Honeybee Population in Massive Decline
Published by It’s long been known that Earth’s honeybee population is decreasing at an alarming rate and what are we going to do about it?
The human population needs to take action now to save the Earth’s honeybee population, or shortly, we could reach a critical point of no return. The honeybees have been in steady decline for several years now and the situation is growing worse and worse. The main contributors for this massive decline are varying climate changes, parasites, and habitat loss.
(Photo credit: acidpix)
Honeybees live in a nest, called a hive and it is estimated that each hive can have up to 80,000 bees, mostly workers. The hive is ruled over by a queen bee. She is the largest bee in the hive, and she is the only female to mate. Males usually just hang around; their only purpose is to mate with the queen; then they die.
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The workers do all of the work inside and outside of the hive. Their jobs include making wax, caring for larvae or the baby bees, building honeycomb, storing pollen, making honey, guarding the hive and collecting pollen and nectar.
A honey bee collecting nectar from an apple flower. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
When Honeybees seek out nectar and pollen to make honey with, they visit many different types of flowers, including milkweed, fruit trees, dandelions and clover, just to mention a few.
Once at the flower, the worker bee drinks as much nectar as she can possibly hold and upon her return to the hive, she passes the nectar on to another worker. This worker holds the nectar on her tongue until the water evaporates, leaving the nectar to return to the air and now the honey is on her tongue and stored in the hive.
Interestingly enough, when a bee finds an area with lots of flowers, she is able to “mark the spot” using her scent. She returns to the hive and does a “dance” which tells the other bees the distance and direction as to location! Nature is truly amazing as this way of communication helps the hive locate the good places, not wasting their precious time searching!
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Sadly, our natural eco-system depends upon the processes involved with the bee pollination and if this pollination cannot happen our crops and foods will be in severe peril. We rely on honey bees for one-third of our food supply, so when honey bees are in danger, we’re all in danger.
Honeybee deaths are reaching a critical point, whereby it may not be possible to reverse the damage. The good news is that much of the population decline can be attributed to human actions, including the use of nicotine-based insecticides that cause bees to literally drop dead.
These chemicals render the bees literally paralyzed by exhaustion and once in contact with these poisons, the bees literally die within minutes.
Honey Bee (Photo credit: Jack Picknell)
While insect pests are detrimental to our crops, the loss of our honeybees would be catastrophic to our earth. We can handle some “less than ideal produce,” but certainly we cannot and must not tolerate a total decimation of our food supply as a result of lack of bee pollination. Without honeybees we will be required to hand pollinate all our agriculture grown foods and this is truly unacceptable, don’t you think?
Please take the necessary action individually to ease this concern and think before you use harmful pesticides and save these precious honeybees!
Liked it
On August 10, 2012 at 9:17 am
Yes, the honeybee population is on the decline. We have to realize, the changes we make on this planet affects other creations. Thanks for for this wonderful article.
On August 10, 2012 at 10:32 am
awesome share
On August 10, 2012 at 10:53 am
Great article KittyK. The pictures are gorgeous. They use a lot of bees to pollenate the trees where I live.
On August 10, 2012 at 1:54 pm
KittyK – You have written a great article about a really vital subject. Congratulations!
On August 10, 2012 at 2:55 pm
We don’t realize every creature God created ,is there for a balance in nature.One problem in the system,and the whole system is wacked out.This was a great article.You really did your homework composing this article.
On August 10, 2012 at 6:53 pm
Well written, thank you. And thank you for your support.
On August 10, 2012 at 10:30 pm
Pesticides and pests. Poor creatures hardly have a chance. I became aware of this in the seventies and it has not improved an iota.
On August 10, 2012 at 10:47 pm
very interesting post
On August 11, 2012 at 12:52 am
Very sad news. I need honey.
On August 11, 2012 at 1:09 am
Very interesting and of value.I was unaware of this delining bee problem.thanks for sharing such a valuable article.
On August 11, 2012 at 11:29 am
I feel bad about this. Good article
On August 11, 2012 at 8:41 pm
So True, and honey is so good for us as well, we must protect this amazing creature
On August 13, 2012 at 10:16 am
Thank you so much for this well presented and interesting articles;I now look foward to any more by you.
Eddy.
On August 14, 2012 at 8:15 am
Yes, the honeybee population is on the decline. We have to realize, the changes we make on this planet affects other creations.
On August 15, 2012 at 9:12 am
Oh no, I guess we get so caught up to the point we dont pay attention to things as simples as honey bees that can cause a huge domionoe effect on us.
On August 17, 2012 at 8:45 am
Good share.
On August 17, 2012 at 11:12 am
excellent article! thanks for the share and people take note: SAVE THE HONEY BEE FROM EXTINCTION
On August 18, 2012 at 2:10 am
Yes, the honeybee population is on the decline. We have to realize, the changes we make on this planet affects other creations.
On August 18, 2012 at 6:12 pm
Thank you for this very informative and well written article. We cannot afford losing bees, our crops are getting already hit big time with droughts and natural disasters.
On August 18, 2012 at 10:17 pm
We must really take this seriously. Thanks for sharing this with your readers.
On August 19, 2012 at 5:07 am
A good informative write up and you are so right to bring this out,we the human who are supposed to be high on the list of brain users should stop and hear your message. thanks pet.I will link with this .
On August 21, 2012 at 5:25 am
This was tackled during some of my biology classes. Mysterious disappearances with multiple factors but no single determinant. Good to read about your perspective on it. Looking Forward To Reading More From You!
On August 22, 2012 at 7:08 am
revisit
On August 24, 2012 at 7:16 am
Honey? My mouth waters,
On August 26, 2012 at 10:43 pm
This is really sad. Thanks for sharing
On September 1, 2012 at 2:24 pm
Thanks for sharing.
On October 2, 2012 at 1:48 am
An extremely disheartening issue. We all need to work together to save honey bees and other organisms that co-exist with us. If the honey bees go extinct we will be at an unimaginable loss
On November 20, 2012 at 8:11 am
very good article