Human civilization is an extremely complex and fragile structure, standing on many pillars and honey bees can confidently be called one of the most important pillars. Every third product included in the human diet would not be on the table without these little workers. Insects are so important to nature that the extinction of bees will lead to the death of thousands of plant species, and this in a few years could lead to famine on a planetary scale. We simply won't have anything to eat.
In addition, bees are of enormous importance for the economy. The total value of agricultural products grown using their pollination is about $265 billion. What we are all accustomed to since childhood and take for granted will simply disappear without bees or, at best, will become an extremely scarce commodity. Apples, onions, pumpkin, and forage plants for livestock, allowing us to get as much milk and meat as we want. The following quote is often attributed to Einstein: “If bees go extinct, within a few years humanity will go extinct.” It is quite possible that he did not say this, but there is some truth in these words.
Honeybees are truly becoming extinct; millions of honeybee colonies have died over the past few years. Beekeepers around the world report declines in their numbers ranging from 30 to 90 percent. In the United States, the number of bee colonies has dropped from 5 million in 1988 to 2.5 million today.
Since 2006, honey bees in many countries have been experiencing so-called colony collapse syndrome. And scientists still find it difficult to answer what exactly causes it. But they know for sure that the situation is very serious.
In the last few decades, bees have developed very dangerous enemies. In particular, bee mites, they are Acarapis woody, which seem to have climbed out of a bad horror movie into reality. These are microscopic creatures that live in the trachea (respiratory tract) of bees. Here they lay eggs and feed on fluids produced by the victims’ bodies. They weaken the infected insects and spend their entire worthless lives in them.
No one has canceled the threat from traditional viruses and fungi not associated with ticks. But all the above-described dangers and horrors under normal circumstances can be curbed, and do not explain the magnitude and almost inevitability with which extinction occurs.
When wondering why bees are dying out, we should remember that in Lately It has become fashionable among agricultural producers to use a new generation of insecticides that are lethal to bees. This neonicotinoids, a chemical family related to nicotine, approved for use in the early 1990s as an alternative to DDT and other similar substances. They amaze nervous system insects. Today they are the most common insecticides in the world. In 2008, they were sold for one and a half billion euros, which is equal to 24% of the entire market for these drugs. In 2013, 95% of corn and canola crops in the United States were treated with neonicotinoids, as well as most orchards and vegetable crops.
Bees come into contact with the toxin while collecting pollen or through contaminated water. Often they carry it into the hive where it accumulates and slowly kills the entire bee colony. These insecticides harm insects in a variety of horrible ways. In large doses they almost instantly cause paralysis, convulsions and death; in small doses they are also extremely dangerous. They cause bees to lose orientation in space, as a result of which they fly away from the family, weaken and die. If this happens with enough frequency, regularly, the bee swarm may lose the ability to reproduce normally.
We know that neonicotinoids are deadly to bees and that we need to find alternatives immediately, but they generate billions for their producers, so these decisions are constantly delayed. Research sponsored by giants chemical industry, miraculously show that these drugs are much less toxic to bees than those carried out by independent laboratories.
There are many more factors that can be considered a threat to the existence of bees, and all of them are quite serious. Too much genetic uniformity, use of monoculture technology in agriculture, lack of food, stress caused human activity, other pesticides. All of them together, both described in detail and mentioned in passing, are probably responsible for bee colony collapse syndrome. Bees are becoming an endangered species beneficial insects, and in the future it will clearly not be easier for them to resist so many enemies. If they lose this battle, the consequences will be catastrophic for all humanity and planet Earth.
This is a puzzle that we are forced to solve if we want to eat as we are used to - plenty and varied. Humanity is very firmly woven into this planet and connected with all living things on it. We must take better care of our surroundings. Not even for beauty and harmony in nature, but for the sake of our own survival.
Last year, Nature magazine reported that Europe lost 1/3 of its honey bee population last winter. What happens if bees disappear? Einstein said that after the bee, man will die.
Frightening numbers
A person can live without oxygen for three minutes, without water for three days, and without bees for four years. At least that's what Einstein thought. The scientist's quote appeared in 1941 in the Canadian Bee Journal. It follows from it that the death of bees for humanity will be no better than a global catastrophe - a volcanic eruption, a meteorite fall or the explosion of a large hadron collider. The result is still the same.
Meanwhile, the mass death of bees continues. The scientific journal Nature reported that southern countries over the past winter the population decreased by 5%, in central Europe by 10-15%, and in the North by 20%.
