WHY
HONEYBEES NEED TO BE PROTECTED LIKE A BANK VAULT?
There
is no doubt that the types and species of insects in existence
as part of living creatures are innumerable. Yet, the honeybees
stand out as treasure and perhaps the most useful insects to man.
In underscoring the utilities of honeybees, Professor Karl Von
Frisch, a German Zoologist and Nobel Laureate said, "Bee is a
magic well, the more you draw from it, the more there is to be
drawn". Unknown to many, honeybees have many functions in the
complex bio-ecological interactions present in nature and the
most important one is their input into food production through
the process of pollination.
Pollination
is an essential process in the production of seeds and fruits
of flowering plants from which man and animals derive their food
for sustenance. In fact, it has been empirically established that
plants, crops, shrubs and trees will produce few fruits or none
at all without insects' pollination. Yet, honeybees are beyond
doubt the most important pollinating insects providing 80 per
cent of pollination services for different plants, shrubs and
crop species.
Pollination
forestalls flower abortion, which is often responsible for crop
failure and crops pollinated by honeybees produce bumper yield,
sometimes double the yield without bee pollination. For instance,
through pollination, honeybees add value to crops in the United
States to the tune of 20 billion dollars every year aside annual
honey production valued at 285 million dollars. Besides pollination,
another contribution of honeybees to agriculture is their use
as biological (non-pesticide) control of agricultural pests, an
industry currently worth over 20 billion dollars per year in the
United States.
The
use of bees to vaccinate crops against diseases and pests will
eliminate the problem of unsafe food linked to excessive use of
pesticides. Invariably, with food being the fuel of life, the
roles of bees cannot be divulged from the search for solution
to the problem of hunger and food insecurity threatening the soul
of humanity. Also, the vital roles of honeybees to human health
justify their conservation. For instance, increased drug resistance
by pathogenic bacteria has created an urgent demand for new antibiotics.
Yet
honeybee and its products such as honey, pollen, royal jelly,
propolis, beeswax, bee bread and venom offer outstanding therapeutic
potential for many debilitating human diseases including cancer,
tuberculosis, mental illness, HIV/AIDS, Parkinson's disease, hypertension
and other cardiovascular disorders. No wonder apitherapy is a
fast emerging science to alleviate human sufferings through medical
applications of bee products for disease prevention and cure.
Worldwide, the efficacy of bee products against many diseases
and ill-health conditions has been scientifically validated.
In
effect, honeybees improve the health and nutritional status of
man as well as ensuring global economic growth because health
is wealth and a concrete input into economic development. These
tiny noble insects are also indicators of world biodiversity and
monitors of the environment. For instance, as pollinators, honeybees
help perpetuate plant species and other genetic resources, which
are vital components of biodiversity.
Also,
in the course of forage, honeybees collect bio available contaminants
as part of nectar, pollen, resin and water, which can be sampled
for presence of toxic environmental chemicals in any given ecosystem.
This way, honeybees have proved effective as monitors of the environment
because they are multimedia samplers, indicators of chemical bioavailability
and assessors of the effects of stress such as exposure to chemical
emissions. Given the critical roles of honeybees to health, agriculture
and the environment, which have bearing on the survival and well
being of man, our lives would be threatened if they were hunted
to extinction. In other words, the looming extinction of honeybees
poses significant threat to the integrity of biodiversity, global
food webs and human health.
Honeybees
sustain life on earth and it would be in our interest to protect
them like a bank vault.
Join
the crusade against bee hunting!
