BEES NEED HUMANS’ HELP — AND HUMANS AND THE PLANET BADLY NEED BEES

In my phone’s notes folder, I keep a mini list of some of my favorite things. I write down things that are sure to make me happy and bring a smile to my face. I have things written down like, “when the taxi driver whistles to the song on the radio” and “when a pigeon hops down from the curb.” At the top of my list is “watching bumble bees wiggle around in poppy flowers.” If you’ve ever seen it, you’ll know exactly what I mean.

Bees spend most of their lives pollinating. In fact, wild and domestic honey bees are responsible for about 80 percent of all pollination worldwide, and pollinate 70 out of the top 100 human food crops. When they land on or in flowers, stiff hairs on their legs groom pollen into small pockets on their bodies for them to carry back to their nest. Many plants rely on this pollen distribution known as cross-pollination to produce capable seeds. In fact, most crops that are grown for their fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, fiber and hay require pollination from insects in order to survive and produce. Pollination grows crops, cleans our oxygen and feeds our families. A single bee colony has the ability to pollinate around 300 million flowers each day. Because of this, bees are magnificently important to our ecosystem. Bees also produce honey, which is an incredible source of natural anti-inflammatories, antioxidants and antibacterial agents used for centuries to heal and help the human regulatory systems.

Bees are in trouble. After mass pollution and harm to our Earth’s biome, bees are declining rapidly due to endangered habitats, unhealthy farming practices, extreme changes in weather and the overwhelming exposure to pesticides. Pollution to the air is also harming the bees consistently. Bees rely on scent to locate food and pollen, and the air pollutants mess with the bees’ ability to find their food, which slows down their ability to pollinate. A study conducted by Penn State concluded that compromised scent molecules affected bees that were exposed. Tasks that would normally take bees 10 minutes to complete took them 180 minutes. If the bees cannot work efficiently, their colonies are in grave danger.

The bee population is diminishing at a rapid rate. The continuous building of infrastructure not only disrupts their ability to provide for their queen and promote the pollination that our ecosystem relies on, but concurrently steals their homes. Bee species will either nest in soil, plants, wood or tree hollows. A study conducted in Bydgoszcz, Poland, found that when exposing bees to railways, roads and power lines, their existence declined dramatically. In the study, 20 percent of the bees released nested in railways (because of their access to wood), only 3 percent found refuge along roads and not one bee was comfortable finding a home under power lines. The rest of the bees collected had fled elsewhere. However, bees returned to the sites when experimenters covered these sites in bee food plants, loads of bare soil and plant species that thrive in dry soil.

Though we have industrialized a good majority of this planet, there is still room to welcome and support bees, and there is no reason not to. An extremely qualified way to encourage bee colonies is to reintroduce ecological farming. Ecological farming is a system that restores soil nutrients with compost systems, refrains from losing soil from water and wind erosion, and avoids the use of pesticides, chemical fertilizers and farming methods that weaken soil. This way of ecological agriculture restores bee populations, which in doing so preserves ecosystem diversity and supports water filtration, pollination, oxygen production, pest and disease control.

Ecological farming is an excellent way to promote and help save declining bee populations, but there are also many ways to aid day to day. One easy way would be to plant diverse flowers around your landscape. Spring blooming flowers are the best! Another way is to allow clovers and dandelions to bloom — don’t mow until after they’ve finished their blooming cycle. Also, purchase plants that are non-toxic to bees and have avoided being treated with systemic insecticides. Finally, purchase local honey to support local beekeepers and food movements, and support your immune system.

Bees are vital to our ecosystem and they need help. They feed plants, they feed animals and they help feed humans as well. Without them, we would see a rapid decrease in food production and availability, plants would die and animal species would diminish as well. The time is now to work towards saving their population.