If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.
If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) states that there are 100 crop species that provide 90% of food around the world and 71 of these are pollinated by bees. In Europe alone, 84% of the 264 crop species and 4,000 plant varieties exist thanks to pollination by bees.
Even if you hate bees, you need them. They are responsible for much of the food on your plate. Bees perform a task that is vital to the survival of agriculture: pollination. In fact, one-third of our global food supply is pollinated by bees.
Simply put, bees keep plants and crops alive. Without bees, humans wouldn’t have very much to eat.
To put this into context, these are many of the crops pollinated by bees: Almonds, apples, apricots, avocados, blueberries, cantaloupes, cashews, coffee, cranberries, cucumbers, eggplants, grapes, kiwis, mangoes, okra, peaches, pears, peppers, strawberries, tangerines, walnuts and watermelons.
It is interesting to know it has been accurately estimated, that more than 100,000 varieties of our plants would disappear if they were not visited by the bees. Our blossoms-covered valley owes a large part of its wonderful fruition, to the little people of the hive.
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In light of the above, the disappearance of bees would cause a true food crisis. Around 84% of commercial crops depend on bee pollination. For example, in Andalusia (Spain) in 1987 a good sunflower harvest was expected but this did not occur due to the lack of beehives; this was caused by the loss of bees from the varroa mite.
Bumblebee populations have been helped in the past quarter-century by European farming policies that encourage the preservation of hedgerows, where bumblebees often establish nests in old mouse holes. Setting aside strips of wildflowers at the edges of fields also helps.
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