What happens if the bees disappear. Eco Inform is a news agency. If there are no bees

A person can live without oxygen for three minutes, without water for three days, and without bees for four years. At least that's what Einstein thought. The scientist's quote appeared in 1941 in the Canadian Bee Journal. It follows from it that the death of bees for humanity will be no better than a global catastrophe - a volcanic eruption, a meteorite fall or the explosion of a large hadron collider. The result is still the same.

A world without bees

Over the past two decades, the honeybee population has declined significantly. This is due to the widespread use of nitrogen fertilizers and pesticides, the "bee plague", radio signals cellular communications. It must be said that there are other natural pollinators in the world - flies, butterflies, birds, bats, wind. Additionally, not all plants are pollinated by bees. In the old days, the flora of North America and Ireland managed just fine without them. It was people who brought bees there.

True, since the great geographical discoveries, considerable changes have occurred in the world. The population has grown, and the need for food has also grown.

Today, the loss of bees, to whom we owe 1/3 of the entire harvest, cannot pass without consequences. Humanity will lose more than just honey.

The Times and Business Insider provide the following chain, citing expert opinion: the higher the mortality rate among insects, the faster beekeeping will become unprofitable. People will begin to abandon their craft, and the frightening statistics will only get worse. Since most of the harvest depends on bees, humanity will have to “tighten its belts” - food counters will be empty, prices for the remaining products will skyrocket. Hunger will begin. And you shouldn’t rely on other components of our daily diet. Since some of the plants will disappear, livestock will also lose food, which means there will be a shortage of milk, cheeses, yoghurts and, ultimately, beef. In general, no matter how you look at it, a world without bees will not be able to afford the current human population.

Compared to the previous one, the thought that a person will have problems with clothes simply fades. Among other things, bees pollinate cotton. In general, you will have to say goodbye to the “100%, 50%, 5% cotton” tags and switch to polyester or skins.

Who can replace the bees

At the same time as searching for a solution to stop the increase in bee mortality, scientists are looking for a replacement. The first candidate is a bumblebee. He also collects honey, but not as tasty as that of bees. Bumblebee honey resembles sugar syrup, but it is also not enough. For comparison, after a honey collection of two bee families 34 kg of honey was pumped out, and bumblebee honey was selected using an eye dropper (48 g).

But the bumblebee has long proven itself to be a pollinator. For example, in some areas of Siberia Agriculture has long been adopted by them. Agronomist Lyudmila Chupina claims that “bumblebees are more industrious than their relatives and are cheaper to maintain.” One problem: they, too, are dying out.

The second potential substitute for bees is humans. The authors of the study “A World Without Bees,” Benjamin Allison and Brian McCollum, immerse the reader in a world where people have learned to live without honey plants. This is not the Earth of 2070, but the modern Sichuan province of China. The bees disappeared there about twenty years ago, due to the already mentioned pesticides. However, the region remains largest exporter pears, which are pollinated by bees all over the world, and here by people. Workers pollinate flowers by hand. It's inconvenient and expensive, but it works.

Another candidate is a robot bee. According to the Guardian, Harvard engineers are currently developing the new assistant. Experimental models have already been invented. Robots with their wings repeat the movements of a bee and thus pollinate plants. According to scientists, one decade separates them from completing the project.

And yet the world needs bees. Once upon a time, 65 million years ago, nature forever erased dinosaurs from the “book of life”, but left bees. More precisely, according to biologist Sandra Rehan from the University of New Hampshire, after complete extinction they were reborn. Perhaps they will outlive humanity.

Read also: editor's choice of "Russian Seven"

Meanwhile, the mass death of bees continues. Science Magazine Nature reported that in southern countries over the past winter the population decreased by 5%, in central Europe by 10-15%, and in the North by 20%.

In Russia, the number of hives has decreased especially strongly in the Chelyabinsk and Ulyanovsk regions. In the country as a whole, bee mortality is 20%. Experts say that the current number of bees is no longer enough to pollinate all plants. Last year, the UN declared that bee mortality was becoming a global problem.

What is the problem?

The story of the death of honey insects is not new: the process began in the middle of the 20th century, but reached its peak in the last twenty years. There is no single reason, but the main culprit has been found - a person.

Agriculture has almost everywhere switched to chemicals - nitrogen fertilizers, pesticides. The latter do not kill insects, but, according to scientists, they lower their immunity.

