World Bees Day 2022
From the perspective of Gut Aiderbichl
Once the bee disappears from the earth, man has only four years to live. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more humans.
- Albert Einstein
In 2018, the 20th of May was designated World Bee Day to commemorate the importance of bees for our food and health.
Here are some numbers: 270 million years ago, the first Hymenoptera emerged, which includes bees, wasps and ants. The first bumblebee buzzed 25 million years ago. The Egyptians began keeping bees 9,000 years ago. 2,400 years ago, Hippocrates developed honey ointments against fever. In the modern age, asphalt and concrete close up the soil and slow down the bees in their life-sustaining work.
The buzzing geniuses fly up to 10 km daily
Bees pollinate around 80% of all wild and cultivated plants. Without pollination, there would be no fruit, no seeds, no food, no life. Whether wild bee or honey bee, pollination is the bees' main task. There would be no biological diversity without the industrious bees that fly from one flower to the next and thus distribute the various flower particles in nature with their fine body hairs.
Far too few people know what the bee does for humanity. There would be no coffee beans without pollination, no cocoa beans, no cotton, etc. All the people who work on the plantations in developing countries, and thus earn their living, would not have a job without bees. Medical and aeronautical engineers copy the construction of the honeycomb, which has been precisely thought out by the bee and is unique in its kind.
The garden as a 5-star hotel for the bees
Whether honey bees in hives or solitary wild bees, climate change and settlement threaten the bees' food sources. Flowers do not grow on asphalt, monocultures reduce the food for bees, pesticides not only act against pests but weaken the bees' immune system to the point of death. Unfortunately, the mowers are faster at cutting down flowering grasses and meadow flowers, whose dust the bees want to get to produce honey.
Let's conjure up species-rich wildflower meadows for the bee colony, balconies with herbs, grow fruit, vegetables and herbs organically and do without pesticides.
In this sense: Go to the bee and learn from it.
Sincerely,
Your Gisela
