Why It Matters

There are several factors at work resulting in the decline of bee survival, also known as Colony Collapse Disorder. While we cannot control the disease that may plague bees, there are other issues at play that we can help. With pesticides being a direct killer, the loss of natural habitat for wild bee colonies also takes away the food source for bees, and climate change affecting hibernation patterns which then results in access to food diminishing; there are things we can do, and change, to help keep the bees safe, fed, and alive.

 

Honeybees are the highest performing pollinators in the world, with a single colony of bees having the capability to pollinate hundreds of millions of flowers a day. Pollinators are responsible for the pollination of our fruits and vegetables meaning that seventy out of the top 100 human food crops – which supply about 90% of the world’s nutrition – are pollinated by bees.

 

Considering the amount of work bees put into keeping us humans fed, the fate of all on Earth is dependent upon the survival of these pollinators and their friends. So even if you think the bees don’t matter and your life will be unaffected if they cease to exist, you’re wrong. They cannot speak for themselves so we must speak for them or risk facing eventual extinction ourselves.

 

The number of honey bee hives in this country has decreased from 6 million in the 1940s to about 2.5 million today.

 

 

Bees are dying from a variety of factors—pesticides, drought, habitat destruction, nutrition deficit, air pollution, global warming and more. Many of these causes are interrelated. The bottom line is that we know humans are largely responsible for the two most prominent causes: pesticides and habitat loss, and it is our responsibility to fix what we have broken.