Pesticides applied to fields against weeds do not kill bees, but make them vulnerable to mites. Well, scientists from Germany have a lot of evidence that the death of bees is influenced by radio signals from networks cellular communications. They disrupt the bees' orientation system, and they cannot find their way home to the hive and die.
In countries where the greatest decline in bees has been recorded (USA, Canada, China, Australia, some European countries), genetically modified plants are grown en masse. Of course, bees cannot pass them. At the same time, the source of their genetic infection is not only pollen and nectar of GM plants, but also feeding from sugar produced from GM beets. When young bees consume GMOs, they experience destruction as adults. internal organs and decreased immunity.
The world changes - the bee changes and disappears. It is now common knowledge that, compared to the USA, the situation with bees in the UK is still better: in last years The bee population here has dropped by about a third. And the threat of complete extinction of the honey bee in this country is predicted in the next decade.
Dead bees do not buzz... Their mass death, which environmentalists in a number of countries are already sounding the alarm about, could lead to the disappearance of many plants, including agricultural crops. After all, almost 80% of them are pollinated by honey bees. Therefore humanity is waiting big problems. Although attempts are being made to somehow get out of this situation. Let's say there are “breeding ideas” in the air. Thus, some scientists propose to derive the new kind bees resistant to any disease by crossing ordinary honey bees with aggressive Africanized bees that have strong immunity.
Science fiction writers, meanwhile, paint such a picture of saving the planet in the event of the disappearance of bees, people en masse go out to fields, meadows and carry out artificial pollination of plants. But where the bee flew, a person could not reach. For everyone has their own purpose. There is still time to stop the Great Chaos and Human Madness in relation to the environment. Already the bees, as we see, give an alarming “SOS!” about this.
30.07.2017 2
Over the past half century, many countries in America, Asia and Europe have faced the problem of mass death of bees. Scientists began to talk about the threat of the death of humanity. Let's look at the reasons for the extinction of bees, and what consequences this may have?
For the first time, the extinction of bees in numbers exceeding natural death was noticed in the twentieth century after the First World War. The process accelerated in the last decades of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The beginning of this process is associated with the massive use in agriculture pesticides and other pesticides.
In the twenty-first century, the process of decreasing the number and types of worker bees is gaining alarming proportions. For example, in the United States, half of the bee colonies died in 2012 alone. In Russia in 2007-2008, the number of winged workers decreased by forty percent.
Among the reasons leading to their death, it is impossible to single out two or three that can be solved quickly and effectively. Let's consider the main factors influencing life and reproduction beneficial insects:
Why are bees dying out? As we see, there is no single reason for the rapid decline in the number of winged workers. In addition to death from diseases and chemicals, sudden disappearances of entire bee families, the so-called collapse, have been observed. In 2012, in America, due to the collapse, the number of bees decreased by fifty percent.
One of the reasons for leaving the hives may be stress caused by transporting apiaries to long distances for pollination of agricultural land. After departure, the bee swarm is doomed to die within the next few days, because domestic bees cannot exist outside the hive.
In Russia, after wintering 2016-2017, a significant death of bee colonies was recorded. Typically, after wintering, mortality in apiaries ranges from ten to forty percent. Over the past winter, in some areas, beekeepers lost all their bees.
In Estonia, during the winter of 2012-2013, the number of bees decreased by twenty-five percent, and in some apiaries the death rate was one hundred percent. The cause of such mass death could be: very coldy and late spring, as well as defeat by “foulbrood”.
Humans need bees not only to get sweets. useful product. Workers fulfill their main mission by pollinating the lion's share of agricultural plants and gardens. Without bee pollination, not only will food availability decrease.
Many plants will not be able to reproduce without pollination, and are gradually disappearing from the surface of the Earth. First, there will be a reduction in the harvest of buckwheat and other crops. Gardens without pollination will no longer provide us with fruit. Famous interesting fact, that in China, in some provinces where there are no bees, gardens are pollinated by hand. But this method cannot replace pollination of gardens by bees.
What foods can disappear from our diet? Apart from honey, which people have enjoyed and been treated with for thousands of years, there will be no fruits, watermelons, grapes, and, surprisingly, coffee. Without some herbs, for example, alfalfa, which is pollinated by bees, it is impossible to provide adequate nutrition for dairy livestock: cows, goats.
Following the bees, many animals that feed on plant foods will become extinct. The disappearance of elements of the food chain will lead to mass starvation. Many have heard the statement of the brilliant physicist Einstein that after the death of the last bee, humanity will not live more than four years and will die of starvation. The Bulgarian healer Vanga also predicted the death of bees and cultivated plants serving as food for people and animals.
How many people know that without bees we will lose this natural product like cotton. After all, its pollination is impossible without bees, and not only will we not have clothes made of light cotton or cambric. But prices for synthetic fabrics will rise significantly.
In addition, the decline of plants, flowers and grasses that require insect pollination for reproduction will accelerate. Some argue that pollination is carried out not only by bees, but also by wasps and other insects. But in terms of the number of plants pollinated, no one can compare with nectar collectors.
British scientists predict the complete disappearance of bees in the world by 2035. This is the most pessimistic forecast, because today many experts are looking for a way out of the current situation. Optimists say that wheat and rice, corn and soybeans will remain. Of the animals whose meat is used for food, pigs and chickens will survive. The yield of potatoes, tomatoes and carrots without pollination will decrease, but only slightly.
Due to the reduction in the number of products and their species diversity, various diseases will begin to attack humanity. After all, the maximum number useful vitamins and minerals human body obtained from products that cannot be grown without pollination.
Video: The extinction of bees threatens the death of all humanity.
Restricting the use of pesticides in agriculture and banning the use of antibiotics in the treatment of bees alone is not enough to restore populations.
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 of 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.
