The Significance Of Honey Bees For Humanity

For millions of years a little flying insect has been pollinating flowers and crops, creating sustainability for us. Our diet consists of 33 % of cross pollinated plants, where 80% is pollinated from the honeybee. Pollination would be very difficult and time consuming without the help of the pollinators, the bees. There are more bees globally than any other pollinators and their roll is imperative to our survival. Many plants heavily rely on the little bee to pollinate it, these include onions, avocados, certain types berries, apples and even Almonds. Almond pollination in industrial scale is now the main financial drive to the honeybee business. Although this comes with a price, gathering up all the bees in the country in just one place, poses a great risk to the colonies. Communication of diseases is the main threat in this case.

Due to foreign competition, honey adulteration (mostly Asian countries alter their honey with cheap syrups to increase its volume) and “Colony collapse disorder” (combination of stress, parasites, insecticides and agri-business monocultures), beekeepers had to learn new ways of making money by putting the bees to do what they do best; pollinate. Honeybees are not only fundamental in the eco-system, but in our society. Often related to food of the Gods in ancient times, honey represents a wholesome food that adds value to any plate. And because of that, we believe that it would be very interesting to learn more about the usage of honey, its different flavours, colours and nuances of honey across the world.

Bees have a great impact on our lives, according to Fairmont. com bees contribute $29 billion alone to the US economy. Humans have been utilising honeybee products for over 9,000 years. In fact, it was discovered recently that, people made pottery with beeswax over 2000BC. Bees do not just give us honey and bees wax, they transfer pollen from one plant to another which helps these plants reproduce. Without bees the prices would go up for Fruits and Vegetables, thus causing world wide poverty, malnutrition and most likely causing an increase of starvation-based deaths which could in the end cause a food chain collapse and harm us humans drastically. There are varying ideas of how the loss of bees would affect us. The BBC states we would not only lose the food to keep us healthy but also lose the food to keep animals healthy, in turn causing us to struggle with keeping us sustained. The National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) states that although we would most likely not go extinct, we would suffer. Our diets would have to change, we would no longer have a variety of food to choose and what we do have would be more costlier and as equally rare. We know that if the bee becomes extinct we will have to take drastic measures to survive, but even a substantial drop in their numbers can harm us. To quote Brian Palmer from the NRDC “Humanity would survive – but our dinners would get a lot less interesting”.

There is no one cause for the decline of the bee, but we are losing them at an alarming rate and should be concerned. We are building at a fast rate and this removes habitat not only for the animals but for flowers and plants for bees to thrive on. Insecticides are a big threat towards the bee. There are many that have an effect on bees, but one specific insecticide has a lethal effect and is widely used in commercial agricultural called neonicotinoids.

Global Warming is not just an issue with us humans, it also affects the bee. With temperatures rising the plants that the bees need are no longer growing and instead of moving north like many animals and insects they have not done so or even a mite called Varroa. This mite was first noticed in Japan and the USSR in the 1960’s, by the 80’s the Varroa had infected 8 more countries including the US and Canada. Today it is known as the deadliest parasite in commercial beekeeping history. With the access to internet and educational documentaries like Rotten on Netflix, people are more conscientious about food origin, sustainability, ethical and natural products.

Many people have no idea what the bee does besides provide honey, so having an open discussion on the importance of Bees in the classroom is the first step towards understanding what the job of a bee entails as well as how we can protect the bee and ourselves. Helping the bee thrive is something we can and should do. Planting flowers and flowering herbs help replace what they are losing due to urban growth. Choosing to not use chemicals and pesticides on your lawn or in your garden helps them from coming into contact and perishing and being a voice for the bees, sharing what you know and educating people on the importance of the bees.