Between 2023 and 2024, US beekeepers lost an estimated 55.1 percent of their colonies—the worst loss in more than a decade and nearly 15 percent higher than the previous 13-year average.
Bees pollinate three-quarters of the fruits, vegetables, and nuts we eat, and many of us rely on bee products for their nutrition and health-promoting gifts. If bees vanish, it’s scary to think of all we stand to lose. And some say that if the bees go, we go too.
Jeff Pettis, president of Apimondia—The International Federation of Beekeepers’ Associations—sums up the health benefits that bees offer humans in one word: huge.
Although two-thirds of our diet comes from carbohydrates—crops like rice, wheat, and corn—which are pollinated by wind rather than insects, many other important foods require bees.
“So we’re not going to starve if we don’t have bees. But literally, everything you can think of that’s nutritious—fruits, nuts, and vegetables—all of those are, we’ll call it, animal-pollinated. The vast majority of those are pollinated by honey bees or other wild bees,” he told The Epoch Times.
1 thought on “Don’t Forget about the Bees”
Comments are closed.