Why Bees Matter So Much#

Human society is pretty complicated and delicate, you know? It’s built on a bunch of important things, and one of the big ones is the honey bee.

Get this – one out of every three meals we eat is thanks to these busy bees. They’re so crucial that if all the honey bees were to suddenly vanish, thousands of plant types would disappear right after them. And that could mean millions of people starving in the next few years.

Besides keeping our plates full, bees have a massive impact on the money side of things too. The plants they pollinate every year are worth around $265 billion globally. Stuff we don’t even think twice about eating would just stop showing up, or there’d be way, way less of it. We’re talking about everyday foods like apples, onions, pumpkins. Plus, they pollinate plants used to feed livestock, which are super important for getting our milk and meat.

You might have heard that quote, “If honey bees die out, humans will follow a few years later,” often linked to Einstein. Turns out, he probably didn’t actually say that, but, honestly, there might be some real truth to the idea.

The Big Problem: Bees Are Disappearing#

This is the unsettling part: honey bees have started vanishing. Millions of their homes, called hives, have died off just in the last few years. Beekeepers all over the world have seen a huge drop, losing anywhere from 30% to 90% of their colonies each year.

In the US alone, the number of bee hives is shrinking steadily. Back in 1988, there were about 5 million hives, and today? Only around 2.5 million.

Since 2006, a mysterious thing called “colony collapse disorder” (or CCD) has hit honey bees in lots of different countries. We’re still not totally sure exactly what causes it, but we know for sure it’s a really serious situation.

The Enemies: What’s Harming the Bees?#

Over the past few decades, bees have faced some really nasty invaders. We’re talking about parasites that sound like they’re from a horror movie.

• Acarapis woodi: These are tiny, microscopic mites. They get into the bees’ breathing tubes (tracheae). Once inside, they lay eggs and feed on the bee’s fluids, which weakens the bee a lot. They literally spend their whole life living inside the bee.
• Varroa destructor: The name fits! These mites are specifically built to reproduce only inside honey bee hives, making them one of the bees’ worst enemies. Here’s how they work:
  • A female mite creeps into a honey bee brood cell – that’s where a baby bee is growing.
  • She lays her eggs on the bee larva just before it’s ready to become a pupa and before the worker bees cover the cell with a wax lid.
  • Inside the safety of the capped cell, the eggs hatch.
  • The young mites and their mother all feed on the developing bee. Usually, this doesn’t kill the bee right then, but it weakens it significantly.
  • The weakened bee still manages to chew its way through the wax cap to get out of the cell.
  • As it comes out, it also releases the mother mite and her new offspring from the cell.
  • These released mites are then free to spread throughout the rest of the hive.
  • This whole cycle takes about 10 days.
  • Their numbers shoot up like crazy, and within just a few months, this can cause the entire bee hive to collapse and die.
  • Even outside the capped cells, adult Varroa mites will suck the bodily fluids of adult bees, weakening them a lot.
  • And to make things even worse, these mites also spread viruses that harm the bees even more and can cause problems like birth defects, like having useless wings.

Besides these creepy mites, bees are also battling other threats like viruses and fungi.

Now, under normal circumstances, bees should be able to handle these kinds of issues. These alone shouldn’t be causing the massive amount of deaths we’re seeing.

A Chemical Threat: Insecticides#

But here’s another major factor: over recent years, some new insecticides have been introduced, and they are really deadly to bees.

• The main culprits are a group of chemicals called Neonicotinoids.
• They’re related to nicotine and were first approved back in the early 1990s. They were seen as a safer choice than older chemicals like DDT.
• These chemicals attack insects by messing up their nervous systems.
• Today, Neonicotinoids are the most used insecticides worldwide.
• In 2008, they brought in €1.5 billion in sales globally, which was about 24% of the entire insecticide market.
• By 2013 in the US, Neonicotinoids were used on about 95% of corn and canola crops. They were also used on pretty much all kinds of fruits and vegetables, including apples, cherries, peaches, oranges, berries, leafy greens, tomatoes, potatoes, cereal grains, rice, nuts, grapes, and lots more.

Bees come into contact with these toxins when they’re out collecting pollen or even through contaminated water. They often carry this toxic stuff back to the hive. Once inside, it can build up over time and slowly kill the entire colony.

These toxins hurt bees in several awful ways:

• In high amounts, it quickly leads to convulsions, paralysis, and death.
• But even small amounts can be fatal in the long run.
• It can cause bees to forget how to find their way around. So, they fly out into the world, get lost, and die all alone, away from their hive.
• If too many bees get lost and die this way, the hive can lose its ability to keep itself going.

We know these Neonicotinoids are bad for bees, and we desperately need to find something different. However, there are billions of dollars being made from these chemicals, which creates a big incentive to slow down finding an alternative. It’s no surprise that studies paid for by the chemical industry somehow tend to “magically” show much lower toxicity to bees compared to studies done by independent scientists.

More Pieces of the Puzzle#

It’s not just parasites and chemicals. There are even more things adding to the bees’ problems:

• Having too much similar genetic makeup (genetic uniformity).
• Farming huge fields with only one type of crop (crop monocultures).
• Not getting enough variety in their food (poor nutrition), especially when hives are crowded.
• Dealing with stress caused by things people do (human activities).
• Other types of pesticides.

Each one of these factors by itself is a significant challenge for bees. But when you put them all together – the parasites getting tougher, the widespread use of harmful chemicals, and all these other stresses – they probably account for the whole Colony Collapse Disorder problem.

Why We Must Solve This#

With parasites evolving and things getting tougher, honey bees are literally fighting for their existence right now. If they lose this fight, it would be a huge disaster for us all.

This situation with the bees is a tough problem we absolutely have to fix if we want to keep enjoying a good amount and variety of food.

Humans are deeply connected to the Earth and all the other living things on it, even though sometimes we act like we’re not. We really need to start taking better care of the world around us. If not just because nature is beautiful, then at least to make sure we humans can keep surviving.

Channel Updates & Support#

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