Humanity’s place in nature is fragile. Hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, and droughts, while headline-worthy, are not the only or even most significant threats to humanity’s longterm survival. As humans, we tend to overlook our interdependence on other species for necessities like food. It turns out that our concern should include those that we tend to ignore (for the most part), the bees.

The bees as a keystone species that entire ecosystems depend on are dying from an unknown cause, and it shows that the world as a whole is not doing so hot.

Honey bees are a good indicator of pollution, radioactive or otherwise, as pollen is a good indicator of air pollution as well.

It could be that pollution of water sources from pesticides with neonicotinoids are contributing to the death of bees. In fact, it’s been verified by the EU making use of neonictinoids illegal for a time, and by Snopes citing CBC News and the Post.

Bees are already known to drink from puddles, brooks, ponds, and irrigation systems. These water sources are full of nutrients, but so is water from freshly turned soil, freshly turned cement, and chlorinated pools that the author, Rusty, at Honey Bee Suite has seen bees drink from. As pesticides can leak into these water sources, it is possible that contaminated water and lack of sufficient education about neonectinoids and water have contributed to the death of bees every where.

Whether it be from water pollution or worse, this problem is serious. But we’re still going about helping in the wrong way.

I’m talking about General Mills, who owns Cheerios, handing out seeds for invasive wildflower species for free to anyone who asked.

“Even though Cheerios managed to publicize the plight of the bees, the company did not factor in the complexity of the environment when deciding how to help save the honey bees,” said Heidi Cho in an article emphasizing the misconceptions and mistakes made by companies.

Learn more about Cheerios’ bumble here:
http://www.tcnjsignal.net/2017/03/27/bee-population-dwindling-at-alarming-rate/

If General Mills really wanted to help the bees, the company would endorse and stop using pesticides with neonectinoids.

Just because of their small size says nothing about how much we depend on them for the necessary pollination of “places that grow specialty crops – such as almonds, blueberries and apples,” according to beeculture.com.

The title of this article says all the author needs to say: Catch the buzz – the first-ever map tracking U.S. wild bees suggests they are disappearing and if this continues, it could hurt U.S. crop production and raise farmers’ costs.

Check out the map at:
http://www.beeculture.com/catch-buzz-first-ever-map-tracking-u-s-wild-bees-suggests-disappearing-continues-hurt-u-s-crop-production-raise-farmers-costs/

And if you think I’m talking about honey bees right now? You’re wrong.

Beelieve me, when I say that honey bees will be fine. Beekeepers keep the domesticated honeybees under favorable conditions for their success, so much so that they can even thrive under human watch in environments nonnative to them, like North America.

As Gwen Pearson said in her article titled “You’re Worrying about the Wrong Bees”:

“The bees you should be concerned about are the 3,999 other bee species living in North America, most of which are solitary, stingless, ground-nesting bees you’ve never heard of.”

Learn how, if worldwide crop pollination was a group project, honey bees would be the freeloader:

https://www.wired.com/2015/04/youre-worrying-wrong-bees/

The ones that do need our help are wild pollinators that do natively live in North America. These include ground bees that are hard to rouse to sting others, and bees that work alone.

So how can we help them?

Planting noninvasive plants (looking at you, General Mills) would be great. Leaving out shallow dishes of clean water with dissolved salt or murk is helpful.

Learn more about ways to help bees here:

https://growtherainbow.com/blogs/news/35730115-why-honey-bees-need-water

Bad puns beesides, we need to save the bees.