Why Bees Are So Important
Our food system is being threatened by the loss of pollinators. Here are 6 things you can do about it.
In 1979 a giant inflatable bee named Horatio, accompanied by dozens of sandwich-eating young children, steamed through a placid tree-filled forest, attached to a train. No, this wasn’t a bad acid trip. It was a commercial for BumbleBee Tuna and the catchy little rhyme that accompanied it went a little something like this-
Yum yum, bumblebee bumblebee tuna,
I love bumblebee, bumblebee tuna
Yum yum, bumblebee bumblebee tuna. I love a sandwich made with bumblebee….
Over 40 years later, I no longer eat tuna, but whenever I see a bee, this jingle automatically starts playing in my head, like a broken jukebox I can’t turn off. As a tuna-melt munching child, I never quite understood the connection between bees and fish, but since we just celebrated World Bee Day (May 20th), I am beginning to understand the importance of these amazing little yellow and black, winged heroes.
The Importance of Pollinators
Maybe you thought that their only purpose was to muck up your windshield on long road trips, but domesticated honey bees, wild bees, and other pollinators, which include butterflies, ladybugs, moths, wasps, flies, beetles, ants, bats, birds are some of the most important creatures on the planet.
Not only do they pollinate the foods we eat, but they also pollinate the trees and plants that clean the air, stabilize the soil, sequester CO2, and provide food for wildlife. Stop to think about that for a second. These creatures we think so little about, that we swat with our hands, crush under our feet, and poison with pesticides are responsible for our food, trees, plants, soil, air, and even clean water which is filtered through the soil. Without them, our world collapses.
According to the FAO, about 75% of our food depends on pollinators based on the number of crops. While about 35% of our food depends on them based on tonnage. This means that 1 out of 3 bites of food that you eat depends on a pollinator.
Knowing the vital role that insects play in sustaining our ecosystem, you would think that we would do a better job at taking care of them, but you would be wrong. Between 2020 and 2021, an average of 45% of domesticated honey bees were lost across the country and the year before that it was 43%. Through habitat destruction and the spraying of chemicals, we are destroying our food system.
Just to be clear, it’s unlikely that honeybees will go extinct because unlike wild pollinators they receive veterinary care and according to the FAO, the number of managed hives has increased by 85% since 1961 as both amateur and professional beekeepers have started new colonies. So, these high losses don’t mean honey bees are in danger of disappearing for good, because the overall number of bee colonies is relatively stable and even growing as more people take it up bee keeping as a hobby. What it means is that beekeepers need to spend more time and money dividing their surviving bee colonies to create new ones to replace those that are lost.
Our Fear of Bees
Maybe it is all the bad B-movies about killer bees (my favorite is the Swarm) that have been made, or perhaps you have an allergy and have a legitimate reason to be afraid of bees. Whatever the case, according to the Center for Disease Control, an average of about 62 people per year die of stings from bees, wasps, and hornets. Unless you have an allergy, you have no reason to fear bees and most other pollinators, with maybe the exception of mosquitos, which can carry malaria and other parasites.
Honey Bees Vs. Wild Bees
When people think about bees, they think about Apis Mellifera or the European honeybee. However, there are over 20,000 species of bees. Most of them are wild, solitary bees that don’t produce honey. These are in grave danger of disappearing and estimates say that we’ve already lost about 25% of our wild bee pollinators and that over 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered. This extinction rate is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds, and reptiles. The total mass of insects is falling by 2.5% per year, suggesting they could vanish within the century.
Both wild and domesticated pollinators are important. Domesticated honey bees are good general pollinators, but wild pollinators evolved a relationship with specific plants over centuries. For example, squash bees of Central and South America pollinate early in the morning when the squash flowers are open and the honeybees are sleeping.
Similarly, the flowers of tomatoes, potatoes, and eggplants need a loud vibrating bee like the bumblebee to get them to release their pollen, something that honeybees can’t provide.
Wild bees are about five-times better pollinators than honey bees as they have co-evolved a relationship with the flowers. Sometimes, they are substantially better. For example, to pollinate a hectare of apples it only takes a few hundred of Osmia Cornutta, whereas it would take tens of thousands of honeybees to do the same job.
Many of our crops require pollination by several species, which leads to greater yields. Alarmingly, as we see a decline in wild bee populations, we are also seeing a decline in crop yields of cherries, blueberries and apples in North America.
Likewise, we’ve lost about 3 billion birds in the US and Canada since 1970 or about 30% of the North American population. Of the birds on the planet left today, 70% of them are chickens or other poultry and only 30% are wild.
Monoculture is leading to the destruction of wild pollinator habitats. Ironically, we are becoming increasingly dependent on them since the production of foods like fruits, vegetables and oilseeds has grown by 70% over the past two decades.
Colony Collapse
However, how we use domesticated bees is part of the problem. For example, California produces about 80% of the world’s almonds. According to the American Bee Keeping Federation, two-thirds of the 2.7 million bee colonies are used for pollination, many of which end up in the almond fields, because there are few wild pollinators left there. The traveling causes stress to the bee colonies and exposes them to new pathogens and pesticides, all of which can contribute to colony collapse. Another problem is that when domesticated bees are introduced into wild bee habitats, they can consume all the resources, leaving none for the wild species and they can spread diseases to them as well.
In economic terms, pollinators deliver billions of dollars of services to us for free. The value of the global crops they help us produce annually is estimated to be worth between $235- $577 billion in value. Then there is the clean air, water, plants, trees, and soil, that they provide us with, which are priceless.
What you can do?
-Buy locally produced organic food. You can find this at your local farmer’s market.
-Stop spraying pesticides. If you are spraying for mosquitoes you can use Bti, a naturally occurring bacteria instead.
-Rewild your lawn and garden. This will give pollinators a place to visit and food to eat.
-Plant native wildflowers like this couple. Make sure you are planting native wildflowers in your area. Invasive species can take over. If you don’t know check with your local gardening center.
-Buy or build wild bee hotels. These will attract pollinators to your gardens and give them a place to lay their eggs.
-Breed butterflies
So what is the connection between bumblebees and tuna? It’s simple. Bumblebees pollinate fruit trees, plants, and flowers. Without them, there is no structure to the soil. The soil is important for filtering water that ends up washing into the ocean. So indirectly bumblebees help clean the water that the tuna swim in. Bumblebees also pollinate tomatoes which I used to eat with my tuna melts, when I ate fish.