In Russia, the number of hives has decreased especially strongly in the Chelyabinsk and Ulyanovsk regions. In the country as a whole, bee mortality is 20%. Experts say that the current number of bees is no longer enough to pollinate all plants. Last year, the UN declared that bee mortality was becoming a global problem.
What is the problem? 
The story of the death of honey insects is not new: the process began in the middle of the 20th century, but reached its peak in the last twenty years. There is no single reason, but the main culprit has been found - a person.
Agriculture has almost universally switched to chemistry - nitrogen fertilizers, pesticides. The latter do not kill insects, but, according to scientists, they lower their immunity.
Professor Peter Neumann talks about the plague of bees - varroatosis, a disease carried by a microscopic mite: “it is dangerous because it sucks all the vital juices out of the bee. This is the most common bee disease, it is difficult to get rid of these mites, and treating and nursing weakened insects takes a lot of time and rarely leads to the desired results.”
And a worker bee is not supposed to get sick. Beekeepers do not particularly care about the health of the hive members and continue their business as usual: transporting bee colonies over vast distances. In the US, hives are transported from Florida to California to pollinate crops. Such long trips place bee families under enormous stress. And this leads to “colony collapse syndrome.”
It was described by American beekeepers in 2006. During the course of the “disease,” insects leave their colonies, never to return there again. Bees do not live alone and soon die away from the hives. The reason for the strange behavior is chemicals and cellular radio signals, which, according to scientists at the University of Koblenz-Landau, drive the winged workers crazy.
What if...? 
Still, what happens if bees go extinct or their population declines to critical levels? Will Einstein's prediction - “no bees - no pollination - no food - no humans” - come true?
It must be said that there are other natural pollinators in the world - flies, butterflies, birds, the bats, wind. Additionally, not all plants are pollinated by bees. In the old days, flora managed just fine without them North America and Ireland. It was people who brought bees there.
But since the great geographical discoveries There have been significant changes in the world. The population has grown, and the need for food has also grown.
Today, the loss of bees, to whom we owe 1/3 of the entire harvest, cannot pass without consequences. Humanity will lose more than just honey.
The Times and Business Insider provide the following chain, citing expert opinion: the higher the mortality rate among insects, the faster beekeeping will become unprofitable. People will begin to abandon their craft, and the frightening statistics will only get worse. Since most of the harvest depends on bees, humanity will have to “tighten its belts” - food counters will be empty, prices for the remaining products will skyrocket. Hunger will begin. And you shouldn’t rely on other components of our daily diet. Since some of the plants will disappear, livestock will also lose food, which means there will be a shortage of milk, cheeses, yoghurts and, ultimately, beef. In general, no matter how you look at it, a world without bees will not be able to afford the current human population.
Compared to the previous one, the thought that a person will have problems with clothes simply fades. Among other things, bees pollinate cotton. In general, you will have to say goodbye to the “100%, 50%, 5% cotton” tags and switch to polyester or skins.
Diet of the future
Still, a person will have hope. The pig, which does not depend on the winged workers, will not leave him. The stocks of some basic food products - grain crops and rice, which are pollinated by the wind, will decrease slightly, but will not disappear.
Man will find another salvation where life once originated - in the ocean. The disappearance of bees itself will not affect the fish population, but if people get down to business with their inherent insatiability, Marine life will soon repeat the fate of insects.
Alternatives 
At the same time as searching for a solution to stop the increase in bee mortality, scientists are looking for a replacement. The first candidate is a bumblebee. He also collects honey, but not as tasty as that of bees. Bumblebee honey resembles sugar syrup, but it is also not enough. For comparison, after honey collection, 34 kg of honey was pumped out from two bee colonies, and bumblebee honey was selected using an eye dropper (48 g).
But the bumblebee has long proven itself to be a pollinator. For example, in some areas of Siberia Agriculture has long been adopted by them. Agronomist Lyudmila Chupina claims that “bumblebees are more industrious than their relatives and are cheaper to maintain.” One problem: they, too, are dying out.
The second potential substitute for bees is humans. The authors of the study “A World Without Bees,” Benjamin Allison and Brian McCollum, immerse the reader in a world where people have learned to live without honey plants. This is not the Earth of 2070, but the modern Sichuan province of China. The bees disappeared there about twenty years ago, due to the already mentioned pesticides. However, the region remains the largest exporter of pears, which are pollinated by bees around the world and here by people. Workers pollinate flowers by hand. It's inconvenient and expensive, but it works.
