Honey Bees Research Paper

Nick Lanham
Mrs. Travis
E-Team/English
4-25-2014
The Bees Are About to be Gone Since the beginning of the industrial era humans have begun to dominate the earth’s environments as well as resources; through this cause we have damaged one of the global ecosystem’s most important links in the food web. The honeybee is the world’s most efficient and widespread pollinator. Honeybees provide the crucial harmony between insects and plants; as the bees spread the pollen to flowers propagating the reproduction process of a vast majority of plant species. The United Nations food agency estimates nearly three-quarters of the 100 crop species that provide most of the world’s food are pollinated by bees. In a report released in 2011 the agency warned
The result of the honey bee pollination indirectly supports an exceedingly broad list of species. Honeybees support both plant and animal as the plants cannot spread and reproduce without the honeybee or similar pollinator spreading its pollen. Several animals also rely on the plants that are being pollinated by the honey bees; this pattern follows up the entire food chain. “Honeybees are critical to global agriculture. They pollinate more than 100 different crops, representing up to $83 billion in crop value worldwide each year and roughly one third of the human diet (UPI Security & Terrorism).” Our reliance on honey bees is not a choice we have to make since no other organism on earth is as efficient and native; we our left with one course of action and this is to save the global honeybee population from certain annihilation. The honeybees are experiencing a mass die off on scales never before seen in any living species to date. The trend of entire colonies of bees becoming infected and quickly dying all at once is labeled as Colony Collapse Disorder. “Bee colony declines in recent
Bees are treated as any other livestock they are kept solely for profit. For all that a bee does it would be assumed that they would be on the highest priority of most farmers and producers. Shortsightedness and lack of education play a role in this, as bees are hardly even considered significant by those that are not informed of the vast benefits and uses of bees in the environment. “No one has yet taken stock of the economic or agricultural toll of escalating bee deaths. According to the Canadian Honey Council, the estimated value of honeybees to crop pollination is more than $2-billion (Globe & Mail).” the difficult issue that come with this issue is that enough studies have been done, the evidence is near conclusive. We know what we are doing wrong it is as clear as day. Yet with the agriculture market being so heavily government involved it requires dynamic pressure to create a spark of change. With the amount of bee keepers in the industry the population may potentially be brought to balance; if a shelter for bees was able to be created away from all toxins and outside influence to rapidly breed the insects and protects them from the harsh winter. If a program such as this was implemented on a large enough scale bee population may be possible to recover. Allowing bees to reproduce unhindered from predators or any danger would exponentially build the