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What Are The Pros And Cons Of Beekeepers

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All over the world, bee populations are declining. Because we rely so heavily on bees as pollinators for our crops, this could have a drastic effect on how the world eats. Though some crops, like corn and soybeans, are self-pollinating and therefore don’t need bees, the majority of crops are not. For example, in the almond groves of California, they need bees to help pollinate the flowers that they actually ship bees in from all around the country just for that purpose. However, even with bee populations declining and colonies collapsing, hope is not lost. There are actions that we can on many different levels- from the personal to the political. One of the easiest things that we can do is to support our local beekeepers. Buying your honey from them will help contribute to the beekeeper’s income during the off seasons when their bees aren’t needed to be brought into farms for pollination purposes. Another place that we can help is in our grocery stores. As consumers, what we purchase has power. If we are more intentional about what we buy and whom we are buying from, we can have the ability to bring about change. Pesticides like neonicotinoids cause bees to become confused and be unable to find their way back to the hive. Making sure that we do our research, and that we are only supporting brands that buy from …show more content…

Not just on the local level, as mentioned earlier, but on the national level. By voting in politicians and leaders who care about the environment and who support small farms and preserving our natural world, we can ensure that we are doing everything we can to help our bees. It’s important that we let the USDA know that more subsidies need to be given to fruit and vegetable farmers, who get a minuscule percentage in comparison to corn and grain farmers. We need to let our leaders know that we do not support farms that us neonicotinoids and other harmful

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This project was chosen to investigate the decline of the honeybee and the impact on Australian agriculture. The honeybee decline is interconnected with environmental sustainability with key environmental challenges threatening the future of the honeybee and the industry of beekeeping. Some of these factors such as land degradation, limited water availability, loss of plant biodiversity, climate change, pests and pesticides loss of public lands such as National Parks, State forests and reserves, all impact on the sustainability and ecosystems which the honeybee depends and likewise, the ecosystems depend on the honeybee. With the disappearance of land to urbanisation and government restrictions on access to public lands some 70% of Australian

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Bee hives are disappearing daily, not only will this cause some food consumption to go down but also, economic decisions could be different because there will be no choice to have honey, shelter, and fiber, so we should focus more on measure to protect bees, that way they don 't become extinct. Bees also pollinate in the spring causing there to be enough plants and trees, and to maintain they are alive. Bees pollinate plants by landing on the flowers, picking up pollen and then transferring it to other plants of the same species while they collect nectar. Without bees the plants wouldn 't be able to be pollinated as easily and there wouldn 't be that many that would even get any pollen. It has often been said that bees are responsible for

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When putting it into perspective “one in every three bites of food we eat is pollinated directly or indirectly by honeybees”, according to Dennis vanEngelsdorp. Fruits like grapes, apples, oranges, strawberries, peaches, and blueberries all rely on pollination to be reproduced. Ninety percent of all apples and blueberries rely solely on honey bee pollination in order to be created. Without bee pollination we would lose many of those fruits. Not only would we lose the crops but it would also impact our economy heavily if we decided to kill all of the bees in our backyards.

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If we do not make an effort to help our fellow bees, there will be greater effects on human resources and the environment. There are many factors that play into effect when it comes to the disappearance of bees but if we work together to eliminate every single one of them at a time, we can make a change that will one day bring back the bees. For the past several years’ scientist and bee farmers have been noticing the disappearing of bees, but the most terrifying situation is not

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Honeybees are like an agricultural animal, same as cattle. We are using them in a marketplace in honey like industry workers. Honeybee hive boxes are not natural like natural green bees in the wild, healthy bees are having trouble to survive. Reading about honeybees that help a farmer, but not environment safe it is destroyed our local wild bees. Great possibility make a new string of new bees.

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This again stops the bees from doing their job of pollinating and stops them from getting the food they need to survive. The community can help bees survive by employing a few tactics. One tactic alone will not cure the bee population degradation but it can help boost the bee population. One local and more personal tactic would be to have a “bee garden” that consists of flowering plants that bees like which include apples, oranges, lemons, limes, cucumbers, carrots, and cantaloupes. Another tactic would be do be more environmentally conscious.

