A lot of people don't have a great fondness for bees, neither domestic nor wild. They are in that group of creatures that cause stings, and such a huge draw back cannot compensate for any good that they might do.
But the simple truth is, that without bees, the ability of humans to live on this globe would be so seriously jeopardized, the planet could not possibly support such a large number of us. Without bees to do the job of acting as middleman in the fertilization of crops, vegetation would become quite rare. And with it, not only do we lose food crops, we also lose feed crops.
And at the moment, both wild and domestic bees are being wiped out by the mega millions. Unless the slaughter stops, problems over global heating will become somewhat moot.
At the moment, it is the bee population in the Western hemisphere that sees its population ravaged to survival numbers. Wild colonies disappearing, and domestic bee keepers facing the onslaught of CCD - Colony Collapse Disorder, when up to 90% of a hive die off in a short period of time.
Bees started having a hard time of it as long ago as 1965, but in 1998 a minor problem started to become a major one.
That is when three chemicals – clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam – known as neonicotinoids, got added to crop spray pesticides.making them the most widely used insecticides in the world.
Commercial crop-spray producer Bayer had them approved for use, in tests which seemed to indicate that bees were not harmed by these toxins. It is widely accepted that the tests were hopelessly flawed, and the honey bees' struggles against pollution, blood sucking parasites and other natural disasters had become insurmountable. However, at this time, Bayer lobbyists continue to campaign for the toxins to be permitted to be used, for the company seems to see itself as a simple money making operation, and should not be castigated for its legal actions,
The EU has ruled that from July1, 2013, the toxins are not to be used anywhere within Europe. They are losing 50 million colonies a year in Germany alone, and even those good people have said their fellow national company needs to stop doing so much harm to the world at large.
Despite a 2 million signature petition, in America the EPA not only declines to take action against bee poisons, in 2012 it actually curtailed a 60 day open comment period to end public outcry in America as quickly as it legally could,
Perhaps we owe it to our kids to bring pressure to bear on Washington to bring pressure to bear on the EPA to ignore the Bayer lobbyists and stop the rot while there is still time to do so. And then our kids will only have to deal with global warning, and not the total collapse of our food supply as well.
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