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It was only a few years ago that headlines in Europe and North America were screaming about the coming “bee armageddon”. Honeybees were going extinct, we were told, and because these vital pollinators are vital to our food supply, we were on the verge of global starvation. And pesticides were mostly to blame for the crisis.The problem with that thesis was that honeybee populations aren’t declining, let alone headed for extinction. As I’ll explain below, the media have finally updated their doomsday reporting (years behind the Genetic Literacy Project, which has been documenting the faux crisis for years).
However, no sooner does one apocalypse slip from the headlines than another springs up to take its place. Recently, news and advocacy groups sites have been afire with dire warnings that man’s days on earth are (once again) numbered, this time due to the accelerating extinction of all of the world’s insects.
More on the impending insect crisis below. later. But let’s first review the botched narrative also known as the “bee-pocalypse.” Yes, bees do face some health challenges as the result of a variety of factors, most prominently their loss of habitat and the explosive growth of their mortal enemy, the Varroa mite. But balanced analysis by independent scientists put the use of pesticides way down on the list of pollinator threats. Even some advocacy groups finally abandoned the crisis rhetoric.
“Save the bees’ is a rallying cry we’ve been hearing for years now,” wrote the Sierra Club in a stunning reversal in 2018, abandoning its long held position, parroted by the press, that honeybee doomsday was upon us. “Honeybees are at no risk of dying off.”
While diseases, parasites and other threats are real problems for beekeepers, the total number of managed honeybees worldwide has risen 45% over the last half century.............To Read More...
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