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Honey bees and the environment
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The widely known scientist/physicist Albert Einstein once stated, “Mankind will not survive the honey bee disappearance for more than five years”. Now years after the passing of Albert Einstein Honey bees ( also known by their scientific name Apis) are on the endangered species list, meaning they are endangered and could face extinction.
Due to Environmental stressors that affect the environment like parasites, pesticides, climate change, etc. we are losing honey bees.This paper will examine and discuss these stressing factors that are harming/affecting honey bees to the point of endangerment. This paper will also identify how much we depend on honey bees, and how much we would lose if we were to lose them.
Since the late 1990s the
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Brands such as Burt’s Bees and Cheerios are bringing awareness to the endangerment of the honey bee. Burt’s Bees is planting wildflowers that attract honey bees for every photo you send to them (with the donation of fifty dollars). Cheerios has removed their bee mascot from cereal boxes to show that bees are disappearing. Cheerios is also sending out seeds that attract honey bees (for no donation or shipping charge) for people to plant. Though Cheerios goal was to send out . 100 million seeds they exceeded the amount 10 times over their goal reaching 1.5 billion seeds.
Economically speaking if we were to lose honey bees then we would also lose businesses like Sioux Honey (the largest honey manufacturer in the US) , Burts Bees , and Cheerios. We would also lose 80% of our food on store shelves .
In Conclusion if we lose honey bees due to man-made factors/natural factors then we will also lose the things that they provide to us such as food and plants. This is why it is important for people to become aware and help protect honey bees because if we fail to protect bees (our prime pollinators) and they do become extinct then we would also not survive the disappearance of honeybees since we depend on them more than they depend on
The Inter-Faith Food Shuttle is helping to sponsor bee hives to increase teaching abilities. The JABGC is helping by educating hundreds of children who are at-risk and providing guidance to them. This includes a learning garden. ERA will help by attaining land to help protect and conserve needed resources. For the Alliance Medical Ministry, Burt?s Bees helps them with growing their garden so that they can help their patients and also those in the community to eat fresh fruits and vegetable. The Alliance Medical Ministry also helps to provide insurance to those who otherwise could not afford it. With Habitat for Humanity, Burt?s Bees helps them with their goal of providing homes to those who could otherwise not afford it, while also building homes that are eco-friendly. Finally, Burt?s Bees works with Farmer Foodshare to help get food from the farmers to the people who need it (Burts Bees, 2016). In a nutshell, Burt?s Bees has been busy not just making money, but they have been busy looking for ways to make the word a better
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 ...
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.... ...
Honey bees not only make honey, but they also help pollinate crops worth more than $15 billion a year in the U.S. (NRDC). These small animals are extremely important for providing ecosystem services essential for sustaining biodiversity (Sandrock et al., 2014). However, since the mid-1980s, the honey bee populations have been suddenly declining. This decline is referred to as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) (Wu et al., 2011). There are numerous factors that result in CCD. One of the major suspected reasons is due to the exposure to residue of Neonicotinoids, found in nectar and pollen of the flowers. Neonicotinoids are insecticides that lead
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.
What can we actively take part in to stop the collapse of bee colonies? Bees are such a vital part of our everyday agriculture production, however, colonies are diminishing before our eyes. Colony Collapse Disorder is a massive decrease of bees in hives and it is greatly affecting our crops because bees are not distributing the necessary amount of pollen to crops in order for them to grow the maximum, most nutritious produce possible. There are many solutions that may help CCD, such as banning neonics, urban beekeeping, and interbreeding honey bees with African killer bees. The most effective way to decrease CCD is by interbreeding honey bees with a stronger specie of bees labeled African killer bees.
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.
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).
The worldwide eradication of honey bees may not be too far away. The reasons the honey bees are dying are linked to a number of things. The most common causes are linked to industrial agriculture, parasites/pathogens, and climate change, according to the article entitled “The Bees in Decline” on GreenPeace’s website, SOS-bees.org. However, bee-killing pesticides pose the highest risk to the pollinators (the Bees). Honey bees are not the only form of pollinators.
At any rate, over the years, industrial apiaries bred their queens in virtual isolation from other colonies. Predictably, this has made most industrially raised honey bees vulnerable to fungal infections, mites, and probably viruses as well. Over the past five years, billions of honey bees have vanished due to an as yet unidentified disease termed colony collapse disorder.
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.
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.
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.