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Globally there are more honey bees than other types of bee and pollinating insects, so it is the world’s most important pollinator of food crops. It is estimated that one third of the food that we consume each day relies on pollination mainly by bees. Many domestic and imported fruits and vegetables require pollination. Examples include avocados, soybeans, asparagus, broccoli, celery, squash, and sunflowers for oil, cucumbers, citrus fruit, peaches, kiwis, cherries, cranberries and melons. For crops such as blueberries and almonds, the honey bee plays an essential role in pollination of commercial crops, with around 80% of the US crop said to be dependent on honey bees. Honey bees can also pollinate clover and alfalfa, which are fed to cattle, so there are implications for the meat and dairy industry too. And that is not to mention the huge range of manufactured food products made from all these ingredients. In addition, honey bees play a significant role in the pollination of other important crops such as cotton and flax. And there are also a number of valuable non-food products produced by the honey bee, such as beeswax used in cleaning and beauty products .
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Bees are industrious pollinators because they have coevolved with flowering plants over millions of years. The bees need the flowers for food, while the flower needs the bee to reproduce. Unlike other insects, nectar and pollen from flowering plants are bees’ only food source; the sweet nectar drink gives adult bees energy. Pollen is protein-rich baby food. As the poet Kahlil Gibran beautifully put it: “To the bee, a flower is the fountain of life, and to the flower, the bee is a messenger of love.” www.sustainweb.org
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In the process of foraging for food, bees are designed to pollinate. If you watch a female honeybee or bumblebee on a flower, you will see she has balls of pollen on her back legs.These are collected in her pollen baskets which she takes back to the nest to feed the young after fertilising the flowers. For solitary bees, the pollen collects on the hairs that are on their abdomen. So how do the bees pollinate? Quite simply, the bee gets covered in pollen, from the male part of the flower (the stamen), and deposit the grains on the female part (the stigma) of the next flower that they visit. Luckily for the plant, bees tend to visit flowers from the same plant when they are flowering rather than flit from one plant to another, so the plant is able to have sex. Once the pollen is on the stigma it moves down into the ovary where it fertilises and forms a seed. A few months later the seed grows into a fruit or vegetable. Think of an apple tree; it blossoms, is visited by bees, produces apples later in the summer containing pips (the seeds), which if planted could slowly grow into a new apple tree www.theguardian.com
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Bees live in colonies that contain the queen bee, the worker bee and the drone. The worker bee and the queen bee are both female, but only the queen bee can reproduce. All drones are male. Worker bees clean the hive, collecting pollen and nectar to feed the colony and they take care of the offspring.The drone’s only job is to mate with the queen. The queen’s only job is to lay eggs, she does not do any other work. Bees store their venom in a sac attached to their stinger and only female bees sting. That is because the stinger, called an ovipositor, is part of the female bee’s reproductive design. A queen bee uses her ovipositor to lay eggs as well as sting. Sterile females, also called worker bees, don’t lay eggs.They just use their ovipositors to sting. pestworldforkids.org 5
Only four of these species are honeybees, of which the western honeybee is the one we took to the US and then on to Australasia. Honeybees make honey. It’s their winter food, for feeding the 10,000-strong colony in the hive when it’s too cold to fly. Bumblebees don’t make honey we can harvest but they are important pollinators, too. Around 250 species of bees are different types of bumblebees. Their hairier coats can attract more pollen and they can fly at colder temperatures than honeybees. Some species are long-tongued so are better at pollinating plants with long, tubular flowers. And they are capable of “buzz pollination” – by shaking the pollen from the anthers of a flower on to the stigma of another – which is how some crops, notably tomatoes, are pollinated. While most bumblebees are wild, some species are increasingly used commercially to buzz pollinate. Research shows that under the same conditions, bumbles can actually pollinate more flowers per bee than honeybees, though a honeybee colony (50,000 bees in the summer) is much larger than a colony of bumblebees (only 250). www.theguardian.com
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Bumblebees are considered to be beneficial insects because they pollinate crops and plants. They are very social bees and live in large “families”. Unlike honeybees, bumblebees can sting more than once because their stingers are smooth and do not get caught in the skin when they fly away.
Honeybees live in large “families” and are found all over the world. The honeybee is the only social insect whose colony can survive many years. That is because they huddle together and eat honey to keep themselves alive during the winter months.
