Imagine walking into the produce section of your supermarket of choice and seeing no apples, almonds, blackberries, avocados? Such a scenario may someday become a reality if the nation’s honeybee colonies continue to decline.
A grim story in WIRED says a report complied by scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, beekeepers and other researchers found that one-third of the nation’s commercial honeybee colonies died off or disappeared over the winter. According to the consortium, the plummeting honeybee population is caused by a range of factors, including pesticides, fungicides, malnutrition– the latter of which might be connected to the addition of high fructose corn syrup to colony food supplies (and is probably unsurprising news to many nutritionists.)
Conservation biologist Claire Kremen spoke discussed the honeybee crisis at the Commonwealth Club in 2009, and helped illustrate what the world would look like without pollinators. While we wouldn’t go hungry, Kremen explained our diets would become dramatically “impoverished.”
Imagining a World Without Pollinators from Commonwealth Club on FORA.tv
