List of Foods We Will Lose if We Don’t Save the Bees

What can WE do to save them? farmers are gonna continue to use them. monsanto no matter how much i hate them. will continue to be powerful. thats how big they are

 

This is a HUGE issue. People just keep on using dangerous chemicals in industrial agricultural setups that are eventually going to destroy our planet.
 
We need to start creating more natural agricultural techniques, there is no need for all the chemical warfare. It's destroying us and ecosystems all around the world.
 
Also, people are waking up to the truth, there just needs to be people spreading the truth. It is entirely in our power to save ourselves and the future.

 

I hear it's a combination of chemicals and all the 'wireless' technology. If wireless technology affects how trees grow, I'm sure it's affecting the bees. We've got to remember that their senses are much different than ours - they hear, see, and communicate at different frequencies and wavelengths than what we humans do. What if they're more sensitive to all the information flowing through the ether? If it can cause cancer in humans, it can wreak havoc on something more sensitve than us.

 

Ugh, not this sensationalist crap.
 
 #1-  Honeybees, despite the popular claim, are NOT the most important pollinators.  
 
 #2-  A wide range of alternate pollinators will simply replace them -  Flies, spiders, beetles, butterflies, moths, ladybird beetles, birds, and many other creatures are just as efficient at pollination.  
 
 #3-  Honeybees are actually invasive and responsible for the extinction of many native bees.  There are hundreds of native Bees in the united states that will simply replace them.  
 
  BTW, passionfruit will not go extinct if honeybees disappear.  Passionfruit is locked into mutualism with Gulf Fritillary butterflies, and is largely pollinated by the adults.    
 
 
 This sensationalism is complete garbage, and propagated by the general ignorance of the public, regarding insects.  
 
 
  Fortunately, I am the insect god of Grass City, and will not allow this bullshit to continue.
 
 http://bugguide.net/node/view/8267/tree
 
 That's a list of Bees found in the united states, you'll see there are a shit-ton of bees that will simply replace honeybees.  

 

noooo not the black eyed peas!

 

I cannot stress this enough--  if Apis mellifera goes extinct, NONE of those plants will go extinct.
 
 
  In fact, most of them originated in regions where Apis mellifera DOESN'T occur naturally!
 
 
 I'm going to return later and edit this post, and list in detail every plant posted here, and WHY they won't go extinct in the absence of Apis mellifera.  
 
 
  But for now..  Opuntia?  Really?   If you're gonna make claims, don't make fraudulent ones.  Opuntia, better known as prickly pear, does NOT need honeybees for pollination. 
 
 Honeybees originate from europe and asia, NOT america, where prickly pear originates.   Opuntia is actually reliant on birds to both pollinate and spread seeds, which require scarification in the crop, in order to successfully germinate.  Doves are very fond of Opuntia blossoms, and enjoy the nectar, especially white-winged doves, which occur alongside Opuntia in the wild.
 
  To be continued..    But honestly, if you're gonna make claims..  please research them first.

 

^ Oh, so the only insects effected by this are honey bees? you don't think excessive use of dangerous chemicals harms the environment as a whole? yes other creatures help pollinate, but they will all die alongside the bees.
I feel like you're missing the point entirely, and just trying to show how much you know about your insects.
just an observation.   

 

there goes most of our antioxidants

 

 
1) Why'd you single out honey bees? Are they the only bees in decline?
 
2) Are human-induced environmental conditions the main cause, or even a cause, for the decline in bee populations?
 
I have a lot of more questions, but they're going to be based on the answers of the first two.

 

Dunno what the fuck this bee nonsense is about, just yesterday I passed by no more than 5 big ass hives.

 

 
Well with that logic we can say that the islands that make up Hawaii don't exist because we don't physically see them.

 

  I'm not gonna debate you.  You will simply ignore everything i say and retort with the same nonsense, like every other sensationalist fundamentalist.  "they will all die alongside the bees".. lmfao!

 

 #1) Because this post was obviously geared towards honeybees.  No, they aren't the only bees in decline, many species of hymenoptera are in decline, like virtually any family in the animal kingdom, there are always sensitive species that fare poorly with the introduction of disease, parasites, or the problem of habitat loss, or invasive species.
 
 #2) Good question.  There is a wide variety of factors contributing to the failure of captive honeybee colonies, it can be varroa destructor mites, disease, fungi, predation, and pollen sources that either lack the proper nutrition for the larvae, or as recently discovered, the use of fungicides, which has turned out to be a major problem.  Because of fungicides, many bee hives have failed to produce proper "bee bread", rendering them vulnerable to a particular microbe, and this has decimated both captive and feral bee colonies.
 
 The notion that honeybees are the equivalent of Atlas holding the earth is laughable, because of the sheer magnitude of different species that pollinate just as much, across several different families.   Roundup ready plants are simply resistant to glyphosate, and have no effect on bees, even though glyphosate is mildly toxic, it doesn't bioaccumulate, and is evacuated entirely after ingestion.
 
  As I pointed out earlier, many plants on that list evolved entirely in the absence of honeybees. Here are a few of the plants mentioned in the list, and here is a bit of debunking.  I will add to this post later and clear up the whole misunderstanding.  I'm not going to respond to any further questions after those two. (which were very good questions, kudos.)
 
  Figs, for example, do not rely on bees to pollinate them. The fruit of the common fig is actually a false fruit, containing the flowers inside.  As a result, honeybees are incapable of pollinating them altogether.  The actual pollinator of this plant is a tiny symbiotic wasp, and pollination of the common fig requires an insect to bore into the fig itself to pollinate it. 
 
 Celery is another plant that would be unaffected by the disappearance of honeybees.  Regarding apiaceae, the important pollinators are actually syrphid flies and parasitic wasps.  Note the tiny flowers on these plants, more suited to pollination by these small insects.
 
 "rose hips".  This is a laughable claim, because rose hips do not require pollination to form.  They form in sterile rose bushes.  And as you may know, rose bushes are largely propagated by cloning, it's really hard to find fertile roses.
 
 
 
 Green fig beetles, pictured above
 
 Beetles are far more important pollinators than honeybees.  After all, they're 20% of earth's entire animal bio-mass!
 
  The only plants that would really be hit hard by the absence of honey bees are the plants that evolved alongside them, like Apples.

 

 
Thanks for the detailed explanation. Even though you said you weren't going to respond, if you change your mind I do have one final question:
 
We know that bees aren't directly needed to promote pollination, but isn't the mere reflection of their decline threatening to the food web (instead of specifically the pollination process)? What I mean by this, is that even though we don't need these bees to promote pollination, their decline may be leading to a rigid food web. A more rigid food web is more prone to collapse. I'm not implying that if the bee population declines it will be the sole variable that can bring upon a collapse in the food web, but their decline reflects the decline of many species that may be the cause of human pollution (toxic chemicals, electromagnetic waves, waste emissions, etc.).
 
I'm not advocating a "let's safe the bee's" program, but we should at the least be looking at how their decline plays a part in the ecosystem as a whole and why are other species declining and how the combination of these declines may affect the bigger picture.

 

I think I might've accidentally killed one of the above pictured beetles because I thought they were the flesh eating ones from The Mummy. My bad.

 

 
Alright after that and some education on my own, I think I can say I am done eating figs unless I am dying of hunger.