Human society is extremely
complex and fragile, built upon various pillars. One of them is the honey bee. One out of three meals eaten by humans
is made possible by honey bees. They are so important that if all the
honey bees were to die out, thousands of plants would follow, which could lead to millions of people
starving in the following years. On top of that, honey bees have
a huge economic impact. The dollar value of plants
pollinated by them each year is around $265 billion. Food we take for granted would just
stop existing without them, or there would be a massive
decrease in productivity. Food including apples, onions, pumpkins,
and also plants used for feeding livestock and thus extremely important
for our milk and meat. Einstein is often quoted as having said, “If honey bees die out, humans
will follow a few years later.” Actually, he probably didn’t say that, but there might be some
truth in the statement. It’s unsettling, but honey bees
have started to disappear. Millions of hives have died
in the last few years. Beekeepers all over the world have seen an
annual loss of 30–90% of their colonies. In the US alone, bees
are steadily declining. >From 5 million hives in 1988
to 2.5 million today. Since 2006, a phenomenon called
“colony collapse disorder” has affected honey bees in many countries. And we’re not entirely sure
what’s causing it. All we know is that it’s pretty serious. Over the last few decades bees have seen
an invasion of very dangerous foes. Parasites straight out of a horror movie,
like Acarapis woodi, microscopic mites that infect the tracheae
(that’s the breathing tubes) of bees. Here, they lay their eggs and feed from
the fluids of their victims, weakening them considerably and spending
their whole life inside the bees. Or Varroa destructor, a fitting name
because they can only reproduce in honey bee hives and are one of
the bees’ greatest enemies. The female mite enters a honey bee brood
cell and lays eggs on the bee larva before it’s about to pupate and before the hive bees cover the
cell with a wax capping. The eggs hatch and the young mites and
their mother feed on the developing bee in the safety of the capped cell. The bee is not normally killed
at this stage, just weakened, so it still has enough strength to chew
its way through the wax capping and release itself from the cell. As it does, it releases the mother mite
and her new offspring from the cell, and these are free to
spread across the hive, starting the process over again
in a cycle of about 10 days. Their numbers grow exponentially,
and after a few months, this can lead to the collapse
of the entire bee hive. Once outside of the cell, adult mites
also suck the bodily fludis of bees and weaken them considerably. To make things worse, they also transmit
viruses that harm the bees even more and can lead to birth defects
like useless wings. But there are other threats too,
such as viruses and fungi. Under normal circumstances, these
phenomena should be manageable and are not enough to explain the horrendous amount of
dying going on in bees. Over recent years new insecticides
have been introduced that are deadly to bees. Neonicotinoids, a chemical family
similar to nicotine, was approved in the early 1990s
as an alternative to chemicals like DDT. They attack insects by harming
their nervous systems. Today, they are the most widely
used insecticides in the world. Globally, they saw sales
of €1.5 billion in 2008, representing 24% of the global
market for insecticides. In 2013, neonicotinoids were used in the
US on about 95% of corn and canola crops, and also on the vast majority
of fruit and vegetables, like apples, cherries, peaches, oranges,
berries, leafy greens, tomatoes, potatoes, cereal grains, rice, nuts,
grapes, and many more. Bees come into contact with the toxin while collecting pollen or
via contaminated water, often bringing material into the hive, where it can accumulate and
slowly kill the whole colony. The toxins harm bees in a
variety of horrible ways. In high enough doses, it quickly leads
to convulsions, paralysis, and death. But even in small doses, it can be fatal. It may lead to bees forgetting
how to navigate the world, so bees fly into the wild, get lost, and
die alone, separated from their hives. If this happens often enough, a hive
can lose its ability to sustain itself. We know that neonicotinoids
are harmful to bees and that we urgently need
an alternative to it, but there are billions of dollars
to be made in delaying this. Studies sponsored by the chemical
industry magically appear to prove a much lower toxicity to bees, compared to
those produced by independent scientists. There are even more factors
contributing to the demise of bees, like too much genetic uniformity,
crop monocultures, poor nutrition due to overcrowding,
stress because of human activities, and other pesticides. Each of those factors on its own is
a major problem for bees, but together, they probably account
for colony collapse disorder. With parasites upping their
game in recent decades, the honey bees are now
fighting for survival. It would be a catastrophe
if they lost this fight. This is a conundrum we have to solve
if we want to continue living with a relative abundance
and diversity of food. Humanity is deeply interconnected with
Earth and the other lifeforms on it, even if we pretend that we’re not. We have to take better care
of our surroundings, if not to preserve the beauty of nature,
then at least to ensure our own survival. This video is supported by the
Australian Academy of Science, which promotes and supports
excellence in science. See more at . It was a blast to work with them,
so go check out their site. Our videos are also made possible
by your support on . Recently, we passed
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Backyard beekeeper here. I get where he's coming from, and I like bees, but this sort of video of ignores two pretty important issues.
