Bees pollinate a third of everything we eat and play a vital role in sustaining the planet’s ecosystems. These include most fruits and vegetables, many nuts, and plants such as rapeseed and sunflowers that are turned into oil, as well as cocoa beans, coffee and tea. Crops grown as fodder for dairy cows and other livestock are also pollinated by bees.
Of crops for humans need
bees and other insects
Types of Plants
Worth in annual global
crop pollination (c. 2015)
But beyond their monetary value for maintaining our fragile food supply, bees also make an invaluable contribution to ecosystems around the world.
They are the Guardians of the food chain and the biodiversity of our species.
Bees are industrious pollinators because they have co-evolved with flowering plants over millions of years. The bees need the flowers for food, while the flower needs the bee to reproduce.
“To the bee, a flower is the fountain of life, and to the flower, the bee is a messenger of love.”
Kahlil Gibran
In the process of foraging for food, bees are designed to pollinate.
There is an apocalyptic quote attributed to Albert Einstein (although there is no proof he actually said it): “If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years left to live.” Mankind’s survival has been inextricably linked to bees.
Cave drawings dating back 20,000 years depict images of honey hunting. The ancient Egyptians transported their hives along the Nile to pollinate crops and buried their pharaohs with containers full of honey to sweeten the afterlife. The antibacterial and antiseptic properties of honey have made it as important to the apothecary as the chef over the centuries, while beeswax embalmed the dead and created artificial light.
There are 25,000 different bee species around the world. Only four of these species are honeybees, of which the western honeybee (Apis mellifera) is the one we took to the US and then on to Australasia. The vast majority of the world’s bee species are solitary bees. Many are adapted to pollinate one type of plant and their life cycle is synced with the plant so they are able to pollinate it and feed their young at the same time.
There’s been little research on solitary bees, but in March, the first ever assessment of all 1,965 bee species across Europe by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) found that almost one in 10 of Europe’s wild bee species – most of which are solitary bees – face extinction as a result of intensive farming, insecticide use and climate change.
Most people have heard about colony collapse disorder, which wiped out a third of all honeybee colonies in the US when it first struck back in 2007. The disorder lead to the widespread death of honeybees in the US, where 40% of colonies are still dying each year.
In the UK, honeybee winter losses have ranged from 10% to 33% since annual surveys began eight years ago.
The habitat that wild bees depend on to nest and forage is increasingly disappearing due to modern farming practices and urbanisation. Since 1945, 97% of wildflower meadows in the UK have vanished. During that time two bumblebee species have become extinct, and of the 24 species left only eight are commonly found. Globally, a quarter of the world’s 250 bumblebee species are thought to be facing some degree of extinction risk, according to the IUCN.
“What Happens If All The Bees Die?” (AsapSCIENCE 2015)
John Muir, a giant of the conservation movement, summed up
the importance of bees to the human race when he said:
“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.”
We harm them at our peril.