‘A catchy headline for a serious matter: The honey bees are disappearing.’

This little flying insect; the one that lots of people fear, the one that if it landed on your picnic, you wouldn’t think twice about killing it with your news paper. This little insect is not surviving in this modern world and the causes for the most part are still unknown…but lets face it, colony collapse disorder is real and it’s a serious problem.  -“But why should I care about the bees?”   – First, lets see what these Bees really do for us.

Just to give you a rough idea of what I’m talking about here, imagine a world right now without the force to produce the following essential crops:

Forage and Legume: Alfalfa; buckwheat; clover, crown vetch; sweet clover, lespedeza (bush); trefoil.

Fruit: Apple; apricot; avocado; blackberry,blueberry, cranberry, gooseberry, raspberry, and strawberry, carambola, cherry, grapefruit, lemon, mandarin, nectarine, tangelo and tangerine, kiwi, mango, passion fruit, peach, pear, plum, grape and prune.

Nuts: Almond, cashew, chestnut, coconut, and macadamia.

Oilseed: Cotton, flax, rape, safflower, soybeans, Sunflower.

Vegetable Seed: Asparagus, broccoli, brussel sprouts, carrots, cauliflower

celery, Chinese cabbage, collard, cucumber, dill, eggplant, garlic, kale, kohlrabi, leek, lima beans, mustard, onion, parsley, pepper, pumpkin, radish, beetroot, squash, and turnip.

Vegetable: Beans, cucumbers, pumpkin, squash, watermelon, lima beans, and peppers… the list continues… and so do the consequences!

So, lets think a minute about what this really means to us…

You may be saying, -“I don’t eat alfalfa, I’m not a bloody cow.”

Fine. That’s no more cider for you, no more wine maybe, no lemons in the cocktails for the ladies and no more fabrics made from cotton. That’s no more ‘mirepoix’ for the food aficionados, no more of your ‘five a day’, no more coffee in the morning, no more oils for cooking, etc, etc, etc…Basically it means a disaster of cataclysmic consequences for the entire human race.

In terms of nutrition, it is estimated that Bees are more important to humankind than poultry and even cattle!

In times where all what we hear in the media today is about the state of the world’s economy, drugs, the war on terror, erupting volcanoes, dollars, earthquakes, elections, Iphones & all the celebrity gossip (this last one specially), it is easy to forget how vitally important this flying creature is to humanity. Maybe the time has come to refocus our attention towards this small buzzing flying insect.

Why are they disappearing?

The truth is that no one really knows. But we do know that the likely causes are many and vary from polluted environments & global warming to pesticides in crops, monocultures, cell phones and even supermarkets!

It is estimated that one third of the world food production depends on the honey bee and its relatives.

So it is time we all start paying a little more attention to these little buzzing creatures.

What can we do?

It is difficult to really recommend direct action, but it is very important that we start to be at the very least aware of the issue, to try and create awareness to those around you, talk about it in any social circles, and please don’t kill them if they land on your picnic! This problem doesn’t belong just to the scientists, governments or farmers, we all have the same responsibility and the need to be concerned about this.

And like Albert Einstein once said: …”if bees were to disappear, man would follow only a few years later.”

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