Carpenter bees are solitary bees. They build nests just for themselves and only feed their own young. They get their name from their ability to drill through wood. Carpenter bee stingers are not barbed, so they are able to sting over and over again.
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Facts
-Since the 50s more than half of our native bee population has disappeared -3 species are extinct -5 are under serious threat of extinction and 2 are very close to that threat
Our honeybees are in crisis and there are serious effects already in motion due to the loss of these precious and very useful creatures. Without honeybees our flora, fauna and our food sources are going to disappear. Bees are dying at never before seen rates due to an emerging threat called Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD. The first official account of the CCD was reported in 2006 when Beekeepers began noticing a very drastic increase in the disappearance of the honey bee colonies that are in North America (with approximately 25-30% of the colonies are dying every single year). There is no one a single cause of CCD, but research points to the use of neonicotinoid and pesticides (commonly used on GMO crops) as the main culprit. Other factors include the invasion of varroa mites, and the impacts of climate change. To note, New Zealand has not recorded the same increases in Colony Collapse Disorder that have been seen in North America. For New Zealand bees, weather extremes that affect the delicate Manuka flower have been the bigger threat. www.comvita.com
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EE NUMBERS ARE FALLING ACROSS THE WORLD. THERE ISN’T ONE SINGLE CAUSE TO BLAME BUT THERE ARE THREE SIGNIFICANT THREATS THAT STAND OUT: PESTICIDES, THE VARROA MITE AND HABITAT LOSS. PESTICIDES In non-organic farming, pesticides such as neonicotinoids are applied to crops to kill and control pests, but they also cause considerable harm to bees and other species, blocking neural pathways in their central nervous systems, causing disorientation, inability to feed and death. The problem with neonics is also that they are systemic pesticides. Once seeds have been coated in these pesticides, then every part of the plant’s tissues will take it up as it grows. A bee can still receive a toxic dose a long time after the plant has been treated. Neonics also spread and contaminate soil, air, nearby hedges and water nearby. A full ban on outdoor crops of the three worst, bee-harming neonicotinoids was announced earlier this year. Post-Brexit we need to ensure this ban continues and that our pollinators continue to be protected. VARROA MITE Honey bees also face another huge threat from the varroa mite, which attaches itself to the honey bee and sucks its blood. When the bee returns to the hive, the varroa mite can spread and bring viruses and disease with them. Varroa mites are unfortunately very successful. Once the varroa mite has entered
www.soilassociation.org
a colony, it can kill the whole colony in 2-3 years. They have been found to be one of the main causes of colony collapse disorder in North America. Research has found that honey bees infected with varroa mites may be more susceptible to the toxic effects of the neonicotinoid, imidacloprid. The varroa mite does not attack bumblebees or solitary bees, but all types of bees face a significant threat from our changing land use. HABITAT LOSS There is also a significant threat against bees from our changing land use. As cities grow and agriculture becomes more intensive, bees are losing the wild spaces, hedgerows and meadows where they can find flowers and food. An estimated 97% of wildflower meadows disappeared from England and Wales between the 1930s and 1980s; this has contributed to a profound impact on our wildlife, including bees. Hayhow, D.B. et al (2016) ‘State of Nature 2016’, The State of Nature Partnership, p 21 available online here. We have unfortunately lost many flowers from the landscape to growing cities, new roads and intensive agriculture. This has left the bees scrambling to find enough food. Many bee species have declined and two bumblebee species have even become extinct in the UK since 1940. At Soil Association we campaign for more sustainable farming to support our bees and other pollinators for current and future generations. It’s important that farming protects space for the insects and wildlife that are part of the landscape too.
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We rely on honey bees for nearly ONE THIRD of our entire entire food supply. Foods like avocados, almonds, apples, coffee, oranges, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, garlic, etc. Would not exist without bees to pollinate them...
Bees also play a vital role in our global ecosystem. Plants depend on bees to reproduce, insects depend on plants for food and shelter, small animals depend on insects for food, larger animals depend...
on small animals and plants for food, shelter and medicine and so on up the food chain. This world without bees will affect every aspect of our way of life. www.comvita.com
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It’s not just up to beekeepers and farmers to address the plight of bees. There are simple steps that you can take right now to make the world friendlier for bees. Start by creating a bee-friendly garden. When treating your lawn or garden, avoid using chemicals and pesticides. Plant bee-loving flowers and herbs such as; lavender, rosemary, sage, sunflowers, redbud, catnip, aster and echinacea. And buy your honey from sustainable companies always!
