By Marcia Stanton
That little yellow and black critter buzzing around your yard is one of
the greatest heroes our planet has ever seen.
You may say she’s annoying and perhaps even scary, but the fact is that
you need her for your survival. Albert Einstein said
that if she “disappeared off the surface of the globe, man would have only four
years to live."
She is the bee: the most effective plant pollinator on
earth.
Bees - along with beetles, butterflies, birds and bats - are responsible
for pollinating the earth’s plants. Without
them, over 30% of crops and 90% of wild plants would die. Humans and animals rely on plants for
survival and if we destroy plant pollinators, we destroy plants and ultimately
most of our food and oxygen.
These natural crop pollinators provide us with free agricultural labour
that would otherwise cost US$250 billion. Bees ask no salary to do their work
and they put in plenty of overtime hours. How do we repay them? We eradicate these incredible little
volunteer labourers with pesticides and we effectively retrench them
permanently.
We’ve been throwing caution to the wind for too long using pesticides
without comprehending the long term affect.
Now bees face a major crisis called Colony Collapse Disorder and
one of the main causes is long term pesticide use. Scientists have detected over 121 different
pesticides in samples of bees, wax and pollen.
As a
result, it has been estimated that 50% of the bee population has already been wiped
out and specialists are concerned that bees are heading for extinction. Losing
this many bees greatly increases the chance of a major world food supply crisis. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization,
bees alone pollinate 71 of the 100 crop species responsible for food
security.
Bees are irreplaceable and the fact remains that there are simply not
enough humans in the world to pollinate all the world’s crops by hand. One bee colony
pollinates up to 300 million flowers per day.
A human could never keep up as the only way for a person to pollinate is
to use a feather brush to place pollen on each individual flower. This is a labour intensive process that drastically
increases the cost and decreases the yield of food production, ultimately
causing much higher food prices and food scarcity. Globally, it costs US$5.7
billion per year for the lower crop yields and increased production costs
caused by bee decline.
Although scientists do not know precisely how to avert the disaster, they have suggested a precautionary approach until more is known. As a result, this year on April 29th, the European Union voted to place a two-year moratorium on three pesticides that could pose an acute risk to bees.
Now more than ever we need to remember the unsung heroes of our planet and proceed with caution on how we treat them. Let their plight remind us to stop tinkering with things we don’t fully understand.
Although scientists do not know precisely how to avert the disaster, they have suggested a precautionary approach until more is known. As a result, this year on April 29th, the European Union voted to place a two-year moratorium on three pesticides that could pose an acute risk to bees.
Now more than ever we need to remember the unsung heroes of our planet and proceed with caution on how we treat them. Let their plight remind us to stop tinkering with things we don’t fully understand.
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