This
morning, I've seen a documentary that made a strong impression on me.
It was about the devastating effects of pesticides on bee colonies
across the world.
In Germany, the beekeepers lost more than half
of their colonies last year and it was all related to new pesticides
that got approved by the government without proper testing.
The bees were making huge efforts to return from
the pesticide-infested fields, just to die in front of their hives in -
what it looked like - excruciating pain.
I don't know if bees are actually able to feel
pain or not, but the fact that they are so extremely well organized
(those amazingly intricate honeycombs are actually built by the bees
from wax; they protect them from melting by regulating the temperature
inside the beehives; each individual bee takes on a role, like attending
for larvae, making royal jelly for the larvae and the queen, gathering
pollen or water for the community, etc. The bees are also capable of
changing their role, in accordance to the needs of the hive), makes me
believe that there is so much more to them than we know today.
As an example of adaptation, or maybe even
superior intelligence, one of the beekeepers showed to the reporter how
bees were basically refusing to sting him.
He took random bees from the hive and pressed
them against his hand in a way that should have immediately made them
act in self defense. Yet, I clearly saw them protecting the back side of
their bodies, where the needle is located. They were consciously
refusing to sting their caretaker.
So, to see these wonderful creatures tormenting
on the ground before eventually dying, made a strong impression on me.
Not only that bees are beautiful and intelligent, but our very existence
on Earth depends on them.
You see, bees are the most important pollinators in nature and
if they go extinct, then crops will fail and our species will starve to
death. I know it sounds like something exaggerated, but it's actually
true.
According to "Abeilles et fleurs," June, 1965:
"Professor Einstein, the learned scientist, once
calculated that if all bees disappeared off the earth, four years later
all humans would also have disappeared."
Though it is still debated if Einstein actually made this remark or not, what is not debated is the gravity of situation:
“Remove the bee from the earth and at the same
stroke you remove at least one hundred thousand plants that will not
survive.” - “Canadian Bee Journal” (1941) - Quote also attributed to
Albert Einstein.
In 1901 the prominent Belgian writer Maurice
Maeterlinck published “The Life of the Bee”, and he helped to popularize
the idea that the bee was a vital ecological linchpin:
"You will probably more than once have seen her
fluttering about the bushes, in a deserted corner of your garden,
without realising that you were carelessly watching the venerable
ancestor to whom we probably owe most of our flowers and fruits (for it
is actually estimated that more than a hundred thousand varieties of
plants would disappear if the bees did not visit them), and possibly
even our civilisation, for in these mysteries all things intertwine."
Scientific Studies Prove Pesticides Are Responsible for Bee Deaths
SNIP
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