Bees are everywhere that flowers, fruits and vegetables grow on the planet Earth. They are huge contributors to the biological diversity, or biodiversity, in the majority of ecosystems across the planet. Bees pollinate plants, allowing crops for human consumption to vary much more wildly than if plants had to rely on the wind and remaining pollinators alone to progress their reproduction. Biological diversity, or biodiversity, is essential for the future of humanity because we are healthier with a varied diet, but also because it protects against diseases, disasters and invasions. Biodiversity on the back of the bees. And I am talking about all the bees, there are many kinds- the bumble being my personal favorite. But I know, it's normal to be thinking just about them honey bees.
Honey bees are amazing. I encourage everyone to fall down more than one internet hole by reading about honey bees. Humans convinced honey bees to live inside man-made hives, the better to exploit them, for sure. Being cared for by humans has not really bothered bees. They have been kept by beekeepers (who were first farmers) for thousands of years. Later, as the honey bee ways of life became more understood, their society was held up as an example of what humans should strive for. Work yourself to death serving your hive and queen. Napoleon was a big fan.
The honey's are a social species of bee. They live together to survive and thrive. It's a perfect example of how a community survives better than a solitary way of life. Colonies of honey bees are in the tens of thousands. There are a lot of them, they need a lot of food. There are a lot of them, they make a lot of food. They make enough honey so that they can survive the winter. In bee standards, this is like super survival. Most of the other kinds of bee species, usually hanging out on their own, just die without even trying to survive. This super ability of honey bees to live through winter makes them all the more appealing to humans as they spread across the globe together. [insert thousands of years] Here comes the time where the agricultural industry starts needing to import pollination. Honey bees as portable pollinators were the natural choice. They were already domesticated.
Importing pollinators is necessary to the manufactured world of farming where mono-culture is created in the ecosystem via human intervention. They transport hives of honey bees from one gigantic field or orchard of the same crop to another. Like on semi-trucks, for days, across highways. Bees that can communicate with each other about where they are in the world and where they can find food is in the world. Bees that have spent thousands of years eating from many different plants all at one time. They are put on trucks, finding only a single food source in each of their destinations. Then, right before winter, their honey is taken away and they are given corn syrup to eat instead. And then the beekeepers wonder why they are dying. it is because you are exploiting the resource.
Mono-culture is a farming practice developed to make farming as profitable as possible. The health of bank account balances and the survival of companies has been accepted as more important than the health and survival of the human species! Science says humans need biodiversity to survive and thrive. And mono-culture only exists because the impact on [survival of humans] is not THE measure for success in what everyone calls "just business". High numbers in a column called "money" is more important than the actual, real life, survival of human beings. It's just so obviously stupid, I wouldn't even sit through a movie with it as the premise.
Humans can and should unite around the health of the honey bee because its intrinsically linked to the health of humanity. Two social species united against the deception and destruction of greed. You should give a crap that the bees are dying, people. If you don't care about the bees, you don't care about yourself. There are so many simple ways a human can help all bees, not just the exploited honey bee.
Being a beekeeper is a way to help. But, do your research before jumping in. Because there are different kinds of hives to meet the needs of the different motivations that people have to keep bees. Langstroth hives were designed with the intention of taking as much honey as possible from honey bees. On principle, I am personally opposed to looking at bee keeping from a perspective based in exploitation. I want to keep bees in Warre hives on the roof of a building because I want to leave them alone most of the time. just let them be[e] :-D
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