(opinion) The selfish case for saving bees: it's how to save ourselves

[nitpicker]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/18/saving-bees-save-ourselves-pollinators

The selfish case for saving bees: it’s how to save ourselves

Alison Benjamin

Sat 18 May 2019 06.00 BST Last modified on Sat 18 May 2019 08.25 BST

When I see a bee buzzing around my garden or in the park in early spring, I get a real thrill from being able to identify her. If she is black and darting among small, white tubular flowers with her long tongue protruding and her legs tucked under her furry, round body, I know she is a hairy-footed flower bee.
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This month a landmark UN global assessment report warned that a million wildlife species were facing extinction, and at an unprecedented rate. Thousands of bee species will be among them. In Europe, 37% of them have experienced a recent decline in populations, and 9% face extinction; almost a quarter of those in North America are at increasing risk of becoming extinct. In other parts of the world, where data is limited, they all face similar threats from intensive farming, climate breakdown and invasive species. And their demise is potentially catastrophic for nature and humankind.
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It makes bees a linchpin in nature and of modern agriculture. Not only do they pollinate trees, whose oxygen we breathe, and which mitigate the climate crisis, they also pollinate the flora that feed other insects, birds and mammals in the food chain and one in three mouthfuls that we eat. Bees boost the yield of 90 commercially produced crops. These include most fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and spices that we eat, as well as coffee, and fodder for livestock. The annual contribution of pollination services to the global economy has been estimated at $577bn (£453bn).

But there is a contradiction at the heart of our farming system. In the last five decades there has been a threefold increase in the volume of production of those 90 bee-dependent crops. This has turned farms into industrial food producers. As a result, wild-flower meadows that provided food and nesting sites for solitary bees and bumblebees have been wiped out. Europe’s largest bumblebee, the endangered Bombus fragrans, is just one example of a species seriously threatened by intensive farming, which is destroying its native habitat on the steppes of Ukraine and Russia.

Without food and habitat to sustain wild pollinators, modern farming has become reliant on trucking in managed honeybee hives when crops are in bloom, and flying in factory-bred bumblebees to pollinate tomatoes and other crops grown in greenhouses. This can spread lethal parasites and disease to wild bees, including the giant golden bumblebee of Patagonia, which is now threatened with extinction.

Neonicotinoid pesticides have been linked to bee deaths, and a successful campaign to ban these toxic chemicals was orchestrated across Europe, leading to the EU introducing a total ban on the outdoor use of the most common ones last year.

But that alone won’t save bees. Now we need a similar campaign to ban herbicides and bring back wild flowers and wild bees. Research shows that the greater the diversity of bees attracted to a field of crops by the presence of wild flowers, the better pollinated those crops will be. In some trials, harvests doubled or even tripled, because solitary bees can pollinate some flowering plants 100 times more effectively than honeybees.
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[MFM008]

1. I havent seen

To maney honey bees yet but the Rhodies were alive with big fat bumblebees today. They werent last year.