Since the late 1990s, beekeepers around the world have observed the mysterious and sudden disappearance of bees, and report unusually high rates of decline in honeybee colonies. While the bee has colossal influence in our lives, honeybees are dying all over the globe.
In America, one in three hives was left lifeless in 2008. In France, the death rate was more than 60 per cent. The drastic decline of bee population is alarming given our reliance on these insect pollinators for biodiversity and global food security.
The life of bees has intensified with that of humans since the dawn of history. The ancient Egyptians decorated their tombs with beehives and used honey in their embalming process and buried dignitaries with jars of the nectar to take them to the next world. Bee and other pollinating insects play an essential role in ecosystems. A third of all our food depends on their pollination. A world without pollinators would be devastating for food production.
How are they efficient in their quest for nectar? Bees rely on an array of visual and sensory clues such as humidity level, shape, pattern and colour to discern whether flowers have something to offer, and are known to have three-fold the colour recognition ability of humans. Flowering plants depend on an outside source, and the foragers are happy to fill that need (pollination), receiving nectar (which they convert into honey) for the service they provide. Mess with pollination and both bees and flowers/crops suffer.
The irony of our characterisation of honeybees as hard workers is that they are lazy two-thirds of their lives. Rather, worker-bees create a work-rest balance. Bees do many things, but one at a time. They work serially, rather than multi-tasking, accomplishing jobs more efficiently. They begin cleaning cells, feed larvae, receive nectar and pollen, move on to build comb, fan the nest, and then guard the entrance.
They organise work and take decisions and provide useful insights about how we can function individually and collectively in our culture. Honeybees achieved what we strive for - a life lived in a moment and a sagacious connection with the ambience around us. “Honeybees stand out for their extraordinary communication and orientation abilities”, writes Mark Winston, a distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences.
The bees can sense tiny variations in temperature. They impart how to live in synergy with other species on an increasingly crowded, stressed planet. In a life that lasts 25-30 days, a male bee performs different tasks based on its age and community needs. They make radical career changes every few days, going through different “professions” during their brief lives.
Use of pesticides
We have lost some of our confidence in listening to nature, as modern life relies more on technology. The use of pesticides in the hive to kill viral, bacterial and fungal organisms adds to the toxic soup. Most pollinators – honeybees, moths, beetles, butterflies, flies – are susceptible to the designed toxicities of applied insecticides. Environmental pundits are concerned that a phenomenon – Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), a honeybee plague that has already killed millions of bees, reflected an ominous indicator of the shifts in the ecosystem.
Climate change exacerbates the risk of extinct of the pollinators. With droughts, earthquakes and other disasters befalling us, pollution and urban-isation notwithstanding, losing the bees threatens our survival as the dominant species on earth. Rural and forest land is consistently being developed for housing and shopping malls, reducing the flowers bees feed on.
An experiment by scientists found that the decimated bee population in Kerala was caused by electromagnetic waves emitted soon after the installation of mobile phone towers throughout the state, essentially crippling the navigational skills of worker bees. They simply didn’t return to their hive/s when a cell phone was placed near it, leaving the queens alone with the eggs. Radiation also damaged the nervous system of the bee, impeding its ability to fly.
To protect bees and agriculture, we need to shift from dest-ructive industrial agriculture to ecological farming. Ban all pesticides that are harmful to bees and other pollinators. Non-che-mical farming alternatives must be endorsed and dedicate more funding support to ecological farming. Hand pollination is extremely labour-intensive, slow and expensive. The economic value of bees’ pollination has been estimated around $290 billion annually, worldwide. So, also from an economic point of view, it pays to protect the bees.
