by Tori Lemon
Lantern Staff Writer
Imagine this: The Bee Movie, but every time they say “bee,” one dies. Harsh, is it not? Unfortunately, that is the reality we are now facing.
To say that bees are “kind of” important is like saying Vincent Van Gogh was “kind of” talented and Simon Cowell is only “kind of” a jerk. It is an understatement.
Crops pollinated by bees are worth $215 million worldwide. Let that sink in. According to PBS’s series, It’s Okay To Be Smart, bees provide 75 percent of the fruits, veggies and nuts that we eat every day. Their pollinating “services” are worth $15 million for domestic bees and $9 million for wild bees. These hard little workers also pollinate the coffee plant. As a college student, that is truly vital. Shout-out to them.
When talking about the death of bees, the species experts are talking about are the European Honeybee, Apis Mellifera. According to Wayne Ellwood who writes for The Internationalist, they “account for nearly all the bees managed by beekeepers in Europe, the Americas, Asia, Australia and New Zealand.” They are the one true global bee, and they have become essential to modern industrial agriculture.
News of this mass bee-apocalypse came about in 2006. Beekeepers were reporting that anywhere between 30 percent to as much as 90 percent of the bee colonies were dying off within the year. This almost apocalyptic wipe-out of bees is actually called the Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).
CDD causes the hives to turn into ghost towns. Only a few nurse bees and the occasional queen remained, but little else. No adult working bees could be found. Dave Hackenberg, one of Pennsylvania’s biggest beekeepers, had 400 hives on his site and all but 32 had collapsed in October of 2006.
As time progresses, so does the decline in bee populations. By 2007, it was obvious to scientists and environmentalists that CCD was a widespread issue.
“A quarter of all US beekeepers had suffered losses and more than 30 percent of all bee colonies in the country were completely wiped out. Eerie reports of huge die-offs also came from Australia, Canada, Brazil, China, Europe and other regions,” Wayne Ellwood wrote. Talk about a buzzkill.
Pesticides are also one of the most likely culprits of these extinctions. Chemicals called neonicotinoids are sprayed on many plants. When the bees feed on those, they can become disorientated due to messing up their nervous system and later die.
A report by the National Research Council in Washington D.C. seemed to stress the importance of this bee crisis perfectly, “Pollinator decline is one form of global change that actually does have credible potential to alter the shape of the terrestrial world.”
Oftentimes, people tend to show worry when the big mammals become endangered– the lion, the tiger, the bears — oh my. However, it is important that the world does not overlook the struggle our backyard friends are facing. It is time we start living with this planet, rather than only being considered with living on it.
