When animals and insects pick up the pollen of flowers and spread it, they allow plants, including many food crops, to reproduce. Birds, rodents, monkeys and even people pollinate, but the most common pollinators are insects, and among them, bees.
Pollinators contribute directly to food security. Nearly three-quarters of the plants that produce 90 percent of the world’s food require this external help. And according to bee experts at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, a third of the world’s food production depends on bees.
Bees are renowned for their role in providing high-quality food—honey, royal jelly and pollen—and other products such as beeswax, propolis, and honey bee venom. They are also part of the biodiversity on which we all depend for our survival.
“Sacred passages about bees in all the worlds’ major religions highlight their significance to human societies over millennia,” says a May 2019 report by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).
Bees and other pollinators, such as butterflies, bats and hummingbirds, are increasingly under threat from human activities.
In May 2018, the European Union upheld a partial ban on three insecticides known as neonicotinoids to mitigate the lethal threat they pose to bees and their trickle-down effect on pollination as a whole.
Air pollution is also thought to be affecting bees. Preliminary research shows that air pollutants interact with scent molecules released by plants which bees need to locate food. The mixed signals interfere with the bees ability to forage, making them slower and less effective at pollination.
“Increasing crop and regional farm diversity as well as targeted habitat conservation, management or restoration, is one way of combating climate change and promoting biodiversity,” says UN Environment biodiversity specialist Marieta Sakalian. “Governments need to take the lead.”
It is precisely to encourage governments, organizations, civil society and concerned citizens to protect pollinators and their habitats, that the United Nations has declared 20 May World Bee Day.
Original source: UN Environment
Published on 20 May 2019