Another candidate is a robot bee. According to the Guardian, Harvard engineers are currently developing the new assistant. Experimental models have already been invented. Robots with their wings repeat the movements of a bee and thus pollinate plants. According to scientists, one decade separates them from completing the project.
And yet the world needs bees. Once upon a time, 65 million years ago, nature forever erased dinosaurs from the “book of life”, but left bees. More precisely, according to biologist Sandra Rehan from the University of New Hampshire, after complete extinction they were reborn. Perhaps they will outlive humanity.
Last year, Nature magazine reported that Europe lost 1/3 of its honey bee population last winter. What happens if bees disappear? Einstein said that after the bee, man will die.
Frightening numbers
A person can live without oxygen for three minutes, without water for three days, and without bees for four years. At least that's what Einstein thought. The scientist's quote appeared in 1941 in the Canadian Bee Journal. It follows from it that the death of bees for humanity will be no better than a global catastrophe - a volcanic eruption, a meteorite fall or the explosion of a large hadron collider. The result is still the same.
Meanwhile, the mass death of bees continues. The scientific journal Nature reported that in southern countries over the past winter the population decreased by 5%, in central Europe by 10-15%, and in the North by 20%.
In Russia, the number of hives has decreased especially strongly in the Chelyabinsk and Ulyanovsk regions. In the country as a whole, bee mortality is 20%. Experts say that the current number of bees is no longer enough to pollinate all plants. Last year, the UN declared that bee mortality was becoming a global problem.
What is the problem?
The story of the death of honey insects is not new: the process began in the middle of the 20th century, but reached its peak in the last twenty years. There is no single reason, but the main culprit has been found - a person.
Agriculture has almost everywhere switched to chemicals - nitrogen fertilizers, pesticides. The latter do not kill insects, but, according to scientists, they lower their immunity.
Professor Peter Neumann talks about the plague of bees - varroatosis, a disease carried by a microscopic mite: “it is dangerous because it sucks all the vital juices out of the bee. This is the most common bee disease, it is difficult to get rid of these mites, and treating and nursing weakened insects takes a lot of time and rarely leads to the desired results.”
And a worker bee is not supposed to get sick. Beekeepers do not particularly care about the health of the hive members and continue their business as usual: transporting bee colonies over vast distances. In the US, hives are transported from Florida to California to pollinate crops. Such long trips place bee families under enormous stress. And this leads to “colony collapse syndrome.”
It was described by American beekeepers in 2006. During the course of the “disease,” insects leave their colonies, never to return there again. Bees do not live alone and soon die away from the hives. The reason for the strange behavior is chemicals and cellular radio signals, which, according to scientists at the University of Koblenz-Landau, drive the winged workers crazy.
What if...?
Still, what happens if bees go extinct or their population declines to critical levels? Will Einstein's prediction - “no bees - no pollination - no food - no humans” - come true?
It must be said that there are other natural pollinators in the world - flies, butterflies, birds, bats, wind. Additionally, not all plants are pollinated by bees. In the old days, the flora of North America and Ireland managed just fine without them. It was people who brought bees there.
But since the great geographical discoveries, considerable changes have occurred in the world. The population has grown, and the need for food has also grown.
Today, the loss of bees, to whom we owe 1/3 of the entire harvest, cannot pass without consequences. Humanity will lose more than just honey.
The Times and Business Insider provide the following chain, citing expert opinion: the higher the mortality rate among insects, the faster beekeeping will become unprofitable. People will begin to abandon their craft, and the frightening statistics will only get worse. Since most of the harvest depends on bees, humanity will have to “tighten its belts” - food counters will be empty, prices for the remaining products will skyrocket. Hunger will begin. And you shouldn’t rely on other components of our daily diet. Since some of the plants will disappear, livestock will also lose food, which means there will be a shortage of milk, cheeses, yoghurts and, ultimately, beef. In general, no matter how you look at it, a world without bees will not be able to afford the current human population.
Compared to the previous one, the thought that a person will have problems with clothes simply fades. Among other things, bees pollinate cotton. In general, you will have to say goodbye to the “100%, 50%, 5% cotton” tags and switch to polyester or skins.
Diet of the future
Still, a person will have hope. The pig, which does not depend on the winged workers, will not leave him. The stocks of some basic food products - grain crops and rice, which are pollinated by the wind, will decrease slightly, but will not disappear.
