Tea and honey go together like peanut butter and jelly, rice and butter, pasta and sauce. We know, from tea experts here, how environmental, and even political factors can affect tea production. And now we have discovered that tea’s favorite sweetener, honey, is being threatened – by harm to the honeybee – from a number of sources.
Pesticides, factory farming favoring high margin crops, lack of plant species honeybees need to survive, mites, fungus – and maybe factors we don’t even know about yet – have drastically harmed honeybee colonies.
Not only do the bees produce honey, they pollenate essential food crops, and up to one-third of our food supply could be affected. Years before the epidemic of bee death, a genius named Albert Einstein surmised: “If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live. No more bees, no more pollination, no more men.”
More recently, another phenomenon has been occurring, which is collapse of the colony. Worker bees simply and suddenly just disappear, leaving the colony decimated. Scientists have theories, but nothing conclusive, as to why this is happening.
Those are the facts, but let’s not end on a negative note. There are actions all of us can take to help in our own little way, while the great scientists ponder potential solutions on a grander scale. We can stop using pesticides (I’ve read even ‘organic’ sprays that have dire warnings); we can plant species that bees live on (as they are literally starving); we can support beekeepers in our area by buying local honey; and we can make others aware of the situation.
Next time you put a spoon or squeeze of honey in your tea, remember that even if a mega-corporation can produce artificial honey-like substances, only bees can make real honey. and mega-corporations can’t pollinate one-third of foods we need to survive.
Or can they?
If the bees are gone, they will need to think of something . . . and fast.
It’s very scary what is happening with the honeybee. My daughter, who lives in Portland Oregon, has a backyard hive. I agree that there are things many people can do to support the honeybees. I suspect it will take average people to get involved before this disturbing situation gets resolved. It’s amazing to me that despite attention to this crisis, nothing has been done to turn it around. I remember seeing a report on 60 minutes years ago. I hope we don’t have loose these important insects before the proper attention is paid to the problem. I was under the impression that pesticides were the primary culprit. Thanks Diane for shining a light on the problem.
gmo plants that contain pesticides are killing bees and this will be our down fall a friend of mine that has been bee keeping 40 + years said he had no problems till about 10 yrs ago when they first started to blame killerbees for the death of the honey business as it is. which was a lie, you can not mess with the food supply and act like it didn’t matter ( little like the butterfly effect)
I have a feeling that the factory farm megacorps and lobbyists that support them are not helping the situation. Think of the way the farmers in India were affected by the sterile seeds they purchased from a certain international megacorp, who owns patents and sells seeds that require repurchasing…much like the ‘mule of seeds’. The megacorps who own such huge chunks of the grocery business, the beverage business. Do they think their families will somehow not be affected, no matter how wealthy, if there is not enough food. Maybe they’re buying one of those megamillion underground communities stocked with foods to keep them alive while the rest of us go it alone? ;) The world is getting smaller and smaller as far as who calls the shots for our essentials.
Mark, who was the ‘they’ who blamed it on killer bees? Or, should I say who was behind ‘them’? I remember hearing about Indian farmers killing themselves because a certain co. that starts with an ‘M” had made it impossible for them to be self-sustaining, but forever tied to buying the sterile seeds. The ‘killer bees’ certainly can’t speak for themselves, so they make a good blame it on.