Crop production relies heavily on pollinators for high yields. Animals account for the pollination of approximately 88% of plants; 68% of all global crops rely on animals (mostly insects) for pollination. Managed bees, mainly honey bees (Apis mellifera), are commonly used to provide pollination services. However, alternative native or the locally and naturally-available bees that are not formally managed may also provide significant contributions to crop pollination.
There is a general decline in Honey bees and other wild bees like bumble bee in North America and Europe, although similar trends have not been documented in other parts of the world such as Australia and Africa. Of particular concern is increased global cultivation of pollinator-dependent crops such as high value fruits and vegetables in an environment in which the population of pollinators of those crops may be decreasing. The need for pollination of fruits and vegetables will rise as humans increase their consumption of these foods. This trend has been seen in my parts of the world including US, Europe and Asia, but this information is lacking in many developing countries where both the population and demand for pollinator dependent fruits and vegetable is increasing. Unmanaged bee pollination supports the production of an estimated $3 billion of food, fiber, and forage crops, whereas honey bee pollination has been estimated at $15 billion.
The abundance of native pollinators may be driven by farm management practices by farm landscape context, or both. At present, the determinants of native bee abundance and pollination services are rarely understood well enough, especially in developing countries to guide farmers who want to use them for pollination, leaving ...
... middle of paper ...
...nsight into the bee fauna of economic importance to fruit and vegetable crop agriculture, and will identify bee species and management tactics with potential for increase pollination. We will produce a Fruit and Vegetable Pollination Monitoring Guide which will provide both a key to the most important crop pollinators in each region and a crop survey tool where farmers and/or agricultural professionals can assess crop pollination provided by various bees during bloom.
Outcomes: With the outputs from this objective, Kenyan fruit and vegetable crop growers will gain knowledge and awareness of the economic contribution of both managed and unmanaged bees to their businesses and will increase the use of pest and farm management approaches that reduce risk to bees. We envisage that our findings will be adopted by other developing countries with similar cropping systems.
Think for a moment of a world without bees; a world without our buzzing friend. They might look like they barely do much to help our ecosystem. However, bees are a vital part of our agriculture and this makes it vital that we keep them around. The bee population decline in recent years is troubling for both us and our little friends. As their friends, we must do all we can in order to ensure their survival which in turn will ensure our own.
H.R. 3040 aim to alleviate the decline in the pollinator population in North America by protecting and ensuring the viability of native bees and other pollinators. Economically, an evaluation of potential success of H.R. 3040 focuses on direct public action, market efficiency, and how negative productive externalities are affecting the market.
Initially, I didn’t care much about bees until after I received this assignment. Although I may be allergic to bees, they do help my everyday life. I don’t want food prices to go up because we can’t save some bees. We spend trillions on protection, when we have no war. How about take a few million to save the bees, and possibly save man.
In Myla Goldberg’s fiction novel, The Bee Season, young Eliza Naumann is a fifth-grader at McKinley Elementary School. In the novel, Goldberg incorporates several key concepts Martin Buber presents in his text, I and Thou. The story is set around Eliza as she competes in the school, district, and national spelling bees. Throughout the story, struggles as her family begins to separate and deteriorate. Buber in his text argues that there are two separate realms of I-You and I-It (Buber 82, 83). The I-It world is where Eliza experiences reality of the circumstances her family is experiencing. On the other hand, in the I-You world Eliza becomes in total commune and relation with God, or shefa as Eliza describes (Goldberg 190). Buber suggests every human has desire to be in I-You realm (Buber 79). However, this realm can become an I-It by individuals seeking the I-You— making it objectified and using it for a specific purpose (68). In Goldberg’s novel, Eliza begins seeking I-You, shefa, to remove herself from chaos and to help solve her problems of her broken family (Goldberg 172). Once she has obtained shefa, Eliza wants to be removed from the I-It world and “desires to have God continually in space and time” (Buber 161). Buber would suggest Eliza’s I-You relationship is lacking depth and that she is actually going further away from the I-You realm and into the I-It realm, as she objectifies her I-You. Goldberg helps the reader to have a better understanding of Buber’s key concepts, by allowing the reader to experience alongside Eliza as she encounters the I-You and I-It realms.
Secret Life of Bees Prompt Write In the book, The Secret Life of Bees, Kidd presents a character who i feel is one of the most influential and wise characters in the piece. That character is August, she has so many amazing qualities that I very much admire. She is full of knowledge and life experiences that come in handy when giving advice. She is also caring to everybody that crosses her path.
Outline THESIS: Chemical free beekeeping saves beekeepers money, promotes the overall health of the beehive, and preserves the natural goodness of honey. 1. The only entities making money off of chemicals is the bee supply companies and their constituents. a. Chemicals are not cheap; even those that are called natural chemicals. b.