Man will find another salvation where life once originated - in the ocean. The disappearance of bees itself will not affect the fish population, but if people get down to business with their inherent insatiability, marine inhabitants will soon repeat the fate of insects.
Alternatives
At the same time as searching for a solution to stop the increase in bee mortality, scientists are looking for a replacement. The first candidate is a bumblebee. He also collects honey, but not as tasty as that of bees. Bumblebee honey resembles sugar syrup, but it is also not enough. For comparison, after honey collection, 34 kg of honey was pumped out from two bee colonies, and bumblebee honey was selected using an eye dropper (48 g).
But the bumblebee has long proven itself to be a pollinator. For example, in some areas of Siberia, agriculture has long switched to them. Agronomist Lyudmila Chupina claims that “bumblebees are more industrious than their relatives and are cheaper to maintain.” One problem: they, too, are dying out.
The second potential substitute for bees is humans. The authors of the study “A World Without Bees,” Benjamin Allison and Brian McCollum, immerse the reader in a world where people have learned to live without honey plants. This is not the Earth of 2070, but the modern Sichuan province of China. The bees disappeared there about twenty years ago, due to the already mentioned pesticides. However, the region remains the largest exporter of pears, which are pollinated by bees around the world and here by people. Workers pollinate flowers by hand. It's inconvenient and expensive, but it works.
Another candidate is a robot bee. According to the Guardian, Harvard engineers are currently developing the new assistant. Experimental models have already been invented. Robots with their wings repeat the movements of a bee and thus pollinate plants. According to scientists, one decade separates them from completing the project.
And yet the world needs bees. Once upon a time, 65 million years ago, nature forever erased dinosaurs from the “book of life”, but left bees. More precisely, according to biologist Sandra Rehan from the University of New Hampshire, after complete extinction they were reborn. Perhaps they will outlive humanity.
That the disappearance of bees will lead to the disappearance of people. The soothsayer Vanga predicted the disappearance of bees in 2004, but she was wrong. Who knows, maybe the mistake lies not in the fact of the disappearance, but only in the date the disaster began.
Data shows that sharp declines in bee numbers were first noticed in 2006. The World Bee Fund reports that everyone winter period bee colonies decrease from 20% (Europe) to 35% (USA). This is considered an abnormal phenomenon, because during the cold season, bee losses should be no more than 10%.
Esoteric sources say that bees appeared on Earth from another planet to help people.
Up to 33% of the world's food supply requires pollination by insects. Bees do up to 90% of this work. Already today, the need for pollination of agricultural crops has increased by 25%, but the number of bees is not increasing, on the contrary, it is falling (the number of these insects has decreased by half, that is, by 50%, which means that the percentage of pollination is only 25%).
When the bee population decreases to a critical level or they disappear completely, the pollination process of many plants will be disrupted. But there are other pollinating insects - flies and.
With the growth of the world population, there has also been an increase in food consumption. A third of all plants that bees pollinate are food products for humans and animals.
With the disappearance of bees, all bee-pollinated plants will disappear, namely fruits, vegetables and grain crops. In this regard, food famine will occur.
Genetically modified products can come to the rescue, but they also carry hundreds of diseases for humanity. When they are consumed, people develop decreased immunity, pathological changes in individual organs, and a high increase in the number of cancer diseases.
Bees pollinate cotton, and if they disappear, then humanity will have to dress only in polyester or animal skins, but not for long.
If, with the disappearance of bees, the food supply for animals also disappears, then the livestock will simply have nothing to eat. Milk, sour cream, cheese and meat will disappear at the same time. As the world's food supply dwindles, the population of people will begin to decline.
But many scientists today are struggling with this problem by researching the reasons for the disappearance of bees.
