This week’s blog will leave me feeling slightly guilty, as I’m afraid of this cornerstone species, the Honey bee. There are seven species of honey bees, out of more than 20,000 types of bees. However, there are 44 different subspecies of honey bee, found on every continent.

This is one of the rare cornerstone species that are endangered. Honey bees are so important because one third of what humans eat is pollinated by bees. Therefore, if all honey bees go extinct, there would be mass starvation, and food prices would spike, triggering disaster. The Queen of the hive lays all of the eggs, sealing them in wax, and when the larvae hatch, they eat their way out of the mound.

Bees also have a unique language. Honey bees use a dance language to detail where and in what quantity food/flowers are. One thing that contributes to the falling numbers of the Honey Bee is the large amounts of predators. Birds, mammals, reptiles, and even other insects are known to prey on bees. Another enemy of bees is bears, whom are notorious for smashing hives to get at the honey they hold.

However, the ultimate reason for a species’ endangerment is once again humans. The main killer of the Honey bee is habitat loss. This is a truly shocking statement, as bees are a global species. This means that humans have taken out large amounts of habitat on a global scale.

Honey bees are a critical species to not only us, but the whole earth. Habitat loss has been the undoing of half of the animals on this blog sight, and it might be the undoing of us, too. However, if we start to act, and if we save the honey bees and if we stop deforestation and habitat loss, then we will be all right. But that is a lot of obstacles to overcome.

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