Food threatened

Dear Editor,

Without pollination, fresh products like lettuce, tomatoes, cherries, apples, plums, onions, watermelons, broccoli and celery would not exist. Our diet would lack important vitamins and nutrients.

Beekeepers are worried. American honeybees are vanishing. Bryan Walsh has written a well-researched article on this subject in the Aug. 1, 2013, Time magazine.

The Deseret News (Sunday edition) carried a story under the heading "The Lesson of the Bees" Aug. 10, 2014. It describes the important part that honeybees play in our lives.

Honeybees have a short lifespan of less than four months. Worker bees visit millions of flowering plants searching for nectar. They carry pollen on their body parts and pollenate plant life.

Total mileage during their travels adds up to two times the earth's complete circumference.

Each workerbee contributes only 1/12th teaspoon of honey during its lifetime to the hive. A typical beehive has 20,000 to 60,000 bees. They are able to store a good amount of honey for their colony.

According to Bryan Walsh of Time Magazine, researchers suspect that pesticides may be killing our bees. The varroa mite is also being studied. (It is a serious threat to bees.) A bacterial infection is very deadly as well for bees.

Fewer baby bees are being reproduced. Queen bees lay eggs and drones fertilize them. This is another part of the problem.

Grains such as corn, rice and wheat are self-pollinating. Still, we will have less food.

Helen Ruth Arnold,

Trenton, Nebraska