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How important are bees to the environment
Why bees are important essay
Importance of bees
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The Importance of Bees Although everyone may not know it, bees play a vital role in the ecosystem and are essential to the lifestyles around the world. They are major pollinators as they help the spread of the majority of plants. They produce massive amounts of revenue as they are extremely hard workers. Bees are underappreciated and industrial agriculture is a major factor as to why they are dying out. People do not think about the consequences and effects of their actions, and focus solely on the best path to profit. These farming methods are not only damaging the landscapes and health of insects, but may also have negative effects on the humans who consume this food. There are many other causes for the loss of bees such as pesticides and …show more content…
They are a major pollinator, which means that they help numerous plants with reproduction. It can be said without a doubt that they are the most important group of pollinators. With bees, there is a very high level of food production and biodiversity. Even for the few plants that do not require a pollinator, they produce numerous more seeds and fruits than if they were pollinated by the wind. “It is estimated that one third of the human food supply depends on pollination by insects, birds and bats, most of which is accomplished by bees, especially the domesticated European honey bee” (Bee). Bees pollinate an estimated amount of 30% of the world’s food crops and 90% of wild plants. That amount is $19 billion worth of crops just in the US in one year. If the bees were to go extinct, foods such as: broccoli, cucumber, pumpkin, watermelon, blueberries, or cherries would be lost. By pollinating flowers, bees provide an attractive habitat for wildlife to reside. Bees are extremely hard-workers and they are underappreciated as they help immensely in food production. The average worker bee produces 1/12 teaspoon of honey in their lifetime, yet in 2013 US honey production reached 149 million pounds which is worth $317 million. To produce just one pound of honey, about 750 bees must fly 55,000 miles and visit 2 million …show more content…
“One of the most important ways you can help is by planting native wildflowers, and encouraging those around you to do the same. Don’t forget about trees too!” (Save Bees). Growing plants outside is great for bees because it provides them with a healthy habitat, although it is more efficient if the plants are native to the habitat. Buying food locally supports organic farms which promotes a higher bee diversity and health. As well as promoting bee health, locally grown food is a great alternative to digesting food soaked in chemicals. When buying plants, make sure they have not already been pre-treated with pesticides. There are also many petitions online to ban the use of pesticides in industrial agriculture. Some people simply kill bees because they are afraid, although primarily it is honey bees that sting and only when they feel their safety is threatened. By spreading the word about the importance of bees may help people rethink their actions. It is crucial to promote farming practices that benefit pollinators and the preservation of landscapes and agricultural
People from all over the world, from every walk of life, regardless of color, age, gender or religious beliefs all have one thing in common, that is to consume food in order to survive. Many places around the world have food scares yet America has access to a lavish selection of crops to choose from. The most nutritious part of any human’s diet is a result of insect pollination. In such manner, pesticide use is causing honey bee colony collapse disorder putting their existence in grave danger and posing major food source shortages.
It is not unusual for bees to die or colonies to be lost, but the nature and extent reported in the year 2006 was alarming. Statistics gathered in the United States alone show that 50-90% of the bees have been lost so far, due to this scientific phenomenon (Cox-Foster et al., 2007, p. 284). Honeybees play a very major role in the pollination of plants and therefore these huge losses have become a serious concern. There are many reasons that have been floated and acclaimed to be behind CCD and they include pesticides, parasites, electromagnetic radiation, malnutrition, climatic changes, and urban sprawl, among many others.... ...
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.