Professor Peter Neumann talks about the plague of bees - varroatosis, a disease carried by a microscopic mite: “it is dangerous because it sucks all the vital juices out of the bee. This is the most common bee disease, it is difficult to get rid of these mites, and treating and nursing weakened insects takes a lot of time and rarely leads to the desired results.”

And a worker bee is not supposed to get sick. Beekeepers do not particularly care about the health of the hive members and continue their business as usual: transporting bee colonies over vast distances. In the US, hives are transported from Florida to California to pollinate crops. Such long trips place bee families under enormous stress. And this leads to “colony collapse syndrome.”

It was described by American beekeepers in 2006. During the course of the “disease,” insects leave their colonies, never to return there again. Bees do not live alone and soon die away from the hives. The reason for the strange behavior is chemicals and cellular radio signals, which, according to scientists at the University of Koblenz-Landau, drive the winged workers crazy.

What if...?

Still, what happens if bees go extinct or their population declines to critical levels? Will Einstein's prediction - “no bees - no pollination - no food - no humans” - come true?
It must be said that there are other natural pollinators in the world - flies, butterflies, birds, bats, wind. Additionally, not all plants are pollinated by bees. In the old days, the flora of North America and Ireland managed just fine without them. It was people who brought bees there.
But since the great geographical discoveries, considerable changes have occurred in the world. The population has grown, and the need for food has also grown.
Today, the loss of bees, to whom we owe 1/3 of the entire harvest, cannot pass without consequences. Humanity will lose more than just honey.
The Times and Business Insider provide the following chain, citing expert opinion: the higher the mortality rate among insects, the faster beekeeping will become unprofitable. People will begin to abandon their craft, and the frightening statistics will only get worse. Since most of the harvest depends on bees, humanity will have to “tighten its belts” - food counters will be empty, prices for the remaining products will skyrocket. Hunger will begin. And you shouldn’t rely on other components of our daily diet. Since some of the plants will disappear, livestock will also lose food, which means there will be a shortage of milk, cheeses, yoghurts and, ultimately, beef. In general, no matter how you look at it, a world without bees will not be able to afford the current human population.
Compared to the previous one, the thought that a person will have problems with clothes simply fades. Among other things, bees pollinate cotton. In general, you will have to say goodbye to the “100%, 50%, 5% cotton” tags and switch to polyester or skins.

Diet of the future
Still, a person will have hope. The pig, which does not depend on the winged workers, will not leave him. The stocks of some basic food products - grain crops and rice, which are pollinated by the wind, will decrease slightly, but will not disappear.
Man will find another salvation where life once originated - in the ocean. The disappearance of bees itself will not affect the fish population, but if people get down to business with their inherent insatiability, marine inhabitants will soon repeat the fate of insects.

Alternatives

At the same time as searching for a solution to stop the increase in bee mortality, scientists are looking for a replacement. The first candidate is a bumblebee. He also collects honey, but not as tasty as that of bees. Bumblebee honey resembles sugar syrup, but it is also not enough. For comparison, after honey collection, 34 kg of honey was pumped out from two bee colonies, and bumblebee honey was selected using an eye dropper (48 g).

But the bumblebee has long proven itself to be a pollinator. For example, in some areas of Siberia, agriculture has long switched to them. Agronomist Lyudmila Chupina claims that “bumblebees are more industrious than their relatives and are cheaper to maintain.” One problem: they, too, are dying out.
The second potential substitute for bees is humans. The authors of the study “A World Without Bees,” Benjamin Allison and Brian McCollum, immerse the reader in a world where people have learned to live without honey plants. This is not the Earth of 2070, but the modern Sichuan province of China. The bees disappeared there about twenty years ago, due to the already mentioned pesticides. However, the region remains the largest exporter of pears, which are pollinated by bees around the world and here by people. Workers pollinate flowers by hand. It's inconvenient and expensive, but it works.

Another candidate is a robot bee. According to the Guardian, Harvard engineers are currently developing the new assistant. Experimental models have already been invented. Robots with their wings repeat the movements of a bee and thus pollinate plants. According to scientists, one decade separates them from completing the project.

And yet the world needs bees. Once upon a time, 65 million years ago, nature forever erased dinosaurs from the “book of life”, but left bees. More precisely, according to biologist Sandra Rehan from the University of New Hampshire, after complete extinction they were reborn. Perhaps they will outlive humanity.