First, the only reason we know there are a lot of honeybees dying is because we (humans) are keeping bees alive in a "non-natural" state for absurdly long times and in historically record numbers, in the service of our huge agricultural industry. There's nothing inherently wrong with this, ag gotta ag, bees gotta bee, but when you've got a bunch of bees raised by humans, kept from reducing their numbers through winter die-off (with insulation and winter feeding) in a box set in the middle of a thousand acres of a single kind of plant, it's probably not going to be as sustainable as a hive that's naturally grown over a few generations to live on the stuff growing in the forest it found itself in.
Second, the "we're all gonna die without honeybees" part ignores that there are things besides honeybees that pollinate (including all the species of bees that don't make honey) whose population numbers -- being in the wild and all -- are far less monitored and understood.
TL;DR -- the better title would be "death of huge-scale commercially-kept bees will likely change the way megafarm monoculture agriculture does business."
Beekeeper here. Just want to mention that CCD is very much confined to the US for the moment. Europe has it's own honey bee problem in the form of the small hive beetle and the sudden appearance of the Asian hornet but for the moment honey bees are doing okay in the rest of world. The video is great but it places a heavy focus on pesticides.. The video also doesnt mention that US beekeepers care for bees like no where else in the world. Massive bee farms are often moved about the country from Ohio to California. This is a big problem since it has the effect of just spreading diseases. Lack of genetic diversity is also not good.
The BBKA often joke that is isnt CCD or the SHB or Hornets that kill bees.. It's shitty beekeepers.
Buuuuut.. That doesn't mean regulation and care isnt needed. Every beekeeper in the UK is scared to death of the arrival of the SHB. It WILL happen one day (It reached southern France a couple of years ago and has obliterated Apis Mellifera) and that will be oh so very bad.
Also global warming is a huge fucking problem, more radical weather in Europe and the UK is having a huge effect on bees. Especially on Apis Mellifera.
I'm also going to mention The Dark Bee project, a project which myself and thousands more European beekeepers are undertaking. The project is to raise the genetic diversity of Apis Mellifera and bring it's gene pool in accordance with it's cousin, Apis Mellifera Mellifera. (AKA the dark bee)
Mellifera Mellifera is alot more resiliant to cold winters and seems to be much tougher against Varroa. Unfortunately amateur beekeepers seem to insist on importing from warmer countries like Italy and Spain because the breed of bee is alot calmer and more manageable..
Anyway I could talk forever on the subject so I'll just say that if you take anything from this video then let it be that the world needs research and regulation of bees. That's the key to helping the bees.
If you want to learn more about the Dark Bee prject then read up here: http://www.b4project.co.uk/the-project/
"...all we know is that it's pretty serious." cue happy music
The focus on neonicotinoids is a bit annoying. All the major classes of insecticides are neurotoxins that have similar effects to neonics, and are waay more harmful to humans. There is such a storm against neonics that the Taskforce on Systemic Pesticides suggest the use of organophosphates instead which are really toxic to pretty much everything.
Even if you ignore work from industry scientists, there is a lot of evidence that honeybees are pretty resistant to insecticides, they originate from an are in which many of their food plants have decent chemical defences , unlike wild bees . We have to stop focussing on one class of pesticides, when there are much worse ones that they have replaced and would be used if neonics were banned and when pesticides are likely not the biggest factor.
I come from (and my work on this is focussed in) the UK where our honeybee numbers are on the increase. The main issue is higher over-winter losses than we I've seen before, not fewer colonies, but less healthy ones.
Sorry for the wall of text, but this is my day job and I feel the actual evidence is a but misrepresented in probably well meaning outreach like this. Imho the worst thing we can do for pollinators in general ( the honeybees being just one) is focus all our attention on neonics (Which would have minimal impact, possibly even lead to bigger problems) and seek a more thorough review of how we get food.
SourceMy experience (not source, that doesn't make sense) : PhD student researching the impact of pesticides on the honeybeeWhole lotta "probably" and "maybe" in that video for the subject to have the word "explained" in it.
TIL the TARDIS is a fruit and will stop existing when the bees are all dead
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BEADS!? well, let's see who makes more honey! bzzzz!
I would recommend to watch the video from AasapSCIENCE on this similar problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JilYBVrFiLA