Bees in our Biosphere

Bees are arguably the most important animal in the biosphere, being responsible for 80% of pollination worldwide. Without bees to pollinate plants and trees there would be an atrocious down fall of the world as we know it. Plant and tree species would quickly start dying off, without pollination their reproduction cannot take place. If this was a gradual extinction then the plants and trees might have a chance of evolution or some way to find new pollinators, bit if this extinction were to happen then it would be very sudden and with the massive timescale of evolution there is no hope

Figure 1: Fruits that require pollination from honey bees.
http://southernmusings.weebly.com/3/post/2013/01/bees-
food-chain.html

of that happening. Plants have a shorter life span so these would start to disappear first as they die without reproducing. This would make way for more wind pollinated plants like grasses to dominate the areas where shrubs and flowers used to grow. It would be most notable for us by the lack of flowers. All flowers have evolved to entice in animals in, with their bright large petals and nice smells, and help them stand out to their pollinator (most cases bees). This means plants that are not pollinated by bees are mostly ones with no proper flower, and will be abundant if bees went extinct. Trees would have a mere gradual decline. Because trees live for hundreds of years they will be around for a lot longer if bees went extinct. They couldn't be able to reproduce so there would never be small ones again but the big ones could last a long time. Without pollination fruit trees and nut trees couldn't produce their produce as the fertilized flower is the part of the tree that turns into the fruit, this would mean goodbye to almost all fruits, berries, nuts and a lot of vegetables. Although these plants and trees can often be pollinated by solitary bees also their main pollinator is the honey bee. It’s not all bad for plants however as new niches will be opened up for evolution and expansion of other plants like grasses or other windblown pollinators.

Figure 2: Estimated value of agricultural
crops that require pollination.
 Source:http://beeinformed.org/2013/04/6964/
  

Animals would take a big hit from the extinction of bees too. Although not many animals feed on them and they are not the main part of any animals diet they will still have a massive effect on the eating of thousands of animals. This is through not pollinating trees and plants. With the decrease and extinction of so many bee pollinated plants and trees many herbivores will lose their main sources of food. Fruit trees in rain forests provide food for many animals and animals like bears rely heavily on berries for food. Some animals that are affected worse than others might start affecting animals further up their food chain, for example a species that only ate fruit pollinated by bees would see their numbers plummet and if this animal was the main prey for a carnivore it will then affect the carnivores too. This will create a rippling effect up the food chain. These plants dying off will therefore affect animals across the world high and low in the food chain.

Through this we see that bees play a massive part in the biosphere and its web. With the extinction of bees would come an unraveling of many different parts of the biosphere through extinctions and decline of plants to the repercussions faced by the animals from that, one of the keystones to the biosphere is the declining honey bee.