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Albert Einstein, who is considered to be distinguished by rare insight, predicted back in the early 40s of the last century that if bees disappear on Earth, then soon there will be no people either. They say that Vanga, who knew nothing about this, prophesied decades later: in 2004, a massive pestilence of bees would begin in the world, followed by the disappearance of many plants, animals and, finally, humans. The clairvoyant was wrong by only two years. According to some reports, since 2006 there has been a sharp decline in the number of bees on the planet, and this, as some experts say, will inevitably lead to catastrophic consequences.

Statistics from the World Bee Fund (WSBF) are as follows. In the United States, bee colonies decrease by 30-35 percent every winter, in Europe - by about 20 percent, although usually in the cold season the losses should be no more than 10 percent. In Russia, the number of bee colonies has decreased by a quarter over the past ten years. Living without honey, of course, is not sweet. However, the problem is not only its impending shortage. “Most consumers are confident that the main task bees - honey production,” says Nikolai Krivtsov, director of the Beekeeping Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences, corresponding member of the Russian Agricultural Academy. - Not at all. Another thing is much more important: bees pollinate about 150 types of crops, which in Russia, for example, occupy more than nine million hectares. Pollination not only increases the yield of plants, but also improves the quality of their seeds and fruits.” According to the most conservative estimates, the value of the harvest obtained annually thanks to bees is 10 billion rubles.

The role of insects in plant pollination is colossal - up to a third of humanity's food resources depend on them. Bees do 80-90 percent of this work. “Over the last half century, the number of so-called bee-dependent crops grown by humanity has quadrupled, while the number of bees has halved,” says Arnold Butov, chairman of the Russian National Union of Beekeepers. “At the same time, the number of individuals per hectare of land has decreased by 90 percent.” But without bees it is impossible to cultivate citrus fruits, apples, onions, zucchini, beans, peppers, eggplants, cucumbers, tomatoes, coffee, cocoa, nuts, melons, and berries. Without the bee, we are clearly in trouble. “We get the vast majority of minerals, vitamins, and antioxidants from plant foods, which give us almost half of the energy that enters the body with food,” recalls the director of the Institute of Nutrition of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, Academician of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences Viktor Tutelyan. “Of course, the same vitamins and minerals can be synthesized artificially, but if wildlife begins to die, then the chemically obtained nutrients may no longer be useful to us.”

Why are bees disappearing? Experts name several reasons, and all of them are related to the advance of civilization on living nature. The first reason is the excessive use of pesticides. European states, in an effort to preserve bees, are introducing a ban on certain types of pesticides - Germany, France and Italy have already resorted to such measures, and the UK is also considering this. However, agricultural enterprises cannot completely abandon pesticides. In this regard, WSBF proposed to ban the use of these substances in daytime while there are bees in the fields.

The second reason is new diseases. American beekeepers are losing entire colonies of these insects due to an unknown disease called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). The disease, which is killing millions of bee colonies, has already been reported in 24 states. And experts cannot determine the causes of the disease. There were suggestions that it could be caused by the action of Bt toxin. It is produced by genetically modified plants with an integrated gene from the soil bacterium Bt, which kills pests. “The connection between GM plants and the spread of CCD is further confirmed by the fact that greatest number dead bees were recorded precisely in the regions where Bt crops are grown,” notes international expert on environmental and food security, Doctor of Biological Sciences Irina Ermakova.

Other scientists believe that electromagnetic radiation is to blame for everything, or rather, one of its sources is cellular communications. For the first time, the relationship between mobile phones and bees was noticed by researchers from the University of Punjab (India), who observed bee families from two hives for three months. The first hive was subjected electromagnetic radiation from two mobile phones, which were turned on every day for 15 minutes, and the second hive was not irradiated. It turned out that in the first hive the queen bee laid half as many eggs. The amount of honey has also decreased. In addition, worker bees from the first hive stopped returning home after collecting pollen. There is a bitter irony in this situation: after all, at one time mobile communications They called it a honeycomb precisely by analogy with the wax structures - honeycombs that bees create for storing food and settling families. Now that mobile phones Every farmer and beekeeper is armed; the bees seem to be having a hard time.