To most, the honeybee can be an annoying insect that has a powerful sting. Yet, the honeybee is so much more than just another insect. The honeybee is arguably the most vital component in the development of our food crops. With roughly 90 percent of our food crops dependent on the pollination of our honeybees, our food system, agricultural development, and diet rest on the work and well being of these buzzing insects. Unfortunately, since 2006 there has been a major decline in the population of honeybees, and has gotten progressively worse because of colony collapse disorder. The first reported increase of CCD was documented in November 2006 in Florida. By February 2007, several states began reporting major losses associated with CCD, ranging from 30% to 90%. A little over a half decade later in 2012 the attention paid towards CCD has grown substantially with more research being done as CCD continues to get worse. The main culprit for CCD, as research has suggested, is the use of pesticides on our food crops. With major corporations such as Bayer making millions and millions of dollars in profit each year in the distribution of pesticides, it is no wonder that nothing is being done to stop this practice despite evidence linking the use of pesticides and the drastic deterioration of the health of honeybees. With the continuation of the use of deadly pesticides and the vital role bees play in the pollination and development of our food crops, both the environment and our economy will be effected directly and face the potential for catastrophic results.
The best action the public can take to improve honey bee survival is not to use pesticides indiscriminately. In particular, the public should avoid applying pesticides during mid-day hours, when honey bees are most likely to be out foraging for nectar and pollen on flowering plants. In addition, the public can plant pollinator-friendly plants—plants that are good sources of nectar and pollen such as red clover, foxglove, bee balm, joe-pye weed, and other native plants.
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.
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
...nator health by preserving wild habitat 3. Restore ecological agriculture(ref.) through several bee decline contributing factors, and are still in the process of investigating the effectiveness. Pollination plays a significant role in the food production process for notably fruits and certain vegetables, and bees including other pollinators provide beneficial services to the ecosystem, human nutrition, health and wellbeing. There are currently many participation in campaigns, investigations, studies, advertisement, and clubs to help save the bees, and raise awareness. "Honeybees are the modern canary in the coal mine, and they have a very important message to impart to our planet; they are telling us that we are out of sync with nature and that we need to come together for the greater good of Mother Earth and be the change we want to see.” - Director Maryam Henein
How about fruits, vegetables, coffee, even shampoo or lotion? 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 like 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. Our bees are dying at the highest rates ever recorded: 42 percent of the United States bee colonies collapsed in 2015 (NRDC, 2015). 50 to 80 percent of the worlds food supply is directly affected by honeybee pollination (Pennsylvania Apiculture Inc., 2011). Reduced crop pollination will make food more expensive and can even make some crops harder to grow successfully (Worland,
Over time, many bees have been disappearing and their population has been decreasing drastically. These ubiquitous species are mostly known to produce honey, however they do much more than that. Bees are an essential part of the environment and play a huge role in agriculture. They pollinate flowers and about ⅓ of the food we eat depends on bee pollination. Not only humans depend on bees too, but animals do too,and we depend on most of those animals. 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.
The lives of humans and honeybees have been intertwined for millennia. For at least 8,000 years, humans have sought honey for applications in disciplines ranging from medicine to the culinary arts. But while humans love honey, honeybees provide a much more valuable service: pollination. As the world’s most prolific pollinator, honeybees are essential to the reproduction of many plant species, which in turn benefits other animals and plants. In fact, humans heavily rely on honeybees to pollinate our own food source, a service that is worth billions of dollars a year. Unfortunately, the honeybee population is in a severe and prolonged decline, often in the form of colony collapse disorder, in which entire colonies are seemingly abandoned by adult bees overnight. Honeybees are an indispensable component of modern agriculture, and a failure to discern and address the many causes of honeybee population decline – both manmade and natural – could have disastrous consequences for the environment and human society.
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.
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.
The relationships between plants and pollinators play a key role in our ecosystems. Pollinators are animals, such as bees, butterflies, moths, bats, flies, wasps, and birds, that transfer pollen from one flower to another. Pollination is the movement of pollen to the male or female part of the plant. This leads to fertilization and the production of seeds and flowers. They maintain and establish ecosystems. “Pollinators are an integral part of our environment and our agricultural systems; they are important in 35% of global crop production” (NCRS 2013). “Pollinator declines can result in loss of pollination services which have important negative ecological and economic impacts that could significantly affect the maintenance of wild plant diversity,
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.