Assignment 16

One of our worlds greatest known minds, Albert Einstein, once said, “If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four. years. to live.”
I want you to picture this… A world where the vibrant colors you see on your hikes or even in your backyard, no longer exist. A world where, the cute colors of fall on the trees, are nothing more than an sight full of brown, lifeless, sticks, and forever will be nothing more that just that. Not only that, but even worse, imagine a world where even the top 1% is battling to find a meal because it’s just that scarce. If they can't even find food, where will you find it? That's an image that absolutely none of us should be okay with.

The documentary “Silence of the Bees,” dives into how this disturbing world we've imagined could easily become a reality due to the deterioration of the bee species.
This rapid decline has been due to what environmentalists are calling Colony Collapse Disorder, or, CCD. CCD has affected many areas around the country and the world, and has crucial consequences. For example, some areas of the United States have experienced an 80% loss of honeybees that have seemed to practically vanish, all within a mere 6 month period in 2009. Frighteningly, ⅓ of all the food we eat has been pollinated by bees. Not only that, but nearly almost all 100 of human food crops which supply around 90% of the world's nutrition is pollinated by, you guessed it, bees. This human food crop industry for the U.S. has a value that well exceeds $15 billion. So if you won't do it for the life threatening environmental circumstances, you'll at least do it for the economy, won't you?

So what is causing this in the first place? Well, for a while it remained a mystery, but biologists at the University of California have narrowed it down to two major reasonings. The first being pesticides that we use on our crops, and the second being the lack of nutrition bees are becoming exposed to.
These same biologists at the University of California have found traces of over 150 different chemicals in some bees pollen. These pesticides may be harmless to us, but are lethal to bees and other insects. When you have a “pesticide cocktail” as biologist Eric Mussen puts it, it creates a recipe for disaster. We use things called neonicotinoids on our plants because they are not toxic to mammals and birds, but they are to insects. Neonicotinoids hold the seven largest and most common pesticides, including imidacloprid, which is the most commonly used insecticide in the world. If we're spraying majority of our plants worldwide with a pesticide intended to kill insects such as bees, how can we even begin to question why they are all dying out?

It's not enough that bees are being attacked by toxins, but they're becoming more and more malnourished as well. Dr. Heather Mattila, a honeybee biologist at Wellesley College states that, “Bees need a varied diet of different pollens in order to grow into strong, healthy workers.” It may be true that we are not a country that has been completely overrun by urbanization, but that doesn't mean there is a lot of nature for the bee to feed off of. She adds that, “A space can be a green dessert if it doesn't have flowering plants that are bee-friendly.” Meaning, that even though yes we do have lots of farms and are still rich in agriculture, we are crop ridden. We are a land full of crop culture, leaving acres and acres of land full of the same plants, which means the same pollen. The fields we don't use for crops are mown down,
leaving no pollen for the bees, and our yards manicured, also staying pollen free. Humans cannot survive off of just one single item of food, so why do we expect the insects that carry our foods future in our hands, to do just that?

So the question now is, how do we solve it? Some options are simple and some more harder to execute, but still possible. First, we need to stop killing off the bees with toxins. This can be done by following the example shown to us by Europe, where they banned the main seven neonicotinoids. There are other means of keeping agriculture growing than dousing them with insect poison. Our oranges may not be perfect spheres, but they will taste same, and can be guaranteed to last to sustain human lives rather than dying off along with the bees. The second option is just as simple as planting flowers. If a farmer just planted some wild or even domestic flowers around their crops or plants, then that alone will boost the nutrition of the honey bees and even attract more. It's just as simple as planting a few flowers in places that are normally mown down like in fields, or even just by telephone poles in rural areas. Even simpler, setting out a potted plant on your front porch.That is all it takes to vary a bees diet and to keep it healthy and full of nutrition. Such simple ideas have such an immense impact on the lives of one of the world's most precious species. All I ask is that you don't let them die out. Don't let US die out. Save the bees.

Sources:
   Markham Heid. "You Asked: Are the Honeybees Still Disappearing?" Time. Time, 15 Apr. 2015. Web. 11 Dec. 2016.
   "What Is a Neonicotinoid? - Insects in the City." Insects in the City. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Dec. 2016.
   @greenpeaceusa. "Research." Greenpeace USA. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2016.

   Silence of the Bees. Dir. Nature. Nature, 2011.