Bees and us…

My love for bees and wasps comes a long way. Since I was a boy. I find them immensely fascinating. For 23 years I dedicated my life to the African Bush, working as I Safari Guide and conservationist.

Nature played, and still plays an important role in my life. It is just now more focused on the African Honey Bee and the preservation of an insect which is completely intertwined with us as humans and our own existence.

The keeping of bees by humans, primarily for honey production, began around 10,000 years ago. A sample of 5,500-year-old honey was unearthed from the grave of a noblewoman during archaeological excavations in 2003 near the town of Borjomi, in Georgia. Ceramic jars found in the grave contained several types of honey, including linden and flower honey. Domestication of bees can be seen in Egyptian art from around 4,500 years ago; there is also evidence of beekeeping in ancient China, Greece, and Maya. Humans began to attempt to maintain colonies of wild bees in artificial hives made from hollow logs, wooden boxes, pottery vessels, and woven straw baskets known as skeps. Depictions of humans collecting honey from wild bees date back 10,000 years ago. Beekeeping in pottery vessels began about 9,000 years ago in North Africa. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beekeeping)

This is just some examples of our relationship with bees and other pollinators that are part of the biodiversity on which we as humans depend for our own survival. But today, we are fighting to protect these little insects as their numbers keeps dwindling and some species are driven to near extinction. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) currently lists 156 species of bees as vulnerable, 20 as endangered, and 11 as critically endangered globally. (Source: https://www.treehugger.com/why-some-bees-endangered-and-what-we-can-do-5025654)

While those numbers are concerning, there are almost 20,000 different species of bees globally. You’re probably most familiar with honey bees and bumblebees; they’re in the family group Apidae and have a shared “hivemind.” Surprisingly, they're in the minority; 98% of bee species are naturally solitary, living without a queen or hive. So, what is causing bee species to die out, you might ask? One of the biggest threats to bee species’ survival globally, is the expansion in world human populations. This growth in human population means that more land is needed for people to live, and this means that bees are losing their natural habitat. Towns and cities needs more land for urban development and thus the bees’ natural habitat is removed. With more people on earth, it means more food needs to be produced, and to do that farmers are more reliant on pesticides and other chemicals to produce higher yield. This affects the bee populations as millions of bees and other pollinators are killed annually. Did you know that in South Africa, about 50 different fruits and vegetables rely on bees to pollinate their flowers?

Can you imagine your life without fruit and vegetables?

What can you do to help?

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