Lynda Jan, age 11, of Peterboro, Ontario, Canada, for her question:
What would happen if all the bees were eliminated?
Most of us would like to say goodbye to the last mosquito but nobody wants to eliminate all the bees. Naturally, it would be nice to keep all the pleasant things and remove all the pests from our planet. But such a project would most likely lead to a chain of disasters.
The world of nature is a complicated series of overlapping cycles. The bees depend upon nectar rich flowers, and certain plants depend upon the bees to hand on life to their seeds. The plants depend upon moist soil and the soil gathers its riches with the help of microscopic decay bacteria. These busy bacteria break up the remains of every bug, every fallen leaf into chemicals that plants can use as food. Last year's bees helped to enrich the soil for the following year's plants. So do last year's mosquitoes and all the other fallen bugs and beetles.
Every plant and animal lives a life that overlaps with many others. Every living thing on this planet depends on many other living things and hands on help to a long chain of still others. Each plant and animal needs all the others and each is needed to fill its own special role in a long chain of assistance. If all the bees were eliminated, one link in a long chain would be broken and no one can say how far this loss would reach. The loss of all the song birds or all the butterflies also would cause far reaching upsets throughout the world of nature.
If we lost all the bees, we would expect a few changes close to home. The price of honey would rise to the skies ,for when the present supply was gone, no more would be added. The bees fertilize many flowers and without them the summer gardens of the future would be much duller. There also would be fewer wayside flowers, less clover in the meadows and fewer clumps of spicy sage an the prairies.
The bees also carry pollen among orchard blossoms and many fruit trees depend upon them. Lf we lost all the bees, our harvests of juicy apples would dwindle and many other fruits would be very scarce. Jams and jellies would be rare, expensive treats or off the menu altogether. So would many of our vegetables.
These are the short range disasters that would surely follow the loss of all the bees. Other long range results would reach far and wide. Without wild flowers, many seed eating song birds would starve. The world would lose their music. Many rabbits and other weed eaters would perish and so would the meat eating animals who feed upon them. The chain of disasters would reach on and on and no one can guess where it would end.
Directly or indirectly, every plant and animal is linked to all the others. The total loss of any one of them can cause far reaching havoc. Even the pesky mosquitoes have a special role and if we lost them all the balance of nature would be upset. The young,science of ecology studies nature's complicated systems of give and take and we need to know more about it. At present, no one can trace the loss of the bees to the very end of the tragic story.