Healthy bees and honey start at the source. Our hives are located far from pollution and agricultural sprays in remote forests in New Zealand, a country free of Genetically Modified crops. While our bees are busiest during the Manuka flowering season (typically September through February), we ensure our bees are looked after and hives protected throughout the year. Comvita also owns a queen bee-rearing facility to ensure that our bee colonies have good genetic diversity, high productivity and youthful Queens, all of which contribute to healthy hives.
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You can use many natural methods for the control of pesky insects which threaten your plants and crops. There are a number of ways to keep slugs down naturally for instance such as placing salt or eggshells around precious young plants‌no self respecting slug will crawl over eggshells! You can also make up a mixture of garlic, chilli and water which you can then spray over plants to deter greenfly and similar. greenerideal.com
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You will help honey bees pollinate. In the process of foraging for food, bees are designed to pollinate. If you watch a female honeybee or bumblebee on a flower, you will see she has balls of pollen on her back legs. These are collected in her pollen baskets which she takes back to the nest to feed the young after fertilising the flowers. For solitary bees, the pollen collects on the hairs that are on the bee´s abdomen. www.honeybeesuite.com
Bees are vital to the global eco-system. Honeybees pollinate one third of the global food supply, and without them many plants (including food crops) would die. If there are no bees, there’d be no flowers; with no flowers, there’d be no herbivores; with no herbivores, there’d be no omnivores. In short, if we don’t ensure the sustainable health of bees, we could put our own human survival at risk.
The Manuka flower is a scarce resource found only in New Zealand, it only blooms 2-6 weeks per year and its composition is delicate. This means that one of the earth’s most rare and precious wellness resources is seriously endangered by the weather extremes resulting from climate change. At a global level, the more we invest in and choose sustainable practices, the more we can slow and curb the effects of climate change, which threatens the existence of the Manuka flower and so many other powerful plants.
We often hear about antibiotics used in the dairy and meat industries, but it is rarely discussed with bees. The same impacts apply: the use of antibiotics could destroy the entire ecosystem of the hive. It is illegal in New Zealand to use antibiotics for bees, so they are never used during the production or collection of Manuka Honey. Which means there is no risk of ingesting unnecessary antibiotics when you choose REAL Manuka Honey.
Pesticides commonly used on large, essential crops have been found to directly cause harm to honey bees. This can range from affecting flight patterns to demolishing entire colonies. Along with the damage to the honeybee, pesticide traces turn up in the pollen and nectar that the bees gather, and that would end up in your bottle of honey. To avoid pesticides, look for honey that is harvested in remote regions. Our hives are located far from pollution and agricultural sprays in remote forests in New Zealand, a country free of Genetically Modified crops.
With the looming threats of global warming, we understand that our processes create a carbon footprint and it is a responsibility for all citizens and especially businesses to continually ask themselves what they can do to reduce their impact. If a brand you buy isn’t forthcoming about their sustainability practices, ask them. Our Manuka plantation projects, partnerships, and pledge to plant more trees provides opportunities for Comvita to offset its carbon credits by reducing its overall carbon footprint.
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Choose single flowers versus doubles or triples, choosing traditional flowers not highly modified flowers. Choose organic, non-GMO, wild, pollution-free foods to plant. Bees need plenty of pollen and nectar – so think about planting plants that provide both nectar and pollen. Create an edible garden, plant berries, fruit trees and herbs. Some good examples are apples, pears, cucumbers and basil. Avoid chemical pesticides, they harm the bees and other pollinating insects. Provide fresh, pesticide-free drinking water for bees. If you fill a saucepan of water, put pebbles or twigs in the water for bees to rest on while they drink. www.comvita.com
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17 www.greenerideal.com
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“If the bee desapperd off the face of the Earth, man would only have four years left to live�. 19
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All worker bees are female. A bee produces a teaspoon of honey (about 5 grams) in her lifetime.
To produce a kilogram of honey, bees fly the equivalent of three times around the world in air miles.
The type of flower the bees take their nectar from determines the honey’s flavour. www.sciencelearn.org.nz
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Diseño por Isabela Alonso. Proyecto Académico, sin fines de lucro. Fotos web. Diseño de Inofrmación Visual.
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