If you frequently find yourself on Youtube, you might have noticed the ‘Bring Back the Bees Campaign’ advert launched by the company, Burt’s Bees. If you haven’t- check it out here!
As with all adverts, the intention of Burt’s Bees is for you to buy their products- but the key underlying message is clear; bees are vital for our survival.
Whilst the video is trying to make improvements (both to the planet and to their profits), it only scratches the surface of the topic. I did a little more research into pollination and why bees are so crucial as well as why they are mysteriously disappearing.
Without further ado, let’s bee-gin!
(Sorry, I had too)
Like all living organisms, reproduction is essential to the survival of plants. Albeit their inability to move makes this more difficult, bees and other pollinators enable plants to undergo sexual reproduction. One could say that they are wingmen.
(Credit: TutorVista)
Pollination, like sex, requires ‘male’ and ‘female’ anatomy- all flowering plants have both sets of anatomy.
In flowers, the ‘male parts’ are known as the stamen and produce a sticky powder called pollen. The ‘female parts’ are known as the pistil. At the top of the pistil is the sticky stigma. In order to be pollinated, pollen must be transferred from a stamen to a stigma.
Flowers can be self-pollinated if pollen from a plant’s stamen move to its own stigma. This is not ideal for plants as this can lead to hereditary disorders being passed onto the new plants. The much better alternative is cross-pollination as the offspring plants are stronger. In cross-pollination, pollen from a plant’s stamen moves to a different plant’s stigma.
In order to allow the pollen to move from stamen to stigma, one of two things must happen:
- The wind picks up the pollen from the stamen and releases it on a stigma (this process is very inefficient as the wind can drop the pollen literally anywhere and there is a low likelihood of pollen falling directly onto a stigma of the same species of plant; in compensation wind-pollinated plants release astronomical amounts of pollen, as hay-fever sufferers know all too well).
- An insect (or sometimes an animal) visits the flower and, whilst doing so, brushes past the anthers (the top section of the stamen) which causes pollen to stick to its body. Then the insect visits another flower and brushes against the stigma, causing pollen to fall of its body and onto the stigma. Option two can be more reliable and is, understandably, the more common method of pollination.
Reading about pollination is not nearly as fun as watching it in action- before moving on check out a few clips from Louie Schwartzberg’s ‘Wings of Life’ which reveals the true beauty of this fascinating process.
I have now explained the basics of pollination, so it is time to add another level of complexity. Not all pollinators pollinate all plants- in fact, there is a more complicated network.
Plants can be considered either specialists (only a few pollinators visit them) or generalists (a very wide range of pollinators visit them). The majority of plants are specialists. Pollinators can also be considered either specialists (visiting only a few plant species) or generalists (visiting a very wide range of plants). Again, the majority of pollinators are specialists
Most pollination networks are ‘nested’- specialist pollinators only tend to interact with generalist plants and vice versa. This is important as it prevents specialist species becoLouie Schwartzberg’s ‘Wings of Life’ ming overly dependent on each other.
Here’s why the honeybee is so important; it is a generalist pollinator. There are very few other generalist pollinators, and yet so many specialist plants rely heavily on honeybee visits. If the honeybee were to go extinct, it would significantly damage the ecosystem and have extreme impacts on all creatures.
This is why it is a devastating fact that the honeybee populations have been falling rapidly in the recent years. Bee disappearance is not new- for centuries hives have experienced such issues, but as this disappearance has become increasingly serious (affecting more than half of all US hives) it has been classed as ‘Colony Collapse Disorder’.
The question we must ask ourselves is “why?”
There are currently three leading theories:
- The first is that bees are now under significant threat from pests and disease. The most infamous pest is the Varroa Mite, which not only outright kills bees, but also infects bees with pathogens which shorten their lifespan.
- The second theory is that their own genes are threatening their survival. Ever since the commercial farming of bees has grown popular, the majority of queen bees (responsible for creating colonies) have been bred from a very small selection of original queens. This lack of genetic diversity might have weakened the immune systems of today’s bees, leaving them more vulnerable to disease.
- The third notion is that chemicals (from pesticides and other sources) are entering the bees’ food source and poisoning them. Some pesticides even affect the homing ability of bees.
It is most likely that all these factors work together to cause a significant population decline. Marla Spivak explained this wonderfully in her TED Talk.
I don’t know what it feels like to a bee to have a big, bloodsucking parasite running around on it, and I don’t know what it feels like to a bee to have a virus, but I do know what it feels like when I have a virus, the flu, and I know how difficult it is for me to get to the grocery store to get good nutrition. But … what if I had to travel a long distance to get to the grocery store, and I finally got my weak body out there and I consumed, in my food, enough of a pesticide, a neurotoxin, that I couldn’t find my way home? And this is what we mean by multiple and interacting causes of death.
Whilst learning about this issue in order to write this post, the solution became clear to me. We need to provide bees with ample food if we need them to perform an integral role in our food creation. We need to plant bee-friendly flowers and not contaminate them with pesticides. Commercial farming must aim to be sustainable, not merely efficient- there have to be plentiful flowering hedge rows (that are not contaminated with pesticides) within the sea of crop to ensure that food for the bees is always nearby. Once this is ensured, we can move onto pest control and breeding stronger bees.
There are many more steps that can be taken, but, for a start, I will buy a Burt’s Bees lip balm if it means that 5,000 more bee-friendly wildflowers will be planted to rebuild the population.
We can bring back the bees but we must bee proactive.
Curiosity Killed The Cation 