Another possible reason for the death of beneficial insects is climate change on the planet, which may interfere with the pollination of plants and the moisture of fields. James Thompson, a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto, began studying wild plants 17 years ago in the Colorado Rockies, recording and comparing his observations three times a year. His conclusion: Climate change could cause flowers to bloom too early, long before bees emerge from hibernation, so that insects cannot obtain early nectar and flowers cannot be pollinated. According to Thompson, this applies to a huge number of flowering plants, not only wild ones, but also cultivated ones, such as tomatoes and strawberries. Scientists from International Institute water management in Stockholm also revealed impacts on food security uneven distribution of precipitation associated with global climate change. As an example of the unpredictability of precipitation, they are reminiscent of last summer's drought in Russia and floods in Pakistan.

And yet, scientists cannot yet come to a consensus on the cause of the death of bees. This is what frightens me. After all, there could be many reasons. But no matter which of them dominates, people are most likely to blame. Is it really that tragic?

Specialists from the Department of Entomology, Faculty of Biology, Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov, do not believe in this natural horror story. They believe that, firstly, the scale of extinction is greatly exaggerated. Periodic decline in the population of certain species is a normal phenomenon in nature. And this is usually associated with a decrease in genetic diversity. Particularly in the case of bees, due to their inbreeding in a particular region. However, after the “degenerates” die, those remaining without harmful mutations in the genome quickly restore the population size. So, in their opinion, honey bees as a species are unlikely to face final death. Secondly, even if this happens, nothing irreparable will happen. Cultivated plants, apparently, you’ll just have to change the pollinator. For example, buckwheat can be pollinated by flies, wasps, beetles... In addition, the bee has not always been the main pollinator of plants, entomologists remind. For many millions of years it lived only in Central Africa, and came to more northern regions only 20 thousand years ago. Man tamed it only 6 thousand years ago. And before that, the plant world existed perfectly well without domestic bees.

Although I feel sorry for the bees and I also want honey.

Opinions

Bees are unlikely to completely disappear from the face of the Earth, because they are surprisingly efficient, hardy and quite aggressively displacing competitors. But their role in the natural chain should not be exaggerated. For example, they have not always been the main pollinator of plants. Before they were tamed by humans, other insects were excellent at this craft. And they are not the only ones who know how to create honey. For example, polybius wasps, which were once tamed by South American Indians, are suitable for this role.

Bella Striganova, Doctor of Biological Sciences, Head of the Laboratory of Soil Zoology, Institute of Ecology and Evolution. A. N. Severtsov RAS:

The number of bees around the world is declining sharply, primarily due to the constant reduction of areas where the insects can feed. Biological diversity the planet is under attack - forests are cut down, water bodies are polluted, and the composition of the atmosphere is depleted. If in other countries this alarming situation is more or less controlled (for example, parks and forests are being planted in Europe), then in our country a complete disgrace is happening. An example is the Moscow region, where cottage settlements are attacking the once luxurious forests full of mushrooms and berries.

Due to urbanization and technological progress, many living organisms are on the verge of extinction, including bees, which vitally need to build their home. The main reason for their death is that they actually become homeless. A person can live in this state, but a bee cannot.

Last year, Nature magazine reported that Europe lost 1/3 of its honey bee population last winter. What happens if bees disappear? Einstein said that after the bee, man will die.

Frightening numbers


A person can live without oxygen for three minutes, without water for three days, and without bees for four years. At least that's what Einstein thought. The scientist's quote appeared in 1941 in the Canadian Bee Journal. It follows from it that the death of bees for humanity will be no better than a global catastrophe - a volcanic eruption, a meteorite fall or the explosion of a large hadron collider. The result is still the same.
Meanwhile, the mass death of bees continues. The scientific journal Nature reported that in southern countries over the past winter the population decreased by 5%, in central Europe by 10-15%, and in the North by 20%.
In Russia, the number of hives has decreased especially strongly in the Chelyabinsk and Ulyanovsk regions. In the country as a whole, bee mortality is 20%. Experts say that the current number of bees is no longer enough to pollinate all plants. Last year, the UN declared that bee mortality was becoming a global problem.

What is the problem?



