Where will we be without bees?
Albert Einstein said: “Mankind will not survive the honeybees’ disappearance for more than five years.” Here's why.
A third of our food production depends on bees. A world without bees and other pollinating insects would be a disaster for food production.
Bees are disappearing
Since the late 1990s, beekeepers around the world have observed the mysterious and sudden disappearance of bees and unusually high rates of decline in honeybee colonies.
Why are bees disappearing?
Pesticides pose the most direct risk to pollinators. The main reasons for global bee-decline are linked to industrial agriculture, parasites/pathogens, climate change and the loss of biodiversity due to monocultures.
Some insecticides, at concentrations applied routinely in the current chemical-intensive agriculture system, exert clear, negative effects on the health of pollinators – both individually and at the colony level. The observed, sub-lethal, low-dose effects of insecticides on bees are various and diverse.
What can we do?
Progress in transforming the current destructive chemical-intensive agricultural system into an ecological farming system will have many benefits on other aspects of the environment and on food security.
- Support ecological farming
- Buy regional and organic food
- Avoid pesticides in your garden
- Plant bee-friendly organic flowers and herbs
- Get others to do the same
