Photo compliments of Creative Commons on Flicker. Photographer Mike Baird
Hello everyone, I hope all is well with you. I’m back today and I’m talking about Bees. That’s right. Bees. I received an e-mail early this morning and it was a call to action.
A call to action to boycott a company that manufactures a pesticide that is detrimental to bees’ health. This started me thinking, why would we need to boycott this company. Why are bees so important?
So, I did some research and I found bees are extremely important to our way of life. I was totally shocked. Who would’ve thought this tiny insect would have such an impact.
They do though, without bees there would be no cross-pollination. Cross-pollination occurs when a bee takes pollen from one flower and delivers it to another flower. Without cross-pollination, there would be no flowers or trees. In addition, without trees there’d be no oxygen.
I bet you can see where I’m going with this.
It’s a scary thought. Did you know more than one hundred agricultural crops in the United States are pollinated by bees? That means bees are essential for the production of nearly seven billion dollars’ worth of crops in Arizona alone.
So I can see the growing concern for keeping our bee population thriving. It’s not thriving though. In fact, bees have been disappearing from the hives. The normal declination rate is five percent each winter; this rate has risen to almost fifty percent in some cases. Scientists are calling this Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).
Photo compliments of Flickr Creative Commons by Know Malta by Peter Grima
What is the cause of this disorder? Scientists aren’t sure. There are many who believe pesticides are the problem. Others believe a virus has weakened the bees’ immune system. Still others hold onto the theory that the use of cell phones messes with the bees’ ability to find their way back to their hives. Something about the magnetic fields that cell phones generate.
Whatever the reason, this is a cause for alarm. According to Albert Einstein, “Mankind would be extinct four years after honeybees disappeared from the face of the earth.”
What can we do? So far, scientists have only speculated on the causes of CCD. Until we know the real causes behind it, we’ll have to be cognizant about the bees and refrain from swatting them with a newspaper. They’re good for the earth.
In addition, if you’re interested in helping them, plant some flowers this spring and feed the bees.
Photo courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons. Photographer is Patty Vicknair
Thanks for stopping by and reading my post. If you have any thoughts on the bee situation please leave a comment. I’d love to read it! :)
***I would like to thank beachbistro.com and Joyfusions.com for some of the information in this post. The links are below.
http://www.beachbistro.com/the-bees-knees-a-drink-to-bug-our-politicians/
http://joyfusions.com/what-is-pollination-and-why-honey-bees-are-important-pollinators/
