What If All The Bees Died off?

What Happens If All The Bees Die?

     

For some people, bees are simply an irritant. They drone around, crawl inside soda bottles, follow people in the street and sometimes even sting. If you're unlucky enough to be allergic, bees can really be a lethal threat.

In the world, there are about 20,000 species of bees, and they are the most important insect pollinators. The thousands of bee varieties have unique flight patterns and floral preferences and some have coevolved with flowers in such a way that their body sizes and behaviors almost perfectly complement the flowers they pollinate.

Sadly, the number of bees of all types are in decline worldwide, as are several other insects. The honeybee has suffered greatly from colony collapse disorder, in which swarms suddenly lose their adult members. Populations of bumblebees and other solitary bees have steeply decreased in many places, considerably because of insecticide and herbicide use, habitat loss, and global warming. Some varieties such as the rusty patched bumblebee, are also listed as endangered species.

If all of the world's bees died, there would be major effects throughout ecosystems. A number of plants such as many of the bee orchids are pollinated particularly by specific bees, and they would die without human intervention. 

This would alter the composition of their habitats and affect the food webs because they are part of and would likely trigger additional extinctions or declines of dependent organisms. Other plants may use a variety of pollinators, but many are most successfully pollinated by these bees. Without them, bees would set fewer seeds and would have lower reproductive success. This too would modify ecosystems. Beyond plants, many animals such as the beautiful bee-eater birds would lose their prey in the case of a die-off, and this would also affect natural systems and food webs.

In the domain agriculture, the loss of bees would dramatically remodel human food systems but would not likely lead to famine. The majority of human calories still come from cereal, which is wind-pollinated and are therefore unaffected by bee populations. 

Many fruits and vegetables, however, are insect-pollinated and couldn't be grown at such a large scale, or so cheaply, without bees. For example, Blueberries and cherries, rely on honeybees for up to 90%of their pollination. Although hand-pollination is a probability for most fruit and vegetable crops, it is incredibly labor-intensive and so expensive. Japan uses the tiny robotic pollinator drones have been developed but remain prohibitively expensive for entire orchards or fields of time-sensitive flowers. 

Without bees, the availability, and diversity of fresh produce would decline largely, also, human nutrition would likely suffer. Crops that wouldn't be cost-effective to hand- or robot-pollinate would likely be lost or persist only with the dedication of human hobbyists.