The Western honeybee is responsible for one in every three mouthfuls of food you and I will eat today. And something is killing them.
From the almond orchards of California to the blueberry bogs of Maine, billions of honeybees are needed to pollinate multibillion-dollar crops. Without bees, these two foods, as well as 235 others, will vanish. Included in these are three of my favorites – apples, lemons and squash.
My family has a personal knowledge of the scarcity of bees. This past summer, not one bee visited our vegetable garden. My husband manually pollinated the squash, zucchini, cucumber, cantaloupe and watermelon blooms using homemade swabs.
Beginning in 2006, beekeepers across America opened their hives, found them full of wax and honeycomb and even honey, but devoid of actual bees. The beekeepers sought other employment. We might someday replace the bees, but can we replace keepers with 40 years of experience? Among the causes of bee extermination are agricultural pesticides, a parasitic mite and bacterial and viral diseases. Yet there is no clear cut culprit.
But American ingenuity is stepping in. In 2007 Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Science successfully developed a life-size robotic fly. The school was awarded a $10 million grant to build a network of autonomous artificial bees.
Can we afford to pay $100 for a watermelon?
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