What causes the extinction of bees?
In the past few years, researches has struggled to find what causes the death of masses of bees, but they have a few surmises:
Most of the crops we plant are sprayed with fungicides and pesticides that are used to kill the insects on the crops. But along with other insects, bees are hurt too by those compounds; even though bees can digest most toxins, the fungicides are deadly for them.
Bee keepers feed their bees artificial supplements instead of real, nutritious food, which causes the lack of diverse pollen for them- and that contributes to bee mortality. Also, the spread of suburbs reduces the pasture areas of the bees, forcing them into cities with much less sources of nectar and clean water than there
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Here are some examples of how the bees affect our everyday life:
When we look at the sides of the roads we see plants and flowers- these are pollinated by insects, such as beetles and butterflies, but bees pollinate them most efficiently. Without bees, we'd lose many of the plants we use for food, such as almonds, apples, apricots, avocados, coffee; that is because at least 30% of our food crops and 90% of wild plants require insect involvement.
Some animals rely on particular plant species- and if those plants will cease to exist, the animals will become extinct. Such thing will shatter the entire ecosystem, including us: with less food for the animals, there woul be less meat and milk production, and because of the reduction in those food sources the human diet would change significantly.
The extinction of bees would also have an impact on our economy: without pollination there would be less biofuel (which is made from plant based materials such as rapeseed or canola) production, and we will rely even more on fossil fuels- which will cause its price to rise even higher. Also, clothing materials, like cotton are pollinated by bees, and without them we'd have fewer clothing
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.
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd is a realistic fiction novel that tells the story of Lily Owens, a 14 year old girl living in South Carolina, in 1964 with her father; T. Raye, and her housekeeper, Rosaleen. Lily and Rosalyn get into an argument with a couple white men. Rosaleen pours her chew on one of the white men because of their obscure comments. Times being how they were in 1964 Rosaleen was put in jail for spitting on a white man. Lily decides she needs to break Rosaleen out. I will present to you the main character’s personality, the main idea of this novel, and how I personally related to the main character.
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.... ...
The Secret Life of Bees is a book written by Sue Monk Kidd which was published in 2001. The story is about a girl named Lily who lives on a peach orchard with her father named T. Ray. When Lily was too young to remember she shot her mother. Lily is white and her nanny is black and together they run away to North Carolina and they stumble upon the Boatwright sisters where they find a family and learn more about themselves and others. The story takes place in the 1960s during the Civil Rights Era. The time the book takes place is significant because it is during the time black people were fighting for rights and wanted to be treated equal as white people. The Catholic Social Teaching of Solidarity teaches us that everyone is one human family,
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.
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
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).
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.
Bees are known throughout the world as dangerous threats and pests to humanity. Bees when left alone are very important to the growth of all the worlds’ crops and plants; they affect the growth of all the crops plant just as much as butterflies and other pollinators. Humans rely on bees for honey and pollination of plants, but what most agricultural workers don’t know is that they are working on the extinction of the common honey bee by doing simple things in their every day jobs on the farm. With the use of pesticides and other harmful things such as an unnatural diet and cramped living spaces, bees can go extinct and without a large group of pollinators our plants ...
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 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.
Just how important are honey bees to the ecosystem? Typically, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Honeybees pollinate eighty percent of our crops, or about a third of our diet. Honeybees cross-pollinate different plant species, by carrying pollen, which it uses to spread throughout an area of flowers. On a larger scale, one bee colony is able to pollinate 300 million flowers each day (Greenpeace). Grains, like rice and wheat, are primarily populated by wind, however, the healthiest foods, such as fruit, vegetables and nuts are pollinated by bees. In order for humankind to grow the honeybees must be able to live.
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.