• Tattorack@lemmy.world
    418·
    2 months ago

    It’s a rather large misconception that bees are somehow required for pollinisation. That’s completely underestimating the value of butterflies, and how much they contribute to pollinisation. Even if all bees were to disappear overnight, the impact will hardly be Earth shattering. The most drastic thing that’ll happen is Humans losing an industry.

    Without bees there will be a minor blank spot in a niche that already has other insects doing the same.

    But that’s assuming that bees are actually dying. There are thousands of species of bee in the world, or even on just a single continent, and they’re doing… Fine… Ish. About as fine as any other creature on Earth being effected by Humans and climate change. The ones everyone is so concerned about is specifically the honey bee.

    Honey bees are not even the best pollinators. No, the real concern with the dying of honey bees is that the honey industry will lose money. So honey bees dying is a corporate fear!

    • RoquetteQueen@sh.itjust.works
      8·
      2 months ago

      There are different kinds of pollinators. Some bees are what is called buzz pollinators, and they are the best pollinators for a whole bunch of different plants. These bees are struggling, partially because we have too many honey bees who are out-competing them.

      • Tattorack@lemmy.world
        2·
        2 months ago

        Yeah, but when people get dramatic about bees dying they’re almost exclusively talking about the honey bee. A lot of people don’t understand there are other kinds of bee.

        When I look up metrics for bee populations dying I’ve not found anything that talks about bees outside of the honey making industry.

      • Tattorack@lemmy.world
        1·
        2 months ago

        Yeah, there’s that too. Honey bees are native here in Europe, but they’re foreign to America. America has their own bee populations, but they don’t produce honey. Or at least, none of the native species are the kind of bee the industry used for honey production.

    • LustyArgonian@lemmy.worldEnglish
      41·
      2 months ago

      The butterflies are indeed dying though.

      https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/congress-urged-to-spend-100-million-to-save-monarch-butterflies-2024-05-13/

      The latest annual count for the eastern monarch butterfly population was the second-lowest ever recorded. The population declined by nearly 60% from the previous year and is only 1/6 of the size needed to be out of the danger zone of migratory collapse. The western population of monarchs, which famously winters on the California coast each year, remains at just 5% of what it once was