We Need to Save the Bees!

Although you may not believe this statistic, one-third of all the food you have consumed throughout your life is put on the table through the help of bees. And, astonishingly, this may be an understatement of their critical role in serving the needs of humankind and the entire planet.

Honeybees are responsible for carrying out 80% of all the pollination in the entire globe! Just a single colony of bees is responsible for pollinating as much as 300 million different flowers in a single day. Out of the top hundred food crops utilized by humans, seventy of them (which accounts for 90% of the world's nutritional value) are pollinated by none other than the honeybee. 

Unfortunately, these critical creatures are in dire danger. The primary culprit for their endangerment is human activities, as is the case for various other endangered species today. More specifically, the bees are dying because of habitat destruction, pesticides, nutritional deficiencies, air pollution, drought, global warming, and an assortment of other anthropogenic causes. When considering statistics from the previous five decades, bees have consistently lost substantial proportions of their population every year. They are unable to keep up with the hardships and changing climate, and at this rate they will not be around for long. 

However, it is still not too late to change course on this issue. While this issue has picked up some steam in recent years as the digital age (internet, social media, blogs, etc.) has developed, more must be done to save the bees. A great start would be to push a ban on the most dangerous pesticides harming bees and other animals, strengthen efforts to preserve wild habitat bees need to carry out their duties, and advocate for a return back to the days of ecological agriculture, without any genetically modified crops. Ecological agriculture is a viable path forward to save the bees, and it has already started to take impressive strides forward, especially in Asian and European countries. The burden of saving these wonderful and invaluable creatures is on our maturing generation, but there is great hope for the future.