Extinction of Bees... End of Human Race

Bee in pollinating process

 Scientists have reported that mass extinctions of marine animals may soon be occurring at  an alarmingly rates than previously projected due to pollution, rising water temperatures and loss of habitat. Many land species also face a similar fate for the same reasons but more likely the biggest foreboding danger of all facing humans is the loss of the global honeybee population. The effect of a dying bee population negatively affect man at the highest levels on our food chain, posing an enormously grave threat to human survival. Since no other single animal species plays a more significant role in producing the fruits and vegetables that we humans commonly take for granted yet require near daily to stay alive, the greatest modern scientist Albert Einstein once prophetically remarked, “Mankind will not survive the honeybees’ disappearance for more than five years.”

Mass death of bees

Honey processing

One of every three bites of food eaten worldwide depends on pollinators, especially bees, for a successful harvest. I read about the strangest way in which human beings has ever consumed honey in the form of a Mellified Man which i will love to share thus: In making this creepy concoction, described in Mary Roach’s 2003 book Stiff, an elderly man essentially donates his body to medicine: for a month or more, he eats nothing but honey and bathes only in honey; then, upon his death, he is sealed in a stone coffin filled to the brim with honey. One hundred years later—mellification is a slow process—the coffin is opened and the contents decanted. A mere tablespoonful or two, according to the Chinese Materia Medica of 1597, will cure broken or wounded limbs.

Honey irrespective of the mellified man has a long history as a therapeutic, used since ancient times to treat many things ranging from bedsores and burns to amputations and stab wounds. As medicine, it’s not a bad choice; honey has been shown to have anti-bacterial and antiseptic activity, which in part explains its phenomenal keeping power. Thousand-year-old jars of perfectly edible honey have been found in Egyptian tombs.

Honey is a sugar, a mix of glucose and fructose although it contains hardly any water itself but can absorb water from its surroundings. Most microorganisms caught in honey are sucked dry and smothered to death. Honey is also acidic, with a pH of about 3.5, which makes it an unfriendly environment for bacteria. despite all of that, it contains a small amount of bacteria that makes hydrogen peroxide.

Honey production

Honey Production
This process takes place in the guts of bees. Honey begins as nectar, the sugary secretions exuded by flowers as tempting lures for pollinators. Foraging bees collect nectar in abdominal honey sacs, and return with it to the hive, where they squirt it into the mouths of helpful house bees. The receiving bees then concentrate the watery nectar, sucking it into mouth and crop, and vomiting it repeatedly, 200 times or more. This converts nectar (30-40 percent sugar) to honey (a sticky 80 percent sugar); it also exposes it to a bee digestive enzyme called glucose oxidase that converts a fraction of the sugars to gluconic acid and hydrogen peroxide. The busy bees then pack the finished product into hexagonal wax storage cells in the walls of the hive, where it is intended to nourish bees.

People have been going through considerable trouble to get bees’ honey for millennia. The ancient Egyptians seem to have been the first to domesticate bees, a temple bas-relief from 2400 BCE is essentially a documentary on early beekeeping, tracing the process from hive to rows of sealed honey pots. The Egyptians passed their techniques on to the Romans, who enlarged the techniques. The oldest known Roman cookbook, abounds with recipes that call for honey, among them honey cakes, honey sauces, myrtleberries in honey, chicken livers with honey, barracuda with honey, and lentils with honey.

People has not only been eating honey, but drinking it as well. The Greeks tossed down dozens of honey-based drinks, like mead and others made from honey mixed with something else. Mulsum, for example, was wine mixed with honey; rhodomel is roses with honey; omphacomel is grape juice with honey, and the questionable thalassiomel is seawater with honey. Mead was the drink of choice in northern Europe. Pliny the Elder wrote of the early Britons, “these islanders consume great quantities of honey-brew.” Beowulf, King Arthur, and the rampaging warriors in Valhalla drank mead.

Honey has been our principal sweetener for much of human history. (Runners-up were boiled-down grape juice, date syrup, and in North America maple sugar.)
We get much more than honey from the bees. We get a hefty percentage of our food.

Bees Controls Our Food Supply

spraying plants with neonic

Honeybees pollinate plants that account for over a third of our food supply, such as: apples, pears, peaches, almonds, okra, alfalfa, beans, berries, broccoli, cauliflower, cantaloupes, watermelons, cabbages, peppers, eggplants, tomatoes, citrus fruits, and grapes. Without bees, there would be no strawberry shortcake, no blueberry pancakes, no salsa, and no wine. Cows (beef and cheese) are fed on bee-pollinated alfalfa and clover; lettuce and onions are bee-pollinated, as are the cucumbers used to make the pickles.The bad news is that we’re rapidly losing bees at an alarming rate.

In the fall of 2006, beekeeper David Hackenberg discovered that 360 of his 400 Florida hives were beeless. Such bee disappearances aren’t unprecedented; ever since people started keeping bees, they’ve been plagued by bee diseases, deaths, and disasters. In the general scheme of things, beekeepers can expect to lose up to 15 percent of their bees each winter. However, Hackenberg’s discovery proved to be the tip of a global iceberg. Suffering from what is now known as Colony Collapse Disorder or CCD, bees are vanishing from hives worldwide. Data from the winter of 2012-2013 showed an average loss of about 45 percent of hives across the United States, and in some places losses are even higher. Worried beekeepers refer to this as “beepocalyse” and “beemageddon.”

Source of Bees death

killing bees with neonictinoids

One possibility is pesticide poisoning; a popular culprit is a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids or neonics, adopted over the past 20 years to replace the far more toxic organophosphates. Still, it’s a complicated picture. In Australia and parts of Canada, where neonicotinoids are used extensively, the bees seem to be doing just fine. Another possibility is a destructive parasite, the varroa mite, that vampire-like sucks the “blood” (hemolymph) of  infected bees. It may be that the effect of pesticides is indirect, weakening the bees, and making them more susceptible to mites and viruses. A third, and perhaps the most insidious, possible cause of CCD is the extensive destruction of bee habitat. Bees may simply not be getting enough food—or enough of the right kind of food—to survive.

It sounds like the best thing we can do for bees is to give them more of what they need. “Plant more flowers,” says May Berenbaum. “And be a little more tolerant of weeds in the garden.” And maybe mow a lot less lawn. Because there are a whole lot of foods out there that we sure don’t want to be without.