Honey Bee Pollinators

Imagine a world without crops like apples, coffee, broccoli, and cocoa. We consume these products often, and just expect them to always be around. A world without bees is a world without these crops and many, many more because they are our main pollinators. When people eat a meal, not much thought goes into how that food is produced. Bees play a part in the production of one-third of all the food we eat. The harsh reality is that honey bees are dying and rapidly. Researchers have been scrambling to find potential causes because losing honey bees completely would be detrimental. Although this problem seems urgent, some argue that bees dying is not a problem because there are other pollinators and some even say that the honey bee population isn’t
The downside of this idea is that their ability to pollinate hasn’t really been studied, so no one knows their potential and it’s doubted that they could pollinate as effectively as the honey bee. Non-bee pollinators visit flowers 39% of the time, compared to the honey bees 61%. Although that seems like a lot, if you try to picture a world with only 39 percent of the food we have today, they just aren’t good enough. One promising alternative to the honey bee is the blue orchard bee. They are currently pollinating a large portion of the almonds in California to keep a steady profit for their most valuable product rolling in. These bees could potentially become as valuable as honey bees. Studies suggest that one blue orchard bee can do the same amount of work as five honey bees. One main similarity the two bees have is that they can pollinate a wide variety of different plants. One downside of the blue orchard bee is that it takes a lot longer for their population to grow. They can only multiply their population between three and eight times in a year while the honey bees can multiply their population by one thousand in a year. James Cane, who is an
In June of 2015, the Obama issued a presidential memorandum that instructed the creation of a Strategy to Promote the Health of Honey Bees and Other Pollinators. The goals of this strategy are to reduce the loss of honey bee colonies, increase monarch butterfly populations, and restore land for pollinators. These goals, especially the last could potentially do a lot of good for the bees. Goulson reported that if one of the main stressors of bees, habitat loss for example, were to be taken away the decline would slow or possibly stop completely because the biggest impact is all of the stressors reacting together, breaking them up would lower the negative effect they have on bees. John Holdren, the writer from the White House who reported on the announcement, mentions how honeybees provide $15 billion worth of crop each year. Our country definitely couldn’t afford that loss. To counteract this, not only have new regulations been passed, but the White House suggests people plant flowers creating more food for the bees, and limiting their pesticide use. Even though most people aren’t farmers, even reducing the amounts of pesticides a little bit could help save bees. Even if certain efforts only save a small number of bees, those numbers add up. Another extremely recent example of an attempt to raise