June 16, 2009

Some foods could die out without bees

It is estimated that the humble bee could be responsible for as much as thirty per cent of the vegetables and fruit that we eat, yet as recent studies have found the bee population has fallen by around fifty per cent over the last fifty years.

Suddenly we find that something that we have taken for grant on a world scale could be at risk of becoming rare and therefore expensive.

Many fruits and vegetables rely on the bee for pollination without which the plants do not produce anything and therefore will die out leaving the world with a severe shortage of stable foods that we have all come to take for granted every time that we visit the supermarket.

The problem is that there is no definitive reason for the decline and therefore at the moment no way of preventing the loss of the bee.

Source [National Geographic]