Honeybees are exceptionally valuable for the world’s food supply as approximately $20 billion of the amount of U.S. crop production is because of honeybees. Out of every three bites of food we take is pollinated by honeybees. Foods like berries, nuts, fruits and vegetables, honey, and coffee wouldn’t exist without these cute fuzzy buzzers. In this article, we will discuss why honeybees are important for the world.
How do honeybees work?
A colony is comprised of around 50,000 honeybees that live in a hive with assigned tasks—as a family does, said Hilary Kearney, bee education expert and writer. The queen is the only reproductive bee in the colony and retains the cycle of death and birth in perspective. Every day, almost half of the colony leaves the hive to search. As the honeybees collect pollen and nectar, they pollinate crops and then take the food home for the hive.
The decline of Honeybees population
There are a lot of factors: pesticides, loss of habitat, Varroa mites, climate change, lack of younger beekeepers. For example, when a bee finds pesticides, it takes the infected nectar to the hive which affects the colony. And that’s only if they’re about to get back to the hive—bees may never return because the poison attacks their navigation abilities.
Also the unusual weather conditions we’ve been enduring as of late? Bees are so intimately bound to the weather that unpredictable weather variations make it difficult for them to endure, Kearney said. The fires, floods, long winters, and hot summers quickly change the number of flowers bees need to breed.
World without honeybees
Specialists say there would be a clear reduction in delightful fruits and veggies. The price of food would go up because farmers would have to start hand pollinating. Honey bees are committing to not only food but other plants that rely on pest pollination—if we were to lose honey bees we would lose the plants.
How we can help to save honeybees?
It’s easier than you imagine supporting honeybees. Anyone can change whatever green area they have into the natural territory—be it ten plots of sprawling grasslands or ten inches of a window cultivator.
We can plant local pollinator gardens with varieties that have eco-friendly associations with bees. There are thousands of wonderful wildflowers that are completely adjusted to the urban conditions that people can put in their backyards, rooftops, gardens, and mini fields. These natural plants and species produce nectar and food to pollinators.
Anyone can support bees by planting flowers for them to pollinate. We have to plant a lot of flowers at various blossom times, too, as 1 pound of honey is produced from 2 million flowers.
