sown (sunflower, soy, etc.) and serve to protect the crops against various predators. Studies are showing that these toxic chemicals remain on plants throughout the growing cycle, right through the flowering period. The nectar eaten by bees also contains chemical residues that are deeply harmful to them. Because of this, honey production has dropped by a third generally, and by up to 90% in some areas.
Bees have to fly farther and farther distances to gather pollen because their supportive environment is disappearing. Cities and suburban areas are growing. This has a disastrous effect on bees in particular because, while most pollinators pick up the fertilizing spores by accident while trolling flowers for nectar, bees collect pollen for their young.
But, the strangest part of the missing bee mystery is the most interesting. There are no dead bees to be found. There are a few dead soldiers scattered on the ground, but millions and millions of bees are gone. They are not in the hive, at the hive, or close by. Many abandoned hives are full of honey. So where did they go? Perhaps the honeybees had enough of our interference. Perhaps they know what man has done to them and they just prefer to fly away.
The honey bee is one of the earth's most important creatures. Beside making honey, they pollinate over 80% of the world's crops. They live in complex societies. A single hive may contain as many as 80,000 bees, which together build the hive, gather food and feed the next generation. They find flowers to gather nectar by merging many sources of information including the position of the sun and the subtle nuance of a flower's scent. When they come back to their hive, they waggle out a dance to tell the other honeybees where to find the flowers.
Sadly it seems that the bees are disappearing. Over the past 30 years, various diseases and predators affecting bees have spread all over the world. Their environments are being manipulated by humans, resulting in the breakdown of their societal order. Stressed to their breaking point, the bees are leaving.
In many cases commercial bees are so domesticated, they can no longer live without human support. They are stored in air tight containers where diseases like viruses and funguses and pests like mites grow, destroying the hives from the inside out. They are artificially fed sugar-water and trucked about in big rigs, traveling thousands of miles in short periods of time, in order to pollinate crops for commercial farmers. Aside from the continual exposure to a hundreds of insecticides and pesticides, constant relocation creates enormous stress on the hive activity. And wild bees are disappearing too.
Bees are showing many symptoms that reveal a fragile state of health. Some bees cannot find their way back to their hive after leaving it. Others are rejected when they return because they are not recognized by the rest of the group.
Newer insecticides introduced in the 1980s are neurotoxins, which are applied when crops are sown (sunflower, soy, etc.) and serve to protect the crops against various predators. Studies are showing that these toxic chemicals remain on plants throughout the growing cycle, right through the flowering period. The nectar eaten by bees also contains chemical residues that are deeply harmful to them. Because of this, honey production has dropped by a third generally, and by up to 90% in some areas.
Bees have to fly farther and farther distances to gather pollen because their supportive environment is disappearing. Cities and suburban areas are growing. This has a disastrous effect on bees in particular because, while most pollinators pick up the fertilizing spores by accident while trolling flowers for nectar, bees collect pollen for their young.
But, the strangest part of the missing bee mystery is the most interesting. There are no dead bees to be found. There are a few dead soldiers scattered on the ground, but millions and millions of bees are gone. They are not in the hive, at the hive, or close by. Many abandoned hives are full of honey. So where did they go? Perhaps the honeybees had enough of our interference. Perhaps they know what man has done to them and they just prefer to fly away.
(Some information for this blog post was shared from "Organic Principal Web Magazine" http://www.organicprincipal.com )
