Bee Populations are collapsing

When insects fly from plant to plant, they feed on the tasty nectar collected in the base of the petals. When doing so, they don't mind getting dirty. The animals accidentally rub their body against the stamen and end up covered in sticky pollen from their food source. Moving on to the next plant, they transport the pollen from one plant to another. This way the plants are pollinated, can reproduce and the next generation of offspring is secured.

Why should we care?

Bees – wild or domestic – are responsible for over 80 % of the pollination worldwide and a single bee colony can pollinate over 300 million flowers per day. 70 % of our main food produce needs to be pollinated by these hard workers in order to produce their crops. Unfortunately, their population has plummeted dramatically over the last decades. The U.S. National Agricultural Statistics show a decline of 60 %, counting 6 million hives in 1947 and only 2.4 million hives in 2008.

What’s the cause?

Reasons for the decline in our bee and other insect populations include pesticides, habitat destruction, drought, nutrition deficit, air pollution, climate change and many more. Most of these causes are connected and can be related to human activities. The two most important ones are habitat loss and pesticides. As big industrial agribusinesses convert large areas of grasslands and forests into mono-culture farms, which are then poisoned by pesticides, the wild bee habitat shrinks immensely every year.

What can we do?

Ecological, organic farming is not a foreign concept. This is how farming has been done throughout human history, until our species became too greedy and was only focussed on the short-term profits. So, in order to help revive the bee and other insect populations, make sure to buy your produce from a biological farm, which neither has monocultures and nor uses pesticides. Also, don’t use pesticides in your own garden. Plant bee friendly flowers on your balcony, your garden or even on the little grass patch in front of your house. If you do have the space, build a little bee hotel in your garden. And last but not least, buy honey from a local beekeeper.