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  • Human society is extremely complex and fragile,

  • built upon various pillars.

  • One of them is the honey bee.

  • One out of three meals eaten by humans is made possible by honey bees.

  • They are so important that if all the honey bees were to die out,

  • thousands of plants would follow,

  • which could lead to millions of people starving in the following years.

  • On top of that, honey bees have a huge economic impact.

  • The dollar value of plants pollinated by them each year

  • is around $265 billion.

  • Food we take for granted would just stop existing without them,

  • or there would be a massive decrease in productivity.

  • Food including apples, onions, pumpkins, and also plants used for feeding livestock

  • and thus extremely important for our milk and meat.

  • Einstein is often quoted as having said,

  • If honey bees die out, humans will follow a few years later.”

  • Actually, he probably didn’t say that,

  • but there might be some truth in the statement.

  • It’s unsettling, but honey bees have started to disappear.

  • Millions of hives have died in the last few years.

  • Beekeepers all over the world have seen an annual loss of 30–90% of their colonies.

  • In the US alone, bees are steadily declining.

  • >From 5 million hives in 1988 to 2.5 million today.

  • Since 2006, a phenomenon calledcolony collapse disorder

  • has affected honey bees in many countries.

  • And were not entirely sure what’s causing it.

  • All we know is that it’s pretty serious.

  • Over the last few decades bees have seen an invasion of very dangerous foes.

  • Parasites straight out of a horror movie, like Acarapis woodi,

  • microscopic mites that infect the tracheae (that’s the breathing tubes) of bees.

  • Here, they lay their eggs and feed from the fluids of their victims,

  • weakening them considerably and spending their whole life inside the bees.

  • Or Varroa destructor, a fitting name because they can only reproduce

  • in honey bee hives and are one of the beesgreatest enemies.

  • The female mite enters a honey bee brood cell and lays eggs on the bee larva

  • before it’s about to pupate and

  • before the hive bees cover the cell with a wax capping.

  • The eggs hatch and the young mites and their mother feed on the developing bee

  • in the safety of the capped cell.

  • The bee is not normally killed at this stage, just weakened,

  • so it still has enough strength to chew its way through the wax capping

  • and release itself from the cell.

  • As it does, it releases the mother mite and her new offspring from the cell,

  • and these are free to spread across the hive,

  • starting the process over again in a cycle of about 10 days.

  • Their numbers grow exponentially, and after a few months,

  • this can lead to the collapse of the entire bee hive.

  • Once outside of the cell, adult mites also suck the bodily fludis of bees

  • and weaken them considerably.

  • To make things worse, they also transmit viruses that harm the bees even more

  • and can lead to birth defects like useless wings.

  • But there are other threats too, such as viruses and fungi.

  • Under normal circumstances, these phenomena should be manageable

  • and are not enough to explain

  • the horrendous amount of dying going on in bees.

  • Over recent years new insecticides have been introduced

  • that are deadly to bees.

  • Neonicotinoids, a chemical family similar to nicotine,

  • was approved in the early 1990s as an alternative to chemicals like DDT.

  • They attack insects by harming their nervous systems.

  • Today, they are the most widely used insecticides in the world.

  • Globally, they saw sales of €1.5 billion in 2008,

  • representing 24% of the global market for insecticides.

  • In 2013, neonicotinoids were used in the US on about 95% of corn and canola crops,

  • and also on the vast majority of fruit and vegetables,

  • like apples, cherries, peaches, oranges, berries, leafy greens, tomatoes, potatoes,

  • cereal grains, rice, nuts, grapes, and many more.

  • Bees come into contact with the toxin

  • while collecting pollen or via contaminated water,

  • often bringing material into the hive,

  • where it can accumulate and slowly kill the whole colony.

  • The toxins harm bees in a variety of horrible ways.

  • In high enough doses, it quickly leads to convulsions, paralysis, and death.

  • But even in small doses, it can be fatal.

  • It may lead to bees forgetting how to navigate the world,

  • so bees fly into the wild, get lost, and die alone, separated from their hives.

  • If this happens often enough, a hive can lose its ability to sustain itself.

  • We know that neonicotinoids are harmful to bees

  • and that we urgently need an alternative to it,

  • but there are billions of dollars to be made in delaying this.

  • Studies sponsored by the chemical industry magically appear to prove

  • a much lower toxicity to bees, compared to those produced by independent scientists.

  • There are even more factors contributing to the demise of bees,

  • like too much genetic uniformity, crop monocultures,

  • poor nutrition due to overcrowding, stress because of human activities,

  • and other pesticides.

  • Each of those factors on its own is a major problem for bees,

  • but together, they probably account for colony collapse disorder.

  • With parasites upping their game in recent decades,

  • the honey bees are now fighting for survival.

  • It would be a catastrophe if they lost this fight.

  • This is a conundrum we have to solve if we want to continue living

  • with a relative abundance and diversity of food.

  • Humanity is deeply interconnected with Earth and the other lifeforms on it,

  • even if we pretend that were not.

  • We have to take better care of our surroundings,

  • if not to preserve the beauty of nature, then at least to ensure our own survival.

  • This video is supported by the Australian Academy of Science,

  • which promotes and supports excellence in science.

  • See more at .

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  • Subtitles by the Amara.org community

Human society is extremely complex and fragile,

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