On April 22nd, we celebrate Earth Day, and the media is flooded with the usual slogans like: “Without bees, we will die in four years,” “Save the bees, set up a hive,” “Einstein warned us.” Most of this is false or at least misleading. The truth about why bees really matter is even more interesting. And as beekeepers, it pays for us to know it so we can help where it makes sense.
This article is not about putting bees down. On the contrary. When we understand how the ecosystem really works, we can make Earth Day more than just sharing pictures of bees on Instagram. Let’s clarify what is said about bees, what we know about them, and what deserves more attention.
Will humanity die out if bees disappear? The short answer: no
Let’s begin with the uncomfortable truth. The main cereals that feed the world – wheat, rice, corn, barley, rye – are wind-pollinated. They don’t need pollinators to reproduce. The same goes for potatoes, soybean (self-pollinating), or sugarcane. According to Klein’s study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B in 2007, while pollinators contribute to 75% of global crops, by volume it is only about 35% of our food.
Let’s translate that: if all pollinators disappeared overnight, humanity would not become extinct. We would lose fruit, most vegetables, nuts, coffee, cocoa, rapeseed, sunflower, spices – and with that a huge part of diversity and vitamins in our diet. It would be a food and health disaster, but not the apocalypse described by posters. This truth is important because dramatization often leads to people helping in the wrong way, or not helping at all when they find the reality is not so terrible.
The essential lies elsewhere. Jeremy Ollerton and colleagues calculated in Oikos in 2011 that 87.5% of all flowering plants worldwide depend to some extent on pollinators. This is no longer just about what we have on our plates. It’s about the entire ecosystem: shrubs, trees, herbs, meadows, which birds, mammals, insects, and consequently everything else depend on. If pollinators really disappeared, the collapse would not happen in the supermarket but in the landscape around us.
What the honey bee really pollinates – and what it does not
Here comes another important turning point. When people say “bee,” they mean Apis mellifera, the honey bee in the hive. However, from the perspective of global pollination, it is just one player – and for some crops, not even the best one.
Garibaldi et al. published a comprehensive meta-analysis in 2013 in Science from 41 agricultural systems and reached a surprising conclusion: wild pollinators increase fruit set success in crops independently of the presence of honey bees. For apples, pears, pumpkins, strawberries, or blueberries, solitary bees and bumblebees are often more effective than honey bees in hives. For tomatoes, only the bumblebee can pollinate the flower – its vibrational pollination (“buzz pollination”) the honey bee cannot perform.
The honey bee is indispensable in one specific mode: massive, coordinated foraging on monocultures (rapeseed, sunflower, orchards). Where you need to pollinate hectares of flowering trees within a few days, a hive with 50,000 workers is economically unrivaled. But on a smaller scale, in open countryside, gardens, and forest ecosystems, wild pollinators are equal or better.
It is not honey bees that are truly endangered – but solitary bees and bumblebees
This is the most common misunderstanding. The honey bee is not an endangered species. On the contrary. According to FAO data, the number of hives worldwide has steadily increased over the last 60 years – by about 65%. In the Czech Republic, we have over 700,000 registered colonies and the number of beekeepers is increasing long-term. From a species conservation viewpoint, Apis mellifera is in a similar situation to cows: a farm animal that does not disappear because people raise it.
Wild species are the ones truly endangered. Goulson, Nicholls, Botías, and Rotheray showed in a 2015 Science study that the decline in wild pollinators is caused by a combination of parasites, pesticides, and especially the loss of flowering habitats. In Europe, flying insect biomass has declined by over 75% in the last 27 years according to the famous Hallmann study from 2017 (PLOS ONE) – and wild pollinators are part of that statistic.
And now comes an uncomfortable paradox: massive keeping of honey bees can harm wild pollinators. Competition for nectar and pollen, spreading pathogens from managed hives into the wild, and managed honey bees displacing solitary bees from attractive resources. Henry and Rodet’s 2018 study in Scientific Reports showed a direct negative impact of high hive densities on wild pollinators in reserves. So when someone tells you “save the bees, buy a hive,” in some contexts we are actually recommending the opposite.
Why honey bees still matter
All this does not mean that honey bees are not important. They are. Just differently than what posters say.
First, they are economically indispensable for agriculture. Without them, orchards, rapeseed fields, and part of vegetable production would not exist as we know it today. Second, they are biological indicators – when colonies start collapsing, it is a warning about the state of the landscape, pesticides, climate. A beekeeper who carefully monitors their hives is essentially a person with an ecosystem detector in the garden.
