A world without honeybees would also mean a world without fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds. Nearly one-third of the worlds crops are dependent on honeybees for pollination, but over the last decade the black-and-yellow insects have been dying at unprecedented rates both in the United States and abroad. Pesticides, disease, parasites, poor weather, and the stress of being trucked from orchard-to-orchard to pollinate different crops all play a role in the decline of managed honeybee populations. A lack of bees threatens farmers who depend on these nectar- and pollen-eating animals for their pollination services. We have few planned defenses against a honeybee disaster. The Farm Bill, passed on June 10, 2013, allocates less than $2 million a year in emergency assistance to honeybees. The bottom line is, if something is not done to improve honeybee health, then most of the interesting food we eat is going to be unavailable, warns Carlen Jupe, secretary and treasurer for the California State Beekeepers Association. Honeybees as a species are not in danger of extinction, but their ability to support the industry of commercial pollination, and by extension, a large portion of our food supply, is in serious danger. Whole Foods recently imagined what our grocery store would like in a world without bees by removing more than half of the markets produce. Here, we also take a purely hypothetical look at how the human diet and lifestyle would change if honeybees and other bee pollinators disappeared from our planet one day. This is the worst case scenario — its possible that human ingenuity and alternate pollinators can mitigate some of these outcomes, but not necessarily all of them. Via Aijaé Seraphina Blossom
Posted on: Thu, 05 Jun 2014 18:36:06 +0000
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