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The first issue that I am going to explain is how bees are dying off in alarming rates. This is not related to the runoff of the pesticides that are used in agriculture, but a separate threat. The different types of pesticides are “working their way into the pollen and nectar of the plants” (Kelmn p. 2). This type of pollution ends up getting onto the bees when they transport the pollen around to pollenate plants, like they have done for thousands of years. But this pesticide in the pollen is roughly 6000 times more powerful than the famous DDT pesticide that was harming bald eagle populations a while back.

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Studies show that 80% of the pollination that happens in a day is because of the honeybees, and 1 colony of bees alone can 300,000,000 flowers daily (“Save The Bees”). That is an unreal amount of production. Honeybees only do what their instincts tell them to and the human race benefits handsomely from their efforts, but the honeybees struggle to survive constantly battling life-threatening chemicals to pollinate plants only to have the honey they produce taken away in the end. In order to protect these bees, some changes are going to have to be made to the current system that has been put in place. First, more government regulations need to be put on the chemicals that can be used in pesticides in order to prevent the harmful effects they have on the bees.

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“Beekeepers across the United States lost 44 percent of their honey bee colonies during the year spanning from April 2015 to April 2016” (“Nation’s Beekeepers lost 44 percent of bees in 2015-2016”). Many famers today plant their cops in sections farther apart depending on the plant. When the bees go to collect nectar they cannot get as much food without getting tired. This has had an effect on bees because they die faster from having to fly so far. Many beekeepers think that this reason causes bees to fade away.

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Due to the mass importing of inexpensive foreign honey sold at extremely low prices, modern-day beekeepers struggle with making a livable wage from this career field. In addition to cheap mass imports of honey, invasive species are extremely expensive to control. According to the research of Dr. Myrna E. Watanabe, becoming a beekeeper is no longer a considerable career option for many people because of the low income “Beekeepers are finding it especially difficult to be patient these days, as honey prices fall in the face of massive imports of cheap Chinese honey. Such low prices cannot sustain the cost of beekeeping, which has become more expensive because of increased costs for mite control” (Watanabe 1170).

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Hazel Sillver says, “Honey bees are declining in population and may be facing extinction. This is bad not just for the bees, but also for humans, who rely on bees to pollinate many plants and important agricultural crops.” Without bees, crops cannot be pollinated, which stunts growth and can cause the crop to be uneatable or it could be left with very low nutrients. Later, Hazel Sillver states, “The bee is vital…. It pollinates

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When bees are in contact with the toxic pesticides, they may also be intoxicated and not be able to find their way home. Who would have known that pesticides, created for better crops, would cause more harm than good? It is like a nefarious virus humans created that in fact is themselves and everything around them. So, what can we do to help out?

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At this time, there is little to no evidence that these pesticides are increasing yields from plants they are applied to. However, there has been evidence of the pesticides killing bees or causing damage to their nervous systems, which impedes their ability to forage and fly. Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health preformed a study which found that 70% of pollen and honey collected from local bees contained at least trace amounts of neonicotinoids. Levels found from these samples were enough to cause detrimental health effects. In a separate study, they found that over half of plants at a major garden store contained neonicotinoids.

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We may not be realizing, but long term monitoring of the changes in global crop production over the past 50 years shows we are becoming more reliant on pollinator-dependent crops. Without bees, there could be serious problems for agriculture productivity and even food security in some regions of the world might have problems.

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Due to pollution, air quality is already poor. The deficiency of all of these factors will inevitably affect humans negatively. In order to protect the pollinators, the environment, and mankind, we must reformulate pesticides or cease the use of them altogether. Dr. Fairbrother, a renowned scientist and former member of the Environmental Protection Agency, noted that commercial bee-keeping companies reported losses of up to ninety percent of their colonies in 2006 (719). Scientists are blaming the losses on Colony Collapse Disorder.

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