And third – and this is something rarely mentioned – beekeepers are often the first to notice changes in the landscape. When the linden nectar flow disappears, when rapeseed blooms three weeks earlier than ten years ago, when new diseases appear, it is precisely the records from apiaries that create one of the longest and densest continuous data series on the state of insect landscapes in Europe.
What really helps (and what is just marketing)
If you want to act meaningfully on Earth Day, here is what science says really works – ordered from most effective:
- Don’t mow the lawn every week. A single unmowed strip of flowering dandelions, clover, and dead-nettles feeds more pollinators than a hectare of “ornamental” English grass. This is completely free and has an immediate effect.
- Plant flowers blooming at different times. The pollinator crisis is often in July and August when rapeseed and linden have finished blooming. Lavender, catmint, thyme, sunflower, buckwheat – anything that blooms during this gap.
- Insect hotels and bare patches of soil. 70% of solitary bees nest in the ground, not in wooden “hotels.” A bare patch of soil in the garden does more than twenty hotels from a DIY store.
- Do not use insecticides during the day when bees fly. If you really must, spray at dusk, away from flowering crops.
- Support local beekeepers by buying honey. Small-scale beekeepers often also care for the landscape, flowering strips, and orchards.
And what is not the most important, although it seems so: buying a hive just to “save nature.” If you want to keep bees, do it because you are interested in biology, craft, and honey. Not because you are saving the planet – the planet won’t thank you for it, especially not the wild bees.
The role of the beekeeper on Earth Day
If we already keep bees, the best thing we can do for Earth Day is to be a careful, considerate, and informed beekeeper. That means:
- Dealing rigorously with varroa and not spreading it into the landscape – weak or sick colonies pose a risk to wild pollinators nearby.
- Not overburdening the landscape with hives. One migratory beekeeper with two hundred colonies in a small reserve can locally displace wild species.
- Watching what is happening around. Pollen analyses, flowering strips, changes in nectar flow timings – all this data has value.
- Keeping records. As we often write – seasonal data is the most valuable thing we take away as beekeepers. And not just for our own apiary.
The Beentry app is a helper here that simply and repeatedly notes all necessary things at the hive – strength, health, nectar flow, weight, varroa. This grows both your own experience and a broader picture of the state of the Czech beekeeping landscape. If you are interested in disease spread in your region, check the disease map – you’ll see in real time what is happening in your area.
Earth Day is not about panic but about awareness
If you take away one thing from this article: bees really are important but in a completely different way than on the posters. The honey bee is a farm animal and doing well. What really need help are wild bees, bumblebees, butterflies, and other pollinators that hold together 87.5% of the world’s flowering plants. And the best help we can give them is not buying a hive – it is not mowing the lawn, planting flowering plants at various times, and respecting that the landscape has its own balance.
For those of us who keep bees, Earth Day is a nice opportunity to reflect on whether we do it responsibly. If yes – thank you for that. If you want to start monitoring your colonies more carefully, try Beentry for free or download the app from the App Store or Google Play. Good records lead not only to better beekeeping but also to better understanding of what is really happening in our landscape.
Sources and literature
- Klein, Alexandra-Maria; Vaissière, Bernard E.; Cane, James H.; Steffan-Dewenter, Ingolf; Cunningham, Saul A.; Kremen, Claire; Tscharntke, Teja — Importance of pollinators in changing landscapes for world crops, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 2007. link
- Ollerton, Jeff; Winfree, Rachael; Tarrant, Sam — How many flowering plants are pollinated by animals?, Oikos, 2011. link
- Garibaldi, Lucas A. et al. — Wild Pollinators Enhance Fruit Set of Crops Regardless of Honey Bee Abundance, Science, 2013. link
- Goulson, Dave; Nicholls, Elizabeth; Botías, Cristina; Rotheray, Ellen L. — Bee declines driven by combined stress from parasites, pesticides, and lack of flowers, Science, 2015. link
- Hallmann, Caspar A. et al. — More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas, PLOS ONE, 2017. link
- Henry, Mickaël; Rodet, Guy — Controlling the impact of the managed honeybee on wild bees in protected areas, Scientific Reports, 2018. link
- Aizen, Marcelo A.; Harder, Lawrence D. — The global stock of domesticated honey bees is growing slower than agricultural demand for pollination, Current Biology, 2009. link
- IPBES — Assessment Report on Pollinators, Pollination and Food Production, Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, 2016. link