By
Amy Goodrich
Posted Friday, October 2, 2015 at 11:55am EDT
About
one-third of the world’s crops depend on the honeybees for pollination.
The past decades honeybees have been dying at an alarming rate. Fewer
bees will eventually lead to less availability of our favorite whole
foods and it will also drive up the prices of many of the fruits and
veggies we eat on a daily basis.
While some actions have been
taken in the past, our bees are still dying and something needs to be
done to make sure our most favorite foods don’t go into extinction.
What’s Causing Massive Bee Deaths?
About
fifty years ago our world looked a whole lot different. Bees had an
abundance of flowers to feast on and there were fewer pests and diseases
threatening their food chain. These days however, nature has to make
place for industrialization and our bees are having a hard time finding
good pollen and nectar.
And if clearing their dinner tables from
good quality food wasn’t bad enough already, farmers are extensively
using herbicides and insecticides, which cause a phenome called Colony
Collapse Disorder (CCD) where bees get disorientated and poisoned and
can’t find their way back to the hive. Or when they manage to get back,
they die from intoxication.
“We need good, clean food, and so do
our pollinators. If bees do not have enough to eat, we won’t have enough
to eat. Dying bees scream a message to us that they cannot survive in
our current agricultural and urban environments,” states Marla Spivak,
an American entomologist, and Distinguished McKnight University
Professor at the University of Minnesota.
List of Foods We Will Have To Go without If The Bees Go
While
we don’t need bees to pollinate all our food because they either
self-pollinate or rely on the wind (like rice, wheat, and corn), many of
our favorite foods will disappear from our kitchen tables.
Foods in the danger zone include:
- Apples
- Mangos
- Kiwi Fruit
- Peaches
- Berries
- Onions
- Pears
- Alfalfa
- Cashews
- Avocados
- Passion Fruit
- Beans
- Cruciferous vegetables
- Cacao/Coffee
- Cotton
- Lemons and limes
- Carrots
- Cucumber
- Cantaloupe
- Watermelon
- Coconut
- Beets
- Turnips
- Chili peppers, red peppers, bell peppers, green peppers
- Papaya
- Eggplant
- Vanilla
- Tomatoes
- Grapes
- Many seeds and nuts
A
substantial drop in population, or complete extinction, of honeybees
will make these food scares or even non-existent. So to keep our body
healthy and our kitchen table interesting we have to take action before
it is too late.
What You can Do
- Plant bee friendly plants in your garden or green community space.
- Limit the use of pesticides or use organic alternatives.
- Buy local, organically grown produce and honey to support the beekeepers and farmers in your area.
- Donate to non-profit organizations, like Pollinator Partnership, to help protect, grow, and strengthen bee populations.
Sources:
CNN,
NCBI, and
onEarth.
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