And that figure is growing by over , species every year. Yet hard data on threatened insect species is lacking, with only 8, records actually assessed by the IUCN. Recently, the spread of the Asian Hornet in Europe has caused great concern. This species preys on honey bees, and a single hornet is capable of killing an entire hive. There is some evidence that wild bees in North America have declined in the face of fungal and bacterial diseases.
Read more: Embattled bees face yet another potential threat — virus-carrying hoverflies. Of course, in the past bees have coexisted with these pathogens. Pollution — particularly from exposure to pesticides — is a key cause of pollinator decline.
There are three types of chemical pesticide widely used in the UK: insecticides targeting insect pests, fungicides targeting fungal pathogens of crops and herbicides targeting weeds. But they may not be the greatest problem pollinators experience. Herbicides are actually used five times as much in farming as insecticides.
These weed killers target a huge variety of the wild plants that bees need to forage. Environmentally-friendly farming schemes recommend planting wildflower strips on the edge of crops, to provide safe refuge and food sources for pollinators. Bees are one of the most important species on the planet and if all the bees died the world would be a very different place. They are critical pollinators for many of the crop products we use daily.
A world without bees would be a place where supermarkets would struggle to fill the fruit and vegetable aisles and the products that we could find would likely only be available at a very high price. Items that are common and inexpensive now, would become luxury items. Apples are one of the most popular, common and very affordable fruits that we all enjoy. But without bees to pollinate apple trees this would no longer be the case. Apples would become scarce and very expensive quickly without bees.
Like most fruit trees, apples in particular require cross-pollination with other varieties that are not closely related to produce a full healthy crop of fruit. Without bees this would have to be done by human hand, which is possible but would make little economic sense in most countries. Of course this would then knock-on affect other apple products like cider, apple pastries, and apple juice- you need around 2.
That a lot of pollination required by bees! Many types of berry rely heavily on bee pollination. In the case of raspberries, blackberries and blueberries bees are considered essential.
It's almost impossible to imagine that these fruits would exist without bees. They would just be too difficult to produce without bee pollinating them. The same goes for cherries, so no cherry pie available in that famous Twin Peaks diner! It's not only cherry pie that would be off the menu either Some coffee varieties can be self-pollinated but even in those cases the presence of bees can dramatically improve the quality and size of the coffee beans. Without bees they might not be a viable crop.
Some varieties like Robusta coffee, appear to be completely dependent on pollinators. Without bees, coffee would be more difficult and more much expensive to produce. Our varieties available would become very limited and what was available would see a very unwelcome and dramatic price increase.
Cotton crops do not rely completely on bees for pollination but introducing them into the crop during flowering results in a very large increase in quantity and quality of the cotton lint.
Without the hard work that bees do, several changes would happen. It would be likely that an inexpensive cotton t-shirt would become an expensive garment to buy.
And the thing is, bees are some of the best pollinators out there. In fact, they've co-evolved with flowering plants over millions of years to become pollinating machines.
Without bees and other pollinators, supermarket shelves would hold about half the fruits and vegetables they have now, transforming the produce section from this We wouldn't have luxuries like almonds, apples, or avocados. We use alfalfa to feed dairy cattle, and dairy cattle, of course, produces the milk, and the milk is used to produce many dairy products that we eat.
When I talk to the kids, all the kids are very disappointed to hear that we might lose ice cream. Narrator: The extinction of bees could have a disastrous domino effect, killing off animals that eat those plants, and so on up the food chain. Luckily, humanity wouldn't face a global famine like you might expect. Narrator: So if the bee apocalypse does hit, we could still meet the daily calorie needs of our global population. Our diets, however, would suffer in major ways, as foods that provide key nutrients for our bodies would become scarce and extremely expensive.
We would probably be very sickly. So, for example, let's just think about citrus, right? We would probably have issues with scurvy, if you think about it.
I guess you could really supplement that with vitamins, but again, definitely not all of the vitamins can be as easily accessible to the body as they are when you're actually eating them.
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