Honeybee populations are declining around the globe. Here’s why you should be very alarmed by that fact.
Gothamist posted this picture to demonstrate what a typical grocery store would look like if bee populations continue to fall.
Lee Kane, “Eco-Czar” for Whole Foods, says we are already seeing impacts from the die-off, which cliams about 30% of the bee population every year.
I think we’re seeing examples. For example in the almond world, honeybees are the main pollinator; in fact, they’re almost the exclusive pollinator of the almond crop, and it’s been extremely hard for the almond farmers to get healthy honeybees in to pollinate that crop. That’s been increasing dramatically over the past two years, to the point where beekeepers are reluctant to bring their bees to the almond crop any longer because of the significant rate of die-off there. But partly that’s because it’s a significant monoculture where the almond farms are located in California. There’s literally nothing else for the bees to forage besides the almonds, and the almond crop and the flowering is only a couple of weeks a year. So once the almond flowers are gone, there is literally nothing else for the bees to eat.
