Why are bees very important to human life? By Tyrone Joseph Zammit.

Sessa-Hawkins, (2015) Honeybees have been existing since 9,000

years ago. Humans have been taking care of honeybees since the
seventh millennium before Christ. Honeybees appear in cave
paintings depicting honeycombs, swarms of bees and honey
collecting.

Cramp, D. (2010, pp.273-289) and MediLexicon International. (n.d.)

Honeybees are good at pollinating crops. Honeybees produce royal
jelly, beeswax, propolis and silk. Honeybees have hairy bodies that
entices their body by electrostatic charge. Pollination hives are at
their best when they are stimulated to collect pollen, when they have
a lot of unsealed broods. Honeybees collect pollen in their pollen
baskets. The pollen is a sticky material which is needed to be sticky
for pollination. The honeybees use their front “legs” to clean their
hairy bodies and to remove all the pollen gathered by the honeybees.
Only the worker has venom, the Queen and the Drone don’t have
venom to use for self-defense or protect their hive. Bees wax is very
easy to process while pollen, propolis and silk are not very easy to
process. Propolis is the only way that the honeybees sanitize their
hives. Honeybee silk is very tough to producing it. Honeybees
produce royal jelly, propolis, silk and honey. Honeybees are used to
pollinate our plant foods and fruits. Bees are a crucial component of
the biodiversity that sustains us. The honeybees provide a high-
quality food such as honey, pollen, nectar and other products like
beeswax, honeybee venom and propolis. FAO (2023) A total of thirty
five percent of the world’s total crop production is pollinated by
honeybees. About three fourths of the world's crops producing seeds
and fruits for human consumption depend on honeybees. Miller-
Struttmann, N. (2016) Honeybees rely on the plants when they visit
the plant for their nutritional needs. Adults collect pollen in their
pollen baskets which they use to feed their brood and nectar for their
own energetic requirements. In turn the honeybees act as pollen
vectors, transporting pollen as they fly from one flower to the next.

Baxter, A. (2015) Losses of honeybees will be a big problem which

will lead to malnutrition for millions around the world. Plants and
crops rely on honeybees because they play a major role in
pollination. If the honeybees decrease in population the world is in a
very big risk of losing all the plants which need honeybee pollination.
If honeybees are decreased people start to lose a lot of vitamin A
which will lead in vitamin A deficiencies which can lead to blindness
and increase the risk of death rates for some diseases including
malaria. Bosch, J., W.P. Kemp, and G.E. Trostle. (2006) Honeybees
perform a vital ecosystem function as the dominant insect pollinators
in both agricultural and natural ecosystem. Managed honeybees
pollinate crops such as pistachios, fruits blueberry, forage, and fiber.
Bee pollination is estimated to be $27 billion to the U.S. economy
and $210 billion worldwide. Western honeybees are the most widely
used managed pollinators. Other honeybees have improved crop
quality and yield. Not all bees produce honey, but it is one of the
main reasons people value the honey. Honey is a natural sweetener
with many potential health qualities. Honey is a traditional medicine.
People use honey when treating a wide variety of conditions. Honey
can treat eye diseases, bronchial asthma, throat infections, and
others. Other bee products include propolis, bee pollen, royal jelly,
beeswax. Beeswax is another important substance which honeybees
produce that is used in waterproofing and fuel.

Duffy, C., Sorolla, A., Wang, E., Golden, E., Woodward, E., Davern, K.,
Ho, D., Johnstone, E., Pfleger, K., Redfern, A., Iyer, K. S., Baer, B., and
Blancafort, P. (2020) Honeybee venom could kill cancer cells.
Honeybee venom and melittin can reduce breast cancer viability.
(Bava et al., 2023) Honeybees produce honeybee venom. Honeybee
venom is produced in the venom gland. The venom gland is only in
the workers and the queen. It is located inside the abdomen. In the
abdomen there is a cavity connected to the containment sac, where
the venom is stored. One of its uses is for self-defense against other
insects and even against their own species but in a different hive.
Another use is the defend the hive, their queen, and their own
colony. Honeybees can indicate foraging profit over a big area, but
distance must be covered. Honeybees can know where their hives
are by smelling their queen pheromones from kilometers away.
Honeybees from one single area can calculate a large area.
Honeybees can communicate with their nestmates from a distance
and direction of the hive to the location where it is.

If honeybees completely become extinct off the globe, then there

will be huge consequences like the Earth will die.
References

Cramp, D. (2010) A practical manual of beekeeping: How to keep bees and develop your full
potential as an apiarist. Oxford: Spring Hill.
https://library.uniteddiversity.coop/Beekeeping/A_Practical_Manual_of_Beekeeping.pd
f

Home: World bee day 2023: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (no
date) WorldBeeDay. Available at: https://www.fao.org/world-bee-day/en/ (Accessed:
07 December 2023).

Baxter, A. (2015) Loss of honeybees and other pollinators could mean malnutrition for
millions around the world, PBS. Available at:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/loss-honey-bees-pollinators-mean-malnutrition-
millions-around-world (Accessed: 07 December 2023).

Miller-Struttmann, N. (2016) The complex causes of worldwide bee declines, Phys.org.

Available at: https://phys.org/news/2016-01-complex-worldwide-bee-declines.html
(Accessed: 07 December 2023).
About bees (no date) ITP. Available at: https://idtools.org/exotic_bee/index.cfm?
pageID=3061 (Accessed: 12 December 2023).

Duffy, C., Sorolla, A., Wang, E., Golden, E., Woodward, E., Davern, K., Ho, D., Johnstone,
E., Pfleger, K., Redfern, A., Iyer, K. S., Baer, B., & Blancafort, P. (2020, September 1).
Honeybee Venom and Melittin suppress growth factor receptor activation in HER2-
enriched and triple-negative breast cancer. Nature News.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41698-020-00129-0

Dancing bees communicate a foraging preference for rural ... - cell press. (n.d.).
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(14)00394-7

MediLexicon International. (n.d.). Raw honey: 7 health benefits and possible risks. Medical
News Today. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/324997#what-is-it

Sessa-Hawkins, M. (2015, November 12). Human relationship with honeybees dