WE HAVE a love-hate relationship with the bees, we humans. We love the final product – honey, flowers, fruit, vegetables – but we are not so keen on the workers who buzz and sting. Indeed, we would happily have the one without the other, if we could. Is there a metaphor here?
If we did not have the bees, assorted moths, fig wasps and hovering flies to move pollen from one flower to another, or one fig to another, we would have very little food indeed. When the bees are in trouble, we are all in trouble.
“Hmmmm?” you say. “Hmmmm,” say the bees, “hmmmm.”
Is it possible that the very survival of humanity is threatened by the slow vanishing of the bees?
The fear that has Europe all abuzz – and this is where the story really starts – is that the bees are in decline. Bee populations have been plummeting; hives falling silent, the European Greens all a-tremor for fear that food crops will wane with the bees.
Nobody knows for sure why the bees are shrinking. But the chief suspects are the poisons used to kill earthbound pests, which attack seeds and roots. Good for growth, the poisons permeate the plant: leaves, blossoms, pollen and all. Their lethal ingredients, neonicotinoids, are a near-relation to nicotine, as their name implies.
Ironically, it might turn out, these poisons were developed because they wreck the nervous systems of insects but do little harm to mammals like us. If nicotine can’t get us through the lungs, it’s going to starve us out!
The researchers say they have mounting evidence that these poisons either kill the bees outright, or they weaken the defences of the wee beeasties and other infections creep in.
Whatever the cause, the bees are waning, something has to be done. Against voluble protests from the pharmaceutical companies – who are accused both of cooking their results and of keeping them secret – the European Union has decided to ban the poisons for two years, starting last week.
In the US, they don’t legislate, they sue. So beekeepers, conservationists and agriculture activists are suing the Environmental Protection Agency for licensing a whole spray of these beastly pesticides.
“Whatever happened?” you ask, “to the hordes of African killer bees swarming north from Brazil to exterminate all life, human or animal, in the southern US?”
They were imported into Brazil during the 1950s, you will recall, interbred with the local honey bees and set off soon afterwards to colonise the entire continent and the one next door. Is there another metaphor here?
They are still swarming and breeding, apparently, nicotine habits notwithstanding.
Now here’s a thought: we exterminate all the bees – or allow them to expire – and employ thousands of workers?
These career “pollinators” would have to be equipped with syringes and ladders and their job would be to hurry from blossom to blossom, alternately sucking and spraying pollen to secure the next crop of flowers, fruit and vegetables. With them would come hordes of pollen inspectors, managers, trainers, licences, BMWs, an entire government department springs to life ...
Perhaps we should rather save the bees.
Today’s Chiel is Gavin Stewart:
To bee or not?
If we did not have the bees, assorted moths, fig wasps and hovering flies to move pollen from one flower to another, or one fig to another, we would have very little food indeed. When the bees are in trouble, we are all in trouble.
“Hmmmm?” you say. “Hmmmm,” say the bees, “hmmmm.”
Is it possible that the very survival of humanity is threatened by the slow vanishing of the bees?
The fear that has Europe all abuzz – and this is where the story really starts – is that the bees are in decline. Bee populations have been plummeting; hives falling silent, the European Greens all a-tremor for fear that food crops will wane with the bees.
Nobody knows for sure why the bees are shrinking. But the chief suspects are the poisons used to kill earthbound pests, which attack seeds and roots. Good for growth, the poisons permeate the plant: leaves, blossoms, pollen and all. Their lethal ingredients, neonicotinoids, are a near-relation to nicotine, as their name implies.
Ironically, it might turn out, these poisons were developed because they wreck the nervous systems of insects but do little harm to mammals like us. If nicotine can’t get us through the lungs, it’s going to starve us out!
The researchers say they have mounting evidence that these poisons either kill the bees outright, or they weaken the defences of the wee beeasties and other infections creep in.
Whatever the cause, the bees are waning, something has to be done. Against voluble protests from the pharmaceutical companies – who are accused both of cooking their results and of keeping them secret – the European Union has decided to ban the poisons for two years, starting last week.
In the US, they don’t legislate, they sue. So beekeepers, conservationists and agriculture activists are suing the Environmental Protection Agency for licensing a whole spray of these beastly pesticides.
“Whatever happened?” you ask, “to the hordes of African killer bees swarming north from Brazil to exterminate all life, human or animal, in the southern US?”
They were imported into Brazil during the 1950s, you will recall, interbred with the local honey bees and set off soon afterwards to colonise the entire continent and the one next door. Is there another metaphor here?
They are still swarming and breeding, apparently, nicotine habits notwithstanding.
Now here’s a thought: we exterminate all the bees – or allow them to expire – and employ thousands of workers?
These career “pollinators” would have to be equipped with syringes and ladders and their job would be to hurry from blossom to blossom, alternately sucking and spraying pollen to secure the next crop of flowers, fruit and vegetables. With them would come hordes of pollen inspectors, managers, trainers, licences, BMWs, an entire government department springs to life ...
Perhaps we should rather save the bees.
Today’s Chiel is Gavin Stewart:
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