Ever since the 1990’s the population of bees have been decreasing drastically. It has almost come to the point where we could call bees an endangered species. Throughout the years bees have been dying and it’s only been getting worse.

Many factors have been contributing to the decrease in bee population. Climate change,  unethical handling, and pesticides alike have all been increasing the decline. Some areas  in the world are experiencing harsher and longer winters while other areas are suffering from severe drought. Another factor contributing to the decline in bee population is overuse of pesticides, fungicides, and insecticides. A study found that insecticides can cause chronic and acute poisoning to the whole bee colony. Another study showed that bees which had come in contact with fungicides were three times more likely to be infected with parasites.

Another important factor is beekeeping. Some beekeepers–especially large honey companies– are unethical in their work and many bees end up being dismembered, wingless, or crushed. Many beekeepers don’t treat their bees with care and they handle them too roughly.  Beekeepers also replace the bees food source–honey–during the winter and replace it with sugar. Sugar doesn’t provide what the bees need which results in them making more honey to survive which over works them.

People know that the bee population has decreased tremendously and sadly some people are unaware of how important bees really are. People don’t realize that the human race would be greatly affected if the bees would go extinct. Bees pollinate to help produce food crops and humans depend on them to produce food. Bees pollinate almost ⅓ of the entire world’s food supply. In actuality humans rely on bees to keep our current food system, and once we lose the bees we would lose our food system as well.

When people realize and actually take the extinction of bees seriously, what will be the resolution? It’s not like we can completely reverse what has happened over the past decades but I believe there are ways we can reduce the decline and we can resolve a few issues. Beekeepers will still make honey, but we need to find ways that people can reduce or even completely get rid of unethical beekeeping.

We know that pesticides and the aforementioned issues are all affecting the bees. People need to put stricter regulations on pesticides or even ban them all together. People can still clean up their lawn without pesticides and we should let bee friendly weeds, like dandelions, grow. People need to realize that our lives would be different without the bees and we need to act and resolve what we have caused.