BEES
How
important are they?
BRIEF HISTORY
There has been some debate about the age of bees. The oldest known
honey bee as we know it today was found about 35-40 million years ago, but a
discovery in Burma has found a close ancestor encapsulated in a piece of amber
that is over 100 million years
The Greeks and Romans were
keeping bees 3000 years ago. They called honey "nectar of the Gods"
and Greek athletes used honey as a carbohydrate boost.
Honeybees did not exist in North or South America, Australia
or New Zealand until Europeans settled there. By the mid 1600's, records show
that the honeybee population was widespread on the East Coast and the bees
spread to the West Coast before the settlers. Native American called the
honeybee "White Man's Flies".
Pollinators
In addition to gathering nectar to produce honey, honeybees
perform another vital function they help in pollination of agricultural crops,
home gardens, orchards, and wildlife habitats. As bees travel from blossom to
blossom in search of nectar, they transfer pollen from plant to plant, thus
fertilizing the plants and enabling them to bear fruit or seeds.
IMPORTANCE
Just how important are
honeybees to the human diet? Typically, according to the US Department of
Agriculture, these under-appreciated workers pollinate 80% of our flowering
crops which constitute 1/3 of everything we eat. Their loss could effect not
only dietary staples such as apples, broccoli, strawberries, nuts, asparagus,
blueberries and cucumbers, but may threaten our beef and dairy industries if
alfalfa is not available for feed. One Cornell University study estimated that
honeybees annually pollinate $14 billion worth of seeds and crops in the US.
Essentially, if honeybees disappear, they could take most of our insect
pollinated plants with them, potentially reducing mankind to little more than a
bread and water diet.
So you can decide for yourself,
how important are honey bees to you?
http://hubpages.com/hub/Why-saving-the-bees-is-so-important-for-our-world_
mailto:jeniecurtis@empirecollege.com