Food is a necessity for us to live, and here in America we are lucky to have a wide range of healthy choices. When eating fruits and vegetable, has it ever occurred to you that bees make it possible for you enjoy these types of food?
Bees are among the most important creatures on earth. Bees pollinate 70 of the top 100 food crops. Bees also pollinate 80% of the flowers on this earth. The pollination of flowers is very important to help provide nourishing habitats for insects and birds. Also, Bees produce honey (Who knew!). Honey is used for a wide range of medicinal purposes and It is also used in many desserts as a sweeter and is delicious all by itself.
A devastating problem is occurring with bees. For more than a decade, around the world, millions of bees are dying mysteriously. Previous research has linked the plight of bees to common pesticides, pests and pathogens, and global climate change according to Popular Science. More recent research, including by work done by a team from The University of Texas at Austin., finds that a common weed killer called roundup has glyphosate affects the balance of healthy bacteria in a bees gut. By throwing off the balance of healthy bacteria, this team has concluded that herbicides like roundup make bees more susceptible to disease. Their work on this subject has been published in Proceedings of the national Academy of Sciences.
Roundup is one of the most commonly used herbicides worldwide and is manufactured by Monsanto. They maintain that their research has found no evidence of glyphosate harming bees.
We certainly should be encouraging ongoing research into the affects of herbicides and pesticides but I have been persuaded to make a change. I hop that you will follow my lead. One way we can prevent the decrease of bees is by hand picking the weeds and decreasing the use of herbicides/pesticides at home. Our ecosystem is slowly crashing and we need to preserve it. Save the Bees. LETS DO THIS!
Jorgensen, Paul. “Why Are Bees so Important? 33 Reasons to Care about the Bees.” Lifebasicsorganics, 25 Sept. 2015, www.lifebasicsorganics.com/blog/why-are-bees-important.
Lardieri, Alexa. “Chemical in Common Weed Killer Linked to Bee Deaths.” U.S. News, 25 Sept. 2018, www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2018-09-25/chemical-in-common-weed-killer-linked-to-bee-deaths.
https://www.popsci.com/roundup-glyphosate-bee-microbiome