Personally, I can’t imagine chips without guacamole… and I
hope you can’t either. I say this because I have recently learned of the
not-so-honey-coated news regarding Bees. The species is dying by the thousands,
and we depend on these flying queens for more than a fourth of our food here in
North America.
The honeybees have apparently been dying as a result of a
pesticide used for aesthetic purposes. Just last year, 50,000 bees were
poisoned in Oregon because of this deadly pesticide. You might be wondering why
you should care about bees or their waning existence whatsoever. Well, one
third of our foods, including apples, cranberries, pumpkins, and avocados can
only grow with the essential pollination bees provide.
That being said, if we don’t start saving and restoring the honeybee
population right now, it won’t just be the cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie that’s
absent at Thanksgiving dinner. In fact, the degeneration of bees would also
change and essentially crush our economy if the problem really developed to a
full extent (North America could lose more than $15 billion dollars a year in
agricultural production).
What can we do to fix this, you ask? Well the up side is
that congress has definitely made note of the problem. But furthermore,
Congress has proposed a bill that would save honeybees by eliminating the
deadly pesticides. For those in favor of using the pesticides (probably
landscaping companies), the real convincing factor is that these pesticides
wouldn’t be eliminated all together, but rather temporarily in order for the
honeybees’ population to be able to make a substantial rebound. If you ask me,
a couple years of bad business for landscaping companies is worth saving one of
the main protectors and ultimately providers of so many of our foods today.
So be(e) informed and smart. Save our honeybees! Here is the bill
, sign it to support our bees!