A world without bees and honey

The disappearance of bees could be catastrophic for everyone. From a commercial point of view, greengrocers would be left without a large part of their produce, the cotton in clothing would disappear, etc. Also, fields and gardens full of flowers would no longer bloom. There would be no bees for raw honey production. All this without an example of what would happen in a world without bees and other pollinators.

Summary: A possible disappearance of bees would be a disaster for the planet and humanity. Some areas of the planet are already seeing this. Therefore, we must act before it is too late. In addition, in our shop in Las Rozas de Madrid you can buy the best honeys in Spain: orange blossom, heather, eucalyptus, lavender, rosemary, thyme…

Other related articles: The 5 best honeys in Spain.

1. General situation

Bees are having problems all over the world for their survival. In Spain, beekeepers are for the moment alleviating the problem by constantly renewing their hives.

However, the places where the problem is most acute are California in the United States and in some areas of China. These cases will be described in more detail below.

1. A world without bees, as areas of China nowadays

On the Asian continent, in the province of Sichuan in central China, there is an area where there are no more bees. An agricultural area planted with pear trees, where farmers have no choice but to pollinate the trees by hand.

In this part of China, hundreds of farmers get up early in the morning during the flowering season. At this time they begin their hard day’s work, which consists of pollinating the pear trees by hand, blossom after blossom. Each one carries a bamboo stick, and at the end of the stick two chicken feathers tied to it. This is impregnated with a little pollen. This pollen is spread on each flower in order to introduce it into the pistil of the female flowers. In this work, the farmer climbs each tree so as not to leave a single flower unpollinated.

This hard, arduous work has been carried out every spring since the 1980s, when this region ran out of insects due to the uncontrolled use of pesticides and other phytochemicals. A task that used to be carried out free of charge and with perfection by the bees. Now it has to be done by farmers, which costs them a lot of money and time.

To think of this situation sounds like an apocalyptic scenario, but it is already a reality. As is well known to much of society, bee mortality rates around the world are increasing and this is causing great concern to researchers, environmentalists and nature lovers.

Photo 1: Dead bees

2. California also not without honey and pollination

Another very worrying example of this situation can be found in the 340 000 hectares of almond plantations in California in the United States. There, farmers have to pay transhumant beekeepers every year to bring their hives to pollinate their plantations, without which it would be impossible to fertilise the almond trees. They have to pay them money to compensate for the losses they suffer due to the increased mortality of their hives when they place them in these fields, despite the fact that these fields are full of food for the bees, with which the bees produce a large amount of honey, and with all this, many beekeepers even refuse to bring them.

The conditions for bees are getting worse year after year and their chances of survival are decreasing due to various factors, such as: varroa, insecticides, climate change, monocultures, etc.

In a world without bees, humans would not starve to death, as maize, wheat and rice crops do not need the work of bees. In a world without insects, humans would have to do without many everyday products. The most everyday ones would be:

• apples
• pears
• peaches
• tomatoes, etc.

Likewise, the little fruit that we would receive would be more deformed, dull and expensive, as pollination with chicken feathers is very deficient. There would also be a shortage of coffee and we would run out of the best sweetener par excellence, honey.

a) Video os currently situation

In short, one third of all the plants we eat and wild plants need insect pollination. Therefore, without bees, the Earth would suffer enormous ecological and economic damage.

Bees are absolutely necessary for the balance of nature and our quality of life. For this reason, we ask governmental organisations, companies and individuals to support any initiative to save them.

Here is a documentary made by TVE about this worrying situation in which these insects find themselves.

Source:

El periódico alemán Allgemeine: http://www.allgemeine-zeitung.de A world without bees