User:GVnayR/Ecological importance of bees

Life has existed for hundreds of millions of years before honey bees evolved and will continue to thrive long after the bees go extinct. A world without bees is not necessarily a world that is completely devoid of life. Much of human existence is presently dependent on honey bees because they are currently the main pollinators. However, penguins and fish don't need bees to sustain their diet. The human race is not likely to become extinct as a result of the bees becoming extinct. Instead, there would be massive deaths until the humans can evolve to eat foods that bees do not pollinate. Food production would decline as a result of the bees' extinction but would never disappear entirely. 70% of American crops can still be grown without the intervention of bees. Grass would still be growing in a world without bees; desertification would not occur after the bees become extinct.

There are plenty of food sources that don't need bees to pollinate. If the bees became extinct, nature would simply make more room for the expansion of plants that get pollinated through other methods. Wheat, barley, rye, rice, bamboo and corn are wind-pollinated food sources that could survive the extinction of the bees. Butterflies are also one of the major pollinators in addition to birds. Pears are one fruit that can be pollinated by hand after the bees go extinct. This practice is used in southern Sichuan where the bee population went extinct due to excessive use of pesticides. This labor-intensive hand pollinating process would raise the price of food.

Life on Earth would survive without bees, but it would be a much different Earth. Most plants depend on insects like bees to pollinate them. Unless some other animal inserted themselves into that biological niche, most of our plants would disappear along with the bees. One source of photosynthesis that is independent of insects is in our water supply. Algae has a tremendous influence on the world's oxygen production, so oxygen would not disappear. Because many trees and flowering plants depend on bees for their reproductive cycle, they would be highly stressed. Plants have been pollinated by a wide variety of animals in North America way before the honey bee were imported from Europe by North America's European ancestors. An increase of flies, beetles, thrips, butterflies, and moths would fill the void as pollinators in a world where bees were either extinct or never existed at all.