Honey Bees Case Study

1181 Words3 Pages

Honey Bee Population Decline
Daisy Childs
11-20-14
Professor Garcia
ENG 1027

INTRODUCTION:
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
“Crop pollination is, by far, the most important and profitable of bee services.(The Economic Importance)” As bees go about collecting pollen and nectar for their hives to make honey, some of the pollen sticks to the bees’ fine fur. The bees will travel from plant to plant spreading the pollen where it needs to go so the plants will produce offspring. Foods such as the ones listed earlier, along with other national favorites such as avocados, cashews, and watermelon, will no longer be able to grow once all of the honey bees die, according to Christina Sarich in her article "List of Foods We Will Lose If We Don 't Save the Bees,” written for the website HoneyLove. This fact poses as a huge threat, not only on our economy, but also on our well being as a species. Fruits and vegetables should be half of what we eat everyday as found on ChooseMyPlate.gov, the nation’s recommended dietary allowance as approved by the United States Department of Agriculture, also known as the USDA. In a world that already has the extremes of some countries being obese and others completely undernourished, the globe can not risk having an extinction of honey bees, which is where we are

Show More
Related

  • Secret Life Of Bees Case Study Essay

    2069 Words  | 5 Pages

    The Secret Life of Bees is a fictional novel by Sue Monk Kidd that is set in 1964, the year of the Civil Rights Act, in Sylvan, South Carolina. The book focuses on the fourteen-year-old Lilly who runs away from her abusive father, with her servant Rosaleen to Tiburon, S.C. In Tiburon, Lilly uses one of her deceased mother’s treasured possessions, a black Virgin Mary, to lead her and Rosaleen to Black Madonna Honey produced by the Boatwrights sisters May, June, and August. These three sisters take in both Lilly and Rosaleen; putting Lily to work in the honey house where she is finally happy for the first time since her mother was killed. Lily is running not just from her abusive father but from the memories she has from when she was four-years-old, specifically the time when she accidentally killed her mother. This book gives a poignant analysis of this fourteen-year-old girl as she demonstrates the concepts of attachment styles, dating, parenting style, self-esteem, and the cohort effects of the generation she lived in.

    Read More

  • Colony Collapse Disorder and Pesticides

    1578 Words  | 4 Pages

    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.... ...

    Read More

  • Bee Population Decline Research Paper

    1009 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Colony Collapse Disorder of the Honeybee

    1951 Words  | 4 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Colony Collapse Disorder ( Ccd )

    1288 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Vanishing Of The Honeybees Essay

    713 Words  | 2 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Persuasive Essay On Bees

    1140 Words  | 3 Pages

    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 world's 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, 2015).

    Read More

  • The Decline of Honeybees: Implications, Causes, and Responses

    3272 Words  | 7 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Carpenter Bees Research Paper

    819 Words  | 2 Pages

    While carpenter bees are not considered wood destroyers on the same level of carpenter ants or termites, they can become an annoyance if they target your home. They have been called carpenter bee because you find small piles of sawdust under their work areas, similar to what you might find with a human carpenter when they saw on a board—dust will be made. These are just flying bugs that have a close resemblance to bees, but they do not make honey. A male carpenter bee cannot sting, but they have been known to approach humans. On the other hand, the female bees will bite when they have been handled improperly.

    Read More

  • Colony Collapse Syndrome

    962 Words  | 2 Pages

    The disappearance of honey bees is baffling scientists everywhere. Although most people see bees as useless annoying insects, they play an important role in the eco-system. Without bees, agricultural business would cease to exist, so it is vital that bees are saved. Currently, about one-third of the honey bees on the United states have disappeared. It seems that within a few days of having a good, healthy colony of bees, most of the adult population disappears. They can't even find any bodies near the hive. Scientists nicknamed this as CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder). Bees have been disappearing all over the globe. Countries such as Portugal, Poland, Central America, and South America have all reported cases of the phenomenon. When bees get sick, they sacrifice themselves and leave the colony to die to lessen possibility of spreading the disease or affliction to the rest of the hive. What is unique about CCD though, is the sheer number of bees leaving the hive.

    Read More

  • The Importance of Bees to the Environment

    1389 Words  | 3 Pages

    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 to whole ecosystems. Therefore, the declining numbers of pollinators, particularly bees, are a cause of concern because of the environmental knock-on effects. High declines in adult bee numbers in some colonies have been reported and this decline is known as colony collapse disorder6. These declines are higher than normal and can go unnoticed by bee keepers because the bees do not generally die in the nest so the decrease is not immediately obvious. The problem addressed in this paper will be the decline of bees and the effects this decline has on the environment. The solutions proposed for this problem are increasing research, managing farming and spreading awareness. It is important to conserve the bee populations before the problem of decreasing pollinator numbers becomes too great to fix.

    Read More

  • Number Of Bees To The Environment Essay

    462 Words  | 1 Pages

    The importance of the bees to the environment and the consequent of the decreasing number of bees Introduction Bees are not only making honey, but also be pollinators. One out of third human's food supply is pollinated by bees. Pollination is also an essential part of plant reproduction. Bees are playing an important role in both human’s well-being and biodiversity.

    Read More

  • Importance Of Bees Research Paper

    772 Words  | 2 Pages

    Bees have a process that gives many seeds to a plant and from there the plants produce food crops. So without these pollinators many plants wouldn't be able to make food that everyone eats. In the words of the National Resources Defense Council “bees help at least 30% of the world's crops and 90% of our worlds plants to thrive”. Bees spent most of their life collecting pollen and giving plants the ability to fertilize so it can grow and produce food. I asked the students at West Mecklenburg High School if they knew that bees provide ⅓ of the foods we eat and the chart below shows their

    Read More

  • Plant Pollinators Essay

    1143 Words  | 3 Pages

    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,

    Read More

  • Essay On Importance Of Bees

    641 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

More about Honey Bees Case Study

Open Document