Since 1992, the honeybee has been Oklahoma’s state insect, largely because honeybees carry out a significant task in agriculture. The honeybee and its contributions to the world dates back thousands of years ago and continues to be by far one of the most extraordinary animals ever. Honeybees are being used in research to detect drugs, bombs and cancer. Also in developing treatments for an array of infirmities in humans, but this is just a few among many things that honeybees have contributed to the human world. Honeybees and the products they emit have many diverse uses in cultures around the world. But above all the amazing and important things, plant pollination is by far the most essential to humans. Honeybees are responsible for 80% of all insect pollination, they pollinate over ninety fruits and vegetable crops worldwide. If honeybee were to completely disappear from our world it would be devastating. We would be limited in our food selections and possibly worse. Albert Einstein once said,”If the honeybees become exstinct, mankind will follow within four years.” To better understand how vital honeybees are to the world we must first understand more about the honeybee itself. Honeybees have been around before written history, they have been traced back over 40 million years ago and have remained physically and socially unchanged for 30 million years. Honeybees are not native to North America and are thought to have originated in tropical Africa. They are thought to have been brought here by Spanish and English colonists. Honeybees live together as community called a colony. A colony consists of one queen, hundreds of male honeybees called drones, and thousands of female honeybees known as workers. Colonies can reach up to 80,...
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Throughout The Secret Life of Bees , there is no shortage of symbolism, coming directly from its namesake, bees. Each connection draws upon the deep and rich meaning behind this wonderful composed text. The bees, however, never are a scapegoat. Similar to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird character Atticus, they never allow for shortcuts or disillusion with reality. They force you to see the world as it is, and to accept it, and send love to it, for it is all you can, when you are as insignificant as a
Kidd, Sue M. “The Secret Life of Bees.” Hunter, Jeffrey W. Twenty-First Century Novels: The First Decade. Vol. 3. Detroit, Gale, 2011. 983-987. Gale Cengage Learning. Print. 14 February 2014.
The life of a hive depends upon the bees knowing and preforming their specialized roles. The queen lays the eggs and oversees all the bees, the drones serve the queen and the worker bees b...
Thomas, Pat. "Give Bees a Chance." Ecologist (London, England) Vol. 37, No. 5. June 2007: 30-35. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 03 Apr. 2014.
Though communication within the hive is a very important aspect of the western honey bee,...
United States. Department of Agriculture. Honey Bees and Colony Collapse Disorder. Washington D.C.:, 2013. Web. http://www.ars.usda.gov/News/docs.htm?docid=15572.
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.
Every night at the dinner table people do not realize that, “One out of every three mouthfuls of food in the American diet is, in some way, a product of honeybee pollination” (Zissu, Alexandra par 1). Almost one hundred percent of our planets fruit, vegetables, and nuts are pollinated from honeybees. If this is the case, that means the collapse in honeybees predict for the future of the worlds ecosystem. Without honeybees
Apis mellifera, commonly known as the honey bee, are solely responsible for pollinating one-third of the world’s crops, and they are in danger of dying off, according to the article “Natures Dying Migrant Worker,” written by Josephine Marcotty for the Star Tribune. This honey bee population decline poses a huge threat to our environment, farmers, and economy. It is assumed by BBC News writer Zoe Gough in her article,"Wild Honey Bees: Does Their Disappearance Matter?" that all of the wild honey bees in England and Wales are gone. The worldwide eradication of honey bees may not be too far away. The reasons the honey bees are dying are linked to a
Miline, Ira Mark. Ed. "The Secret Life of Bees." Novels for Students. Vol. 27. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Print.
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.
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.
Winfree, R. . The conservation and restoration of wild bees. Annuals of the New York Academy of Sciences. Volume 1195, 3 May 2010, Pages 169 – 197.
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
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.