3 days ago The viciousness of bees depends not only on the breed of bees, but also on the location of the apiary. From personal experience came to the conclusion that the hives should be located so that the bees fly into the hives from the top. Probably for this reason, one of the requirements when placing an apiary on personal plot This is a fence no lower than 2 meters. It will not protect neighbors from bees, but it will make the bees themselves calmer. We are guided by these rules when choosing a nomadic point. This year the point is 5+ :) #point #nomadic #napaseke #Siberia #Starchevskie #medsibiri
4 days ago Today we checked several layers. And in some, young queens have already begun to work. It is perfectly. In our climate zone, getting (not buying from the south, but breeding local) fertile queens in the first ten days of June is excellent. Such cuttings will be able to work in the main honey collection. We are preparing the framework for strengthening and fully expanding the layering. At least 500 foundation frames are required. In the morning the UAZ malfunctioned. Most likely the oil was squeezed out through the new filter, the roofing felts were not tightened properly, or something else... Tomorrow we will go to the city for oil and another filter. It’s good that the fault appeared 2 km from the house. We quickly dragged the UAZ into the yard using a T-40 home tractor. On the nomadic
5 days ago The willow is blooming. The dandelion is blooming, but the bees continue to ignore it; apparently, in our area it does not produce “honey.” Meadowsweet (spirea), mountain ash, sage and other types of mint are blooming. The first raspberry flowers are about to bloom. We noticed that the rapeseed was stuck in one pore. 15 days have passed since the emergence of seedlings, and it has not grown a millimeter. #apiary #apiary #honey plants #flowers #summer #rape #medsibiri #Starchevsky
1 week ago In two days the bees filled the hives full of pollen. We never have problems with pollen in Siberia. And beekeepers who feed bees with soy flour and other substitutes do this based on the principle: “Vanka feeds and I will.” And the fact that this Vanka keeps bees somewhere in steppe zone Krasnodar region, where there is a shortage of pollen in nature, for some reason our Siberian beekeeper does not care. You should not make unnecessary movements. This also applies to the breed of bees. Why keep southern bees in Siberia? Feed them full of sugar every fall. Shove tons of snow in the spring to get them to the toilet faster. Buy queens every year and depend
Albert Einstein, who is considered to be distinguished by rare insight, predicted back in the early 40s of the last century that if bees disappear on Earth, then soon there will be no people either. They say that Vanga, who knew nothing about this, prophesied decades later: in 2004, a massive pestilence of bees would begin in the world, followed by the disappearance of many plants, animals and, finally, humans. The clairvoyant was wrong by only two years. According to some reports, since 2006 there has been a sharp decline in the number of bees on the planet, and this, as some experts say, will inevitably lead to catastrophic consequences.
Statistics World Fund protection of bees (WSBF) is as follows. In the United States, bee colonies decrease by 30-35 percent every winter, in Europe - by about 20 percent, although usually in the cold season the losses should be no more than 10 percent. In Russia, the number of bee colonies has decreased by a quarter over the past ten years. Living without honey, of course, is not sweet. However, the problem is not only its impending shortage. “Most consumers are confident that the main task of a bee is to produce honey,” says Nikolai Krivtsov, director of the Beekeeping Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences, corresponding member of the Russian Agricultural Academy. - Not at all. Another thing is much more important: bees pollinate about 150 types of crops, which in Russia, for example, occupy more than nine million hectares. Pollination not only increases the yield of plants, but also improves the quality of their seeds and fruits.” According to the most conservative estimates, the value of the harvest obtained annually thanks to bees is 10 billion rubles.
The role of insects in plant pollination is colossal - up to a third of humanity's food resources depend on them. Bees do 80-90 percent of this work. “Over the last half century, the number of so-called bee-dependent crops grown by humanity has quadrupled, while the number of bees has halved,” says Arnold Butov, chairman of the Russian National Union of Beekeepers. “At the same time, the number of individuals per hectare of land has decreased by 90 percent.” But without bees it is impossible to cultivate citrus fruits, apples, onions, zucchini, beans, peppers, eggplants, cucumbers, tomatoes, coffee, cocoa, nuts, melons, and berries. Without the bee, we are clearly in trouble. “We get the vast majority of minerals, vitamins, and antioxidants from plant foods, which give us almost half of the energy that enters the body with food,” recalls the director of the Institute of Nutrition of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, Academician of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences Viktor Tutelyan. - Of course, the same vitamins and minerals can be synthesized artificially, but if the death of living nature begins, then the resulting chemically nutrients may no longer be of use to us."
Why are bees disappearing? Experts name several reasons, and all of them are related to the advance of civilization on wildlife. The first reason is the excessive use of pesticides. European states In an effort to save bees, they are introducing a ban on certain types of pesticides - Germany, France and Italy have already resorted to such measures, and the UK is also thinking about it. However, agricultural enterprises cannot completely abandon pesticides. In this regard, WSBF proposed to ban the use of these substances in daytime while there are bees in the fields.
