• Question: What would happen if bees became extinct?

    Asked by anon-177600 to Andrew, Becky, Daniel, Helen, Nicola, Urslaan on 19 Jun 2018.
    • Photo: Daniel Marsh

      Daniel Marsh answered on 19 Jun 2018:

      Great question and I’m a beekeeper! Einstein is often quoted as saying that if the bees died out then humans woud follow 4 years later but it is unlikely that he really said this or that it would happen. Bees, along with other insects, bats and birds, are important for pollinating our crops with one in three mouthfuls of food that you eat pollinated by them.

      If bees died out there would be a lot less food in the world and certain types of food would disappear altogther.

    • Photo: Urslaan Chohan

      Urslaan Chohan answered on 19 Jun 2018:

      Bees are perhaps one of the hardest workers when it comes to pollinating plants! They go from flower to flower, carrying the pollen from one flower to another. Without this, plants which rely upon this would die out. The relationship between the bee and flower is known as a “symbiotic relationship”.

    • Photo: Becky Thomas

      Becky Thomas answered on 20 Jun 2018:

      Great question, and something that a lot of scientists are worried about. First thing is that we’d lose lots of food as bees pollinate lots of crops (things like apples, strawberries, coffee, vanilla and chill peppers). Bees are also indicators of how our environment is doing, if bees went extinct, then it’s probably likely that many other species would not be doing so well. So I really hope that this never happens.

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