Role of Honey Bee in Agriculture

 

ALBERT EINSTEIN ONCE QUOTED AS SAYING, ''IF THE BEE DISAPPEARS FROM THE SURFACE OF THE EARTH, MAN WOULD HAVE NO MORE THAN 4 YEARS TO LIVE.'' It's highly unlikely that Einstein said that.

🐝🐝🐝 The Honey bee - The Farmer's Friend🐝🐝🐝

• The Honeybee plays a key role in the pollination of flowering plants, including crops. 1/3rd of the food we eat depends upon pollination,  including almonds, berries, melons and cucumbers.

• Pollination refers to transfer of anther to stigma in flowering plants for sexual reproduction.

• Bees aid in cross pollination in fruits, vegetables, ornamental, cotton,tobacco, sunflower and many other crops.

• Bee pollination helps in uniform seed set, improvement in quality and increase in crop yield.

• While farmers are facing many problems and challenges of providing food for fast growing population, honey bees also facing problems with habit loss, climate change, toxic pesticides and diseases.

• We cannot live without bees, pollinators like bees and butterflies help in pollination approximately of about 75% and roughly 35% of world's food crops including fruits and vegetables.

• Without bees these crops would cease to exist. Bees play very crucial role to our existence as well, so we must work harder to protect and preserve them.

• According to University of Maryland's annual survey since 2006 stated that bee keepers lost 43.7% of their honey bees from April 2019 to April 2020.

• All bee species aid in pollination.

• Value of Honey bees in pollination is 15-20 times higher than that of honey and wax it produces.

• % increase in yield due to bee pollination

•  Mustard                 - 43%
•  Sunflower              - 32-48%
•  Cotton                   -17-19%
•  Lucerne                 -112%        
•  Onion                    - 93%
•  Apple                    - 44%
•  Cardamon            - 21-37%