The second reason is new diseases. American beekeepers are losing entire colonies of these insects due to an unknown disease called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). The disease, which is killing millions of bee colonies, has already been reported in 24 states. And experts cannot determine the causes of the disease. There were suggestions that it could be caused by the action of Bt toxin. It is produced by genetically modified plants with an integrated gene from the soil bacterium Bt, which kills pests. “The connection between GM plants and the spread of CCD is further confirmed by the fact that greatest number dead bees were recorded precisely in the regions where Bt crops are grown,” notes international expert on environmental and food security, Doctor of Biological Sciences Irina Ermakova.
Other scientists believe that electromagnetic radiation is to blame for everything, or rather, one of its sources - cellular. For the first time, the relationship between mobile phones and bees was noticed by researchers from the University of Punjab (India), who observed bee families from two hives for three months. The first hive was subjected electromagnetic radiation from two mobile phones, which were turned on every day for 15 minutes, and the second hive was not irradiated. It turned out that in the first hive the queen bee laid half as many eggs. The amount of honey has also decreased. In addition, worker bees from the first hive stopped returning home after collecting pollen. There is a bitter irony in this situation: after all, at one time mobile communications were called cellular precisely by analogy with the wax structures - honeycombs that bees create for storing food and settling families. Now that mobile phones Every farmer and beekeeper is armed; the bees seem to be having a hard time.
Another one possible reason the death of beneficial insects - climate changes on the planet, which can interfere with the pollination of plants and the moisture of fields. James Thompson, a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto, began studying wild plants 17 years ago in the Colorado Rockies, recording and comparing his observations three times a year. His conclusion: Climate change could cause flowers to bloom too early, long before bees emerge from hibernation, so that insects cannot obtain early nectar and flowers cannot be pollinated. According to Thompson, this applies to a huge number flowering plants, and not only wild, but also cultivated ones - such as tomatoes and strawberries. Scientists from the International Institute of Management water resources Stockholm also identified the impact of uneven rainfall associated with global climate change on food security. As an example of the unpredictability of precipitation, they are reminiscent of last summer's drought in Russia and floods in Pakistan.
And yet, scientists cannot yet come to a consensus on the cause of the death of bees. This is what frightens me. After all, there could be many reasons. But no matter which of them dominates, people are most likely to blame. Is it really that tragic?
Specialists from the Department of Entomology, Faculty of Biology, Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov, do not believe in this natural horror story. They believe that, firstly, the scale of extinction is greatly exaggerated. Periodic decline in the population of certain species is a normal phenomenon in nature. And this is usually associated with a decrease in genetic diversity. Particularly in the case of bees, due to their inbreeding in a particular region. However, after the “degenerates” die, those remaining without harmful mutations in the genome quickly restore the population size. So, in their opinion, honey bees as a species are unlikely to face final death. Secondly, even if this happens, nothing irreparable will happen. Cultivated plants, apparently, you’ll just have to change the pollinator. For example, buckwheat can be pollinated by flies, wasps, beetles... In addition, the bee has not always been the main pollinator of plants, entomologists remind. For many millions of years it lived only in Central Africa, and came to more northern regions only 20 thousand years ago. Man tamed it only 6 thousand years ago. And before that vegetable world existed perfectly well without domestic bees.
Although I feel sorry for the bees and I also want honey.
Natalia Leskova
Vladimir Ivanov, Associate Professor, Department of Entomology, Faculty of Biology and Soils, St. Petersburg State University:
Bees are unlikely to completely disappear from the face of the Earth, because they are surprisingly efficient, hardy and quite aggressively displacing competitors. But their role in the natural chain should not be exaggerated. For example, they have not always been the main pollinator of plants. Before they were tamed by humans, other insects were excellent at this craft. And they are not the only ones who know how to create honey. For example, polybius wasps, which were once tamed by South American Indians, are suitable for this role.
Bella Striganova, Doctor of Biological Sciences, Head of the Laboratory of Soil Zoology, Institute of Ecology and Evolution. A. N. Severtsov RAS:
The number of bees around the world is declining sharply, primarily due to the constant reduction of areas where the insects can feed. The biological diversity on the planet is under attack - forests are cut down, water bodies are polluted, and the composition of the atmosphere is depleted. If in other countries this alarming situation is more or less controlled (for example, parks and forests are being planted in Europe), then in our country a complete disgrace is happening. An example is the Moscow region, where cottage settlements are attacking the once luxurious forests full of mushrooms and berries.
Due to urbanization and technological progress, many living organisms are on the verge of extinction, including bees, which vitally need to build their home. The main reason for their death is that they actually become homeless. A person can live in this state, but a bee cannot.
.jpg)
