BEEPOCALYPSE

The world is full of looming threats. Creeping shadows of the apocalypse wriggle their impossibly-shaped bodies into our lives, especially during this pandemic. This global health crisis showed us that these myths of doomsday are not as far away as we think. Many scenarios try their hardest to escape the confines of the improbable, and some are succeeding. One such devastatingly unthinkable scene has its claws on bees and biodiversity.

Bees die, yes, but why? One might think, as they are alive, death is only a part of their life cycle. And yes, that would be correct. However, the doomsday looming over the horizon is not about death but the death rate. Bees are dying on a dangerously large scale, and we don't know why. This mysterious ailment is called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). CCD is a familiar enemy. Our history with it spans centuries. The Irish called it "The Great Mortality of Bees" in 950 A.D, American beekeepers called it "The Disappearing Disease" in 1903 (Oldroyd, 2007). This occasional crisis must have seemed very strange to early beekeepers, as it did to us. What is new, however, is the speed at which it spreads and decimates.

Honeybees are at the mercy of many deadly parasites; however, most of their symptoms cannot comprehensively explain incidents of CCD. Three things characterize Colony Collapse Disorder: a beehive rich in honey, a queen and her brood within a said hive, and most workers being mysteriously absent from the colony(Oldroyd, 2007). Honey and larvae being untouched differentiates Colony Collapse Disorder from usual parasitic invasions. The principal symptom of this disorder is the lack of the necessary number of workers to sustain the swarm, causing the swarm to collapse. The baffling mystery is where the workers are? It is like they disappeared to a different dimension. So bees die, yes, but why should we care?

Without worker bees, flowering plants cannot sustain their populations. The clade of angiosperm produces flowers to proliferate. However, for flowers to function appropriately, they need an agent of dispersal. Pollen does not move by itself, after all. Some plants achieve this through environmental factors like wind or water, but most rely on mutualist symbiotes to carry their genetic material. Without the presence of these symbiotic pollen carriers, angiosperms would not have the diversity they do. This biodiversity protects the clade against diseases and allows it to fulfill and create niches in an ecological system. They provide nutrients to food chains and sometimes house entire ecosystems. The poster child of these mutualist helpers is honeybees; plants are practically sterile without them.

Bees disappearing is awful news for flower diversity. Loss of divergence can cause inbreeding depression, fringe pathologies becoming more prevalent through similar genotypes mating. This causes the ecosystem to become weakened against disruptions as it becomes less accommodating, dangerous as climate change threatens the stability of most ecosystems. Rigidness to living conditions would be detrimental to a species long-term survival, but this is the smaller of the problems.

One-third of what we put on our table comes from flowering plants[]. Thus, our agricultural industry relies on pollinators to survive. Without the proliferation of our crops, we, too, will wither. As CCD decimates the populations of our principal industrial pollinators, its potential damage to our way of living is massive. Without bees, our crop yields would fall dramatically. Lack of food security would leave the world famished. Hunger means fewer people living comfortable lives and civil unrest. Think about COVID and how the disruption of our fragile everyday life affected everyone. The pandemic got out of control in 2 months, and we had to change our lives drastically. A severe, large-scale incident of CCD may cause such a thing. Yet, the damage doesn't stop there. Our agricultural yields are used to feed us, yes, but also used to produce industrial goods and everyday items from beauty products to clothes to lab-grade ethanol. CCD would also affect the industries associated with these products and start an economic chain reaction of failing businesses and shortages.

Yes, all this is very concerning and most depressing but fret not. As humans, we are as hard-working as bees, after all. Through our struggle, this silent enemy can be vanquished. Researchers have been looking into the precise reason for this phenomenon. They looked into emerging pathogens and parasites and evaluated samples from collapsed hives(2018 EPA). Yet, the answer won't come as simple as that. This is more likely a compound problem. The cause of CCD cannot be singular, some researchers argue(Watson & Stallins, 2016). To kill the beast that slumbers, we need a more holistic approach. We create monocultures of crops with no wild plants that cannot provide a swarm with a sufficient diet(Oldroyd, 2007). This problem is connected to the constant industrial migration of bees to support said croplands(2018 EPA), which puts stress on a colony. Stress weakens the immune system and makes bees less resistant to harmful parasites(Oldroyd, 2007). To combat these parasites, beekeepers use more and more pesticides on the hive, which lowers a worker's lifespan(Oldroyd, 2007). This complex web of cause and effect plaguing beekeeping and agriculture creates a compound problem that puts more stress on colonies than they can handle. With the loss of biodiversity, pollinators that work alongside bees are also disappearing(Thakur, 2012). Perhaps this also affects honeybees' longevity, as everything in an ecosystem is connected.

The important takeaway from all this is that our way of doing things is hurting us. To my eyes, the only long-term solution seems to be a shift in agricultural and apicultural practices. A more sustainable method that incorporates foresight is necessary for our survival. If we don't change how we look at nature, these problems will keep popping up. Climate change, CCD, plastic crisis... I can count fifty more, and we wouldn't be done. Nature is no mere tool but a dynamic system where the slightest changes can cause the most significant effects. Perceiving it separate from us and as an industrial object to be exploited would cause problems to emerge en masse.