Why Bees?

Bees are the most important pollinators of virtually all fruit and berry trees and bushes, vegetables and many other fodder plants and crops, as well as of numerous wild forest and field plants. All these plants have bisexual flowers, i.e. their pollen cannot fertilize their flower ovaries. Fertilization requires pollen from other plants and can be partially done by humans, wind, water, and some insects like bugs, butterflies, or flies. However, massive pollination provided by bees - of 85% of plants - cannot be matched by anyone or anything. An average honeybee colony of 30,000 bees may visit up to two million blossoms daily.

Beehive products possess unrivalled abilities to restore normal functions of most human body systems and organs. Honey, the main beehive product, undisputedly provides the most valuable nutrition. Honey is the only product mentioned in ancient historical monuments, myths of Ancient India, Egyptian papyruses, in the Bible and the Quran. The Bible mentions honey forty (!) times. Other beekeeping products, such as bee pollen, beeswax, propolis, bee bread, royal jelly and drone brood, are also widely applied. Regular bee stinging provides an unprecedented healing effect for the entire human body.

Bees are one-of-a-kind insects that take an indirect part in manufacturing numerous all-natural products. Bees even contribute to meat production, because cattle biofodder is dependent on bee pollination. Additionally, bees are able to refine products, and they are used in environmental monitoring. Thus, in addition to conventional measures, beehives were installed to control air quality at Lyon Saint-Exupery Airport in 2007.

Bees in Danger

“If honeybees died off, then human beings would only have four years to live”. The terrible prediction is thought to have been made by Albert Einstein. Although we cannot claim who the prediction truly belonged to, the issue is by no means less urgent. It seemed far from possible for a long time. However, the years of 2007 and 2008 saw a rapid decline in honeybee numbers in the United States of America and Europe, from 20% to 80%, with main reasons being incurable bees’ diseases and irresponsible human activities.

Bees’ diseases are dangerous primarily due to their ability to rapidly spread across the globe even before a proper cure has been found. The most devastating diseases for bee colonies are Acarine (tracheal) mites, Varroa mites, American foulbrood and Nosema. There are a large number of treatments available currently but they can only help in the event of fast and reliable diagnosis. In case of a neglected disease, bees, like humans, cannot survive and hence entire colonies die off. Wild birds and animals like mice, shrews and chickadees also pose deadly threat to bees.

Evidently, however, human beings are regretfully the main enemy of bees. Scientists believe that the decline in melliferous plants is due to widespread use of agricultural chemicals in food production and use of pesticides. Some unofficial evidence suggests that, despite being toxic for bees, such pesticides as Deltamethrin, Lambda Cyhalohrin, Imidacloprid, and Fipronil have long been used in developed countries. A number of European countries banned the pesticides over the recent years. Albeit the world has become a global village and beekeeping problems cannot be dealt with in each particular country. Any problem is instantly spread across country borders and over continents. Some theories claim that the negative impact on bees is also caused by global warming, electromagnetic emission of power transmission lines and mobile communication stations, and production of genetically modified goods. This has not yet been proved, and more scientific research is required.

All the factors (or at least some of them) led to a horrific phenomenon that was recognized as bee colony collapse disorder (CCD) in 2006. The disorder results in all worker bees abandoning their hives unexpectedly.

Bees existed millions of years before the arrival of a human being. That time span allowed bees to have excelled in navigation to such a degree that humans can only rival them with complex devices. Therefore, bees’ loss of orientation may be explained by an exceptionally violent human interference into the nature’s balance.

There are various theories on reasons for CCD. A number of studies and tests have been carried out. However, there are still no definite answers to all the questions. The impacts of each of the potentially dangerous factors on bees’ life have not been studied fully.

How To Save Bees

The global objective after the years of meticulous selection is to breed bees that will be resistant to all known diseases. Such selection work is merely commencing; and we look forward to astounding breakthroughs.

New, more efficient medicines for bees are required. All pests develop resistance to treatment; hence the development of new drugs has to be on-going.

General public needs to be made aware of the acute issue of bees’ protection and maintenance of the nature’s balance. It is only scientists and professional beekeepers who are concerned about the issue nowadays. Nonetheless, the more people will be involved in discussing the required balance between agriculture, forestry and beekeeping, the sooner beekeeping issues will be solved, and the safer and more environmentally friendly our world will become. Apart from that, protection and development of beekeeping guarantees flourishing agriculture and forestry for many years to come. It is important to deliver a message that one cannot saw off the bough on which one is sitting for the sake of an instant boost of harvest and a short-term gain.

Global beekeeping monitoring, worldwide efforts to prevent bees’ diseases and large-scale specialized measures to control the health of honeybees are required. Such efforts will allow to collect statistical data and to have updated numbers of healthy and diseased bees to take relevant steps globally.

Promotion of beekeeping is vital. Unfortunately, the young know little of hard albeit noble and important work of a beekeeper. Proper promotion may attract a large number of young people to start their beekeeping business or to learn a new profitable hobby to supplement their full-time work. After all, keeping bees means living in the wild, being away from pollution, stress, hustle and exhaustion of a city life.

More books on beekeeping should be published, as well as guides on how to start a beekeeping business.

Children should not be neglected when promoting beekeeping. Comic books, cartoons, and computer games with bees as characters will help children understand the importance of bees and the nature’s balance at an early age.



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Комментарии

04.12.2009 Hugo Sehmsdorf (San Diego, CA, USA)

Congrats, very good job. I'll try to help.

04.06.2009 beebee (england)

so i would like to help. what can i do, i would like to help. any prime examples of yummy flowers. save the bees save the world1

27.04.2009 abdullrahman (amman)

i'm new member in this web site

16.03.2009 Daniel Merriam (Rochester, NY)

Where to buy good bees, with a queen ; would like then shipped to me in Rochester, NY 14606

12.03.2009 rohit rubeek (chennai)

its very imformative. super.

16.01.2009 mrugen rathod (ahmedabad)

i have a question.may i know, what is the main cause of decreasing population of bee?