Why We Should Care About Bees

Middle school students in "The Birds and the Bees: the Purpose and Plight of Our Pollinators" course submitted OpEd pieces to the Daily Camera. Fiona McCormack’s ‘28 piece was published! Chelsea Zaniboni, Watershed educator, noted that, "Fiona's work helps share with the broader community the vital issues we learned about as a class."

By DAILY CAMERA GUEST OPINION | openforum@dailycamera.com | Boulder Daily Camera

PUBLISHED: November 12, 2021 at 12:45 p.m. | UPDATED: November 12, 2021 at 12:45 p.m.

Guest Opinion: Fiona McCormack: Why we should care about bees

By Fiona McCormack

Pollinators are an important part of the ecosystem and for our survival, but bees have been losing their habitats which is causing the bees’ ability to pollinate effectively to falter. There are a couple of different reasons why bees are losing their habitats. Most of the reasons that habitats are dying are because of things that humans are doing.

The first main threat to pollinator environments is fragmentation. Fragmentation is when a habitat is broken into smaller pieces. This can be caused by events like fires, volcanic eruptions, and floods, but is most commonly caused by human activity such as road construction, pipelines, logging, and mining. The reason that fragmentation is even affecting pollinators is because habitat fragmentation is diminishing pollinator habitats. When pollinators’ habitats are broken into smaller pieces it may mean that pollinators (like bees) are unable to collect all of the resources they need to not only pollinate but to survive. Meaning that they can’t collect and spread pollen. This is an important issue because if bees can’t pollinate we will lose one-third of the food that we eat, one-half of the raw materials we use, food for wildlife, and some of the major ingredients for many medicines. Pollinators are a vital part of the ecosystem and fragmentation is one of the many causes of pollination rates depleting. But the good thing is, fragmentation is one of the easier threats to solve. We can stop fragmentation by not building, mining, or logging in pollinator habitats.

The next big threat to bees is habitat degradation. Habitat degradation is when a habitat’s quality is reduced. This is caused by destruction of habitats for agricultural purposes, invasive species coming to pollinator habitats, diminished resources (like mining, some forms of fishing, logging, etc.), and even smaller things like walking over pollinator habitats. Although habitat degradation affects many different pollinators, it influences ground-nesting bees the most. This is because when we destroy the ground that they may be living under with roads and buildings we are taking yet another habitat that may be essential to a species’ survival. Meaning that when we destroy pollinator habitats with concrete and other invasive substances such as that, we may be causing yet another species to go extinct. Habitat degradation is a huge issue that is depleting the world of some of its most important pollinators.

Both fragmentation and degradation are big parts of habitat loss. Habitat loss is when things like human agriculture, resource extraction, and urban and suburban advancements destroy animal habitats. This affects pollinators in much bigger ways than some other animals because it depletes them of things they need like flowers, food, water, etc., without which they aren’t able to pollinate. Habitat loss is one of the main causes of the bee population depleting. Habit loss has been increasing dramatically over the last couple of years, which has been making bees die even more rapidly.

Bees are a VERY important part of the habitat and are important to our survival. Without bees we would lose many important resources, and our diets would become very lacking in terms of variety. There are many easy things to do to help bees, such as not destroying bees’ habitats with concrete and other similar materials, and making sure that you leave enough resources for the bees to survive and pollinate. On top of not destroying pollinator habits, we can also help to build more. The easiest way to do this is by planting flowers in your garden. The most effective flowers to plant are milkweed, borage/starflower, dahlias, daisies, dandelions, goldenrods, coneflowers, marigold, snapdragons, sunflowers, and butterfly bushes.

Fiona McCormack was in 6th grade at Watershed School in Boulder when this Guest Opinion piece was published.