Why bees are important for the ecosystem — Nathan’s student essay

Why Bees Are Important For The Ecosystem?

Let me tell ya bout the great bee. They are one of thee most important creatures you will ever meet here on the good ol terra firma. They are responsible for a large percentage of the pollinating needed for the earth’s crops to grow.

 For example, if you look at a tomato on a delicious caesar salad. that was probably pollinated by our friend the humble bee. Look at any squash, or pretty much any domestically grown plant and it too was probably a product of the bees hard work and dedication

Plants need to be pollinated, or in simpler terms, they need to reproduce. Just like us humans need to mate, so do plants. They cant do it by themselves though, no sir, they need a little assistance. When a bee comes along, (or any bug for that matter, but we talking bout them right now) they will trap pollen on their body, usually on their hairs, and take it to different plant of the same species. The pollen will enter the plant and boom, you got yourself the makings of one big happy family. 

Bees are quite effective at doing this. During the course of the day, a single bee may visit 5000 flowers in one day. That is a big ol number. And there are millions of bees doing this every day! You can see why bees are such a vital part of the earth’s natural ecosystem.

Bee pollinating on a flower blossom

If in some future day the bees go extinct, we are going to have more problems than any pandemic will cause. Not to mention the shortage of peanut butter and honey sandwiches. It will just be peanut butter! And that ain’t right. We may be able to help pollinate the plants that we use in farming, but what bout the plants that are in nature. If a plant can’t reproduce, eventually it will go extinct. It may still hold on with the other bugs that can carry the pollen from plant to plant, but it will struggle. There is no if, and, or buts about it. We need our friend the bee.

Our ecosystem will sustain massive injury by the bee’s extinction. Might as well start trying to figure out how to convert water into food, because that is what we are going to have to do to survive. That is how serious the loss of the bee would be. There is also a another important factor worth mentioning on the importance of the bee. The economy, it is estimated that the amount of revenue bees bring in is around 20-30 billion a year due to what they do. We could have a major deficit from the loss of our bees.

All in all, we need our bees. We need to make sure that they are takin care of. Unless we want to go out and make the pollination magic happen ourselves, we have some changing to do. The world can be benefited from our tender care, or it can be destroyed by our neglect.

Author: Nathan Harley

Brigham Young University Idaho

Works Cited

  • https://wonderopolis.org/wonder/how-many-flowers-can-a-bee-pollinate#:~:text=A%20bee%20may%20visit%20up%20to%205%2C000%20flowers%20a%20day.
  • https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2014/06/20/fact-sheet-economic-challenge-posed-declining-pollinator-populations
  • https://wonderopolis.org/wonder/how-many-flowers-can-a-bee-pollinate

Student Scholarships

Every year Thrive Pest Control hosts an essay contest and the reward is a 1-year scholarship at a 4-year university in the United States. This blog post is one of those scholarships.