Bye Bye, Bees

Bye+Bye%2C+Bees

Sayra Armendariz, Author

Approximately 70 percent of crops grown around the world are pollinated by bees. With this insect´s population steadily declining, fewer plants will produce food. Without bees, we will no longer have apples, almonds, blueberries, cherries, avocados, cucumbers, onions, grapefruits, oranges, plums, and many more foods.

Bees are threatened and slowly becoming extinct. If they do go extinct, the human race will start being affected because a bee’s job plays a very important part in the environment. Bees pollinate our plants, crops, and trees. This means that most plants cannot reproduce without the help of insects. If those start dying out, the animals that eat those plants might start dying out too. That would mean the whole food chain would get messed up.

According to BBC Future, these plants feed 90 percent of the world, meaning that our food supply will drastically decrease. If we lose almonds, for example, the hulls of the nuts are used to feed cattle and chickens. That could result in declining livestock and less milk, cheese, eggs and meat products. Beef and dairy cows would also be in extreme danger because alfalfa, which is pollinated by bees and is harvested as hay to feed cattle, would also be affected.

Climate change is causing habitat loss because bees don’t migrate to cooler areas to make new hives. According to a Time Magazine article, bumblebee territories have shrunk by nearly 200 miles in North America and Europe.

Pesticides and parasites are also to blame for bees dying off because the sprays used to kill them have neonicotinoids, which paralyze the insects and at times kill them. Neonicotinoids are insecticides which have a resemblance to nicotine. It’s popular in insect killers because it can be sprayed on the soil or the plant and works better on sucking insects, which are the most common insects. (According to the website Insects In The City, if used properly these pesticides would  cause only minor harm to bees.)

Humans will struggle living without bees because they have a tremendous job in the food chain. They are a big part of our lives although we don’t acknowledge them. They are the reason we can eat more than corn and rice every day.

Bees also play a big role in people’s everyday lives apart from food. We´ll also have trouble producing clothes. According to the website Trusted Clothes, bees are vital to the growth of cotton, and it is said that honeybees increase the production of cotton by 19.5 percent, meaning that there could be a shortage of cotton.

According to Heifer International, there are five easy things people can do to stop the bees from going extinct: let lawns go wild, don’t use pesticides or herbicides, keep a bee garden, shop responsibly for food, and stay informed.