You may be wondering, what do bees even do for the human population? Why do we need to save the bees? Let me explain. Bees are at the top of our food chain and are one of the main sources of pollination for crops, fruits, and of course flowers. The bees also help our economy greatly because they pollinate over 15 billion dollars worth of crops, which is an insane amount of money going to human resources. Not only do they help humans, they also help their colony by gathering pollen and producing honey for the cells of the honeycomb. (Which happens to also benefit humans because they produce honey for us). So the real question is, why are they going extinct and what can we do to prevent this?

Bees are going extinct mostly because of climate change. The reason why bees are affected by climate change is because bees tend to pollinate when it becomes warmer and climate change is affecting when that time happens. Since it is becoming warmer sooner, flowers are blooming sooner and not giving the bees enough time to get prepared to pollinate. This means that the flowers won’t be around for the whole growing season, when the bees need the whole growing season to pollinate. Bees have had to start pollinating less flowers, which doesn’t allow them to have enough food resources for themselves and the colony. Plus, without them pollinating, some flowers are not reproducing as much as they could causing them to decrease in population as well.

Climate change is not the only reason bees are going extinct. Pesticides also kill bees. The pesticides that farmers put on crops are very harmful towards bees and they restrict them from being able to collect pollen or even make it back to their colony. There are many different types of pesticides but all of them harm bees whether they are adult bees or young immature ones. Some of the most common pesticides are neonicotinoids and coumaphos which affect the bees brain. They make the bee forget certain floral scents and forget how to pollinate.

Now the question is, how do we save the bees? For one, planting bee friendly flowers in a garden at home will help, and keeping the weeds in your lawn as well (not needed but it does have an impact). Another is don’t use pesticides for your garden or lawn because that would be defeating the purpose of having a garden anyways plus, of course, harming the bees. Also, buying local and raw honey means that the bees didn’t have any chemicals put into the hive to make it that way. Lastly, know that bees are  not out to get you. They may be scary and seem like they want to sting you, but they don’t. So, try not to harm them in anyway.

Keep in mind, if the bees die, we’re going with them.