All around the world honeybees are vanishing at an alarming rate, according to the documentary Vanishing of the Honeybees. This film features two commercial bee keepers and their fight to preserve their bee numbers. David Hackenburg was the first commercial bee keeper to go public the bee population was decreasing. Approximately two billions bees have vanished and nobody knows the reason why. Honeybees are used all across America to help pollinate monoculture crops like broccoli, watermelon, cherries, and other produce. Without the honeybees the price for fresh and local produce would be too much money. According, to this film commercial bee keeper’s help fifteen billion dollars of food get pollinated by commercial
The Secret Life of Bees is a story with many conflicts. There are conflicts involving racism, acceptance, and more. The story begins shortly before Lily and Rosaleen flee Silvan, South Carolina to find a new place to live. Soon after, Lily and Rosaleen meet a woman, named May, who is in a conflict with herself every day due to mental issues.
Our livestock depend on bee-pollinated plants like grain. Poorly pollinated plants produce fewer fruits and seeds, leading to higher prices (New Agriculturist, n.d.). Some crops are entirely dependent on pollinators such as almonds and others are 90 percent dependent on blueberries and cherries (ABF, 2015). Bees give us honey and we use this honey in food, shampoo, and moisturizers (Mercola, 2015). Bees pollinate 70 out of our 100 major crops; that includes apples, cucumbers, pumpkins, and many more.
The pesticides used on flowers and other factors that have contributed to the decrease in the population of bees need to be stopped before this problem goes too far out of reach. This decrease can only be described as Colony Collapse Disorder and it will have severe consequences if it is not controlled. However, we are not the only ones that depend on them but in fact most animals depend on them too. Bees cross-pollinate flowers and plants that are eaten by farm and wild animals.
Honeybees are the greatest way to pollinate when it come to agriculture, and it costs nearly nothing to use them. According to the British Beekeepers’ Association, bees pollinate approximately one to two-thirds of the world’s food. “Without the service nature provides, some of that food would become a lot harder to grow and more expensive to buy” (bbka.org.uk). They pollinate foods of all kinds, ranging from fruits to legumes to seeds, which are widely accessible and generally inexpensive. Without bees, alternative methods of pollination would have to be put to use which are less cost-effective and significantly more labor intensive, resulting in a price spike for all the inexpensive foods bees pollinate. Studies from Beyond Pesticides show that the problems bees are facing are related; the use of pesticides results in Colony Collapse Disorder. “Many indications point to CCD being induced by pesticides, especially neonicotinoid insecticides, as well as pathogens, nutritional deficits and environmental stresses” (“Pesticides and Pollinators” 1). When farmers spray their crops with pesticides, they severely harm their pollinators along with
The Apis Mellifera, or honey bee, have survived on this planet for fifty million years. This species of bee is responsible for pollinating flowers, grass, trees and crops around the world. Much of the food we eat is dependent on honey bees for pollination. Our ecosystem depends on the survival of the honey bee. Colonies of honeybees have been disappearing at an alarming rate around the world due to parasites, viral and bacterial diseases, and the introduction of pesticides and herbicides. Over the past six years, on average, 30 percent of all the honey bee colonies in the U.S. died off over the winter of 2012(NPR/TED). If this trend continues to spiral downward, honey bees will disappear from the world. We must understand the importance of the Honey bee and change our environmental practices in order to sustain this vital insect.
In the recent years, bees have been dying at alarming rates. The question arises, why are all these bees dying at an alarming rate? The answer lies in pesticides called neonicotinoids, which are widely used. These pesticides not only have been affecting bee populations, but have also been found killing birds. Approximately 95 percent of the insecticide winds up in the wider environment, meaning bees are easily exposed. Farmers spend around 2.6 billion dollars on this pesticide annually, without considering the detrimental effects on bees, worms, and birds, which are all vital animals in global food production. On June 23 in 2014, “President Obama signed a memorandum establishing the first-ever federal pollinator strategy and the Agriculture
Pollinators are very important to the environment because many plant species rely on reproduction to be carried out by pollination1. Bees are dependent on plants for pollen and nectar and in return, are the most common pollinator of plant species and around 90 percent of plants require pollination by an animal7. Bees are used in farming, both for pollinating crops and for producing honey, and the estimated value of bees to the United Kingdom is £400 million per year9. Plants are the primary producers in many food webs and, as so many are dependent on pollination in order to reproduce, a decline in pollinators would have a detrimental effect on whole ecosystems. Therefore, the declining numbers of pollinators, particularly bees, are a cause of concern because of the environmental knock-on effects.
Over the past decade bee populations have been dropping drastically. A 40% loss of honeybees happened in the U.S. and U.K. lose 45% of its commercial honeybee since 2010. This is a phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) in which worker bees from a beehive abruptly disappear in a short time. These data are definitely not meaningless since bees are a crucial part of the reproductive cycle of many foods. The impact bees have on the agriculture and the environment is far more crucial than we may think. Crops rely on bees to assist their reproduction and bring them life. Bees are renowned in facilitating pollination for most plant life, including over 100 different vegetable and fruit crops. Without bees, there would be a huge decrease in pollination, which later result in reduce in plant growth and food supplies. On the other hand, without the pollination progressed with the assistance from bees, the types of flowers According to Dr. Albert Einstein, “If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live. No more bees, no more pollination…no more men”. That’s why bees’ extinction affects people more than we ever think, and could even forebode the doom day of human race.