Be Kind to Bees

While you may not realize it by the number of bees you see every summer, the planet’s bee population is declining, especially European and North American bees. Some of the causes for the shrinking bee population are known. The biggest threat of all is the loss and destruction of bees’ natural habitat as natural areas are being developed for housing and commercial ventures. Pesticide use on lawns is also killing bees along with other types of pollinating insects.

It appears that a world without bees would ultimately lead to a world without humans too as we probably wouldn’t be able to survive. It’s true that we can get by without the honey and wax bees provide, but they are also one of the world’s essential pollinators.

 

Honey is just one of the things we will miss if bees die outAlmost 90 per cent of the plants in the world depend on pollinators for fertilization and reproduction. This includes many of the plants that supply us with food. But that's just the tip of the ecosystem iceberg, and following the chain leads to some alarming possible side effects of a sudden disappearance of one of nature's busiest (pun intended) pollinators. 

 

Plants also anchor soil, which stop erosion and fuel the nutrient cycle by decomposing and absorbing nutrients. Plants help to clean our air, taking in toxic carbon dioxide and producing essential oxygen.  Plants are also crucial in regulating global warming, greenhouse gases and even the weather, through humidity and thermal currents.

While butterflies, hummingbirds, bats, and several other animals are also pollinators, bees are the most common. Basically, if we were to lose the bee population, we would also lose many of the plants, and you can probably figure out the rest.

If you’d like to save the bees in a more creative way, you can create homes and habitat for them by supplying plants and flowers for the insects in your garden. It is also possible to build houses for bees out of things like wood, empty milk cartons, and vegetation. Different types of bees have varying housing needs, and it’s a fun and educational venture to learn how to build homes to attract a variety of bees.

 

Bee hivesIn Vancouver, Canada, an environmental agency distributed 100 bee condos last year for people to place in their yards. This summer, the organization is placing large bee condos, that can house between 72 and 720 bees each, in parks and public spaces around the city.

So far, the project has spread more than 8,000 bees across Vancouver, hoping the insects will reproduce.

There are hundreds of bee species in the world of various sizes, and all of them are beneficial to the world’s plants. Some bees are as small as a pin head, some live below the ground and some live above it. And every species is beneficial to plants.