In a single day, a worker honeybee can visit 5,000 flowers, adding up to a whopping 210,000 blossoms pollinated in the worker bee’s typical six week lifetime. In these six short weeks, this bee could be responsible for pollinating up to 70 of the 100 top food crops, equating to 90% of the world's nutrient supply. That’s a lot for an insect that weighs only a tenth of a gram (0.00025 pounds!) 

Sadly, bees of all types are in decline globally, along with countless other invertebrate species. Our familiar honeybee has been plagued with colony collapse disorder (a condition in which entire hives lose all of their adult population rapidly,)  insecticide and herbicide use, habitat destruction, and global warming, to name only a few issues. 

The consequences of the extinction of the honeybee would be immediate. A number of plants would be unable to reproduce, dying off without serious human intervention. This loss of biodiversity would trigger a chain reaction in which the food webs they are a part of collapse, causing secondary extinctions of species which depend on these plants. The plants that survive this event would likely rely on other pollinating species, although bees perform the majority of this role. Without the aid of bees, plants would set fewer seeds, bad news for food crops from which we consume fruit and seeds/nuts from. Although we could turn to hand pollination as a “solution,” it is incredibly labour intensive and more importantly, too costly for the large scale applications needed to provide food for the world. 

Governments across the world have recognised that the extinction of bees is a cause for concern, however few have taken the meaningful actions necessary to prevent the consequences they are warning of. The United States Environmental Protection Agency has still not banned neonicotinoids (a group of chemicals widely recognised for the decline of bees,) despite the agency’s knowledge of the adverse ecological effects caused by neonicotinoid use. 

Help us in our fight to save our flying striped friends. Spread the word and save the bees!