The story of the death of honey insects is not new: the process began in the middle of the 20th century, but reached its peak in the last twenty years. There is no single reason, but the main culprit has been found - a person.
Agriculture has almost everywhere switched to chemicals - nitrogen fertilizers, pesticides. The latter do not kill insects, but, according to scientists, they lower their immunity.
Professor Peter Neumann talks about the plague of bees - varroatosis, a disease carried by a microscopic mite: “it is dangerous because it sucks all the vital juices out of the bee. This is the most common bee disease, it is difficult to get rid of these mites, and treating and nursing weakened insects takes a lot of time and rarely leads to the desired results.”
And a worker bee is not supposed to get sick. Beekeepers do not particularly care about the health of the hive members and continue their business as usual: transporting bee colonies over vast distances. In the US, hives are transported from Florida to California to pollinate crops. Such long trips place bee families under enormous stress. And this leads to “colony collapse syndrome.”
It was described by American beekeepers in 2006. During the course of the “disease,” insects leave their colonies, never to return there again. Bees do not live alone and soon die away from the hives. The reason for the strange behavior is chemicals and cellular radio signals, which, according to scientists at the University of Koblenz-Landau, drive the winged workers crazy.

What if...?



Still, what happens if bees go extinct or their population declines to critical levels? Will Einstein's prediction - “no bees - no pollination - no food - no humans” - come true?
It must be said that there are other natural pollinators in the world - flies, butterflies, birds, bats, wind. Additionally, not all plants are pollinated by bees. In the old days, the flora of North America and Ireland managed just fine without them. It was people who brought bees there.
But since the great geographical discoveries, considerable changes have occurred in the world. The population has grown, and the need for food has also grown.
Today, the loss of bees, to whom we owe 1/3 of the entire harvest, cannot pass without consequences. Humanity will lose more than just honey.
The Times and Business Insider provide the following chain, citing expert opinion: the higher the mortality rate among insects, the faster beekeeping will become unprofitable. People will begin to abandon their craft, and the frightening statistics will only get worse. Since most of the harvest depends on bees, humanity will have to “tighten its belts” - food counters will be empty, prices for the remaining products will skyrocket. Hunger will begin. And you shouldn’t rely on other components of our daily diet. Since some of the plants will disappear, livestock will also lose food, which means there will be a shortage of milk, cheeses, yoghurts and, ultimately, beef. In general, no matter how you look at it, a world without bees will not be able to afford the current human population.
Compared to the previous one, the thought that a person will have problems with clothes simply fades. Among other things, bees pollinate cotton. In general, you will have to say goodbye to the “100%, 50%, 5% cotton” tags and switch to polyester or skins.

Diet of the future
Still, a person will have hope. The pig, which does not depend on the winged workers, will not leave him. The stocks of some basic food products - grain crops and rice, which are pollinated by the wind, will decrease slightly, but will not disappear.
Man will find another salvation where life once originated - in the ocean. The disappearance of bees itself will not affect the fish population, but if people get down to business with their inherent insatiability, marine inhabitants will soon repeat the fate of insects.

Alternatives



At the same time as searching for a solution to stop the increase in bee mortality, scientists are looking for a replacement. The first candidate is a bumblebee. He also collects honey, but not as tasty as that of bees. Bumblebee honey resembles sugar syrup, but it is also not enough. For comparison, after honey collection, 34 kg of honey was pumped out from two bee colonies, and bumblebee honey was selected using an eye dropper (48 g).
But the bumblebee has long proven itself to be a pollinator. For example, in some areas of Siberia, agriculture has long switched to them. Agronomist Lyudmila Chupina claims that “bumblebees are more industrious than their relatives and are cheaper to maintain.” One problem: they, too, are dying out.
The second potential substitute for bees is humans. The authors of the study “A World Without Bees,” Benjamin Allison and Brian McCollum, immerse the reader in a world where people have learned to live without honey plants. This is not the Earth of 2070, but the modern Sichuan province of China. The bees disappeared there about twenty years ago, due to the already mentioned pesticides. However, the region remains the largest exporter of pears, which are pollinated by bees around the world and here by people. Workers pollinate flowers by hand. It's inconvenient and expensive, but it works.
Another candidate is a robot bee. According to the Guardian, Harvard engineers are currently developing the new assistant. Experimental models have already been invented. Robots with their wings repeat the movements of a bee and thus pollinate plants. According to scientists, one decade separates them from completing the project.
And yet the world needs bees. Once upon a time, 65 million years ago, nature forever erased dinosaurs from the “book of life”, but left bees. More precisely, according to biologist Sandra Rehan from the University of New Hampshire, after complete extinction they were reborn. Perhaps they will outlive humanity.

home » How to earn » What happens if the bees disappear. Eco Inform is a news agency. If there are no bees