{"id":13260,"date":"2015-10-11T08:02:14","date_gmt":"2015-10-11T13:02:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=13260"},"modified":"2015-10-11T08:02:14","modified_gmt":"2015-10-11T13:02:14","slug":"honeybees-face-global-threat-if-they-die-so-do-we","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=13260","title":{"rendered":"Honeybees Face Global Threat: If They Die, So Do We"},"content":{"rendered":"

Honeybees Face Global Threat: If They Die, So Do We<\/a><\/h3>\n

\u201cThere is one masterpiece, the hexagonal cell, that touches perfection. No living creature, not even man, has achieved, in the center of his sphere, what the bee has achieved in her own: and were some one from another world to descend and ask of the earth the most perfect creation of the logic of life, we should needs have to offer the humble comb of honey.\u201d\u00a0<\/em>\u2014 Maurice Maeterlinck,\u00a0The Life of the Bee<\/a><\/em>, 1924.<\/p>\n

What is the most important animal to humans? In prehistoric times, the dog helped transform early hunter-gatherers into apex predators. Later, human civilization was built on the backs of horses. But starting around 11,500 years ago, when humans began making permanent settlements and invented agriculture,\u00a0bees<\/a>\u00a0emerged as the most critical animal to human survival.<\/p>\n

\"Worker<\/span>
Worker bees on honeycomb cells.\u00a0Photo credit: Shutterstock<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By pollinating crops around the world, honeybees feed more than 7\u00a0billion people today. Most of the food that we eat (and all of our cotton) is produced in part by the hard work of bees. In her 2011 book\u00a0The Beekeeper\u2019s Lament<\/em><\/a>, journalist Hannah Nordhaus described honeybees as \u201cthe glue that holds our agricultural system together.\u201d<\/p>\n

The importance of bees isn\u2019t limited to humans, of course. By promoting the reproduction of angiosperms or flowering plants, bees are also central to survival of countless other animal species that rely on those plants and their fruits to survive. In fact, Earth\u2019s entire planetary ecology has been shaped by bees. Since they first evolved from wasps some 100 million years ago, bees have driven the evolution of plant life.<\/p>\n

Sadly, in recent times, we have not treated our bee friends well. The use of pesticides\u2014neonicotinoids in particular, which are commonly used on corn, soybean, canola and cereal, as well as many fruits and vegetables\u2014have\u00a0killed an estimated 250 million bees<\/a>\u00a0in a just a few years.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Honeybees Face Global Threat: If They Die, So Do We \u201cThere is one masterpiece, the hexagonal cell, that touches perfection. No living creature, not even man, has achieved, in the center of his sphere, what the bee has achieved in her own: and were some one from another world to descend and ask of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[20,8375,299,319,5612,9782,5839,2516],"class_list":["post-13260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-agriculture","tag-ecowatch","tag-farming","tag-food","tag-honeybees","tag-human-civilization","tag-neonicotinoids","tag-pesticides"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13260"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13261,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13260\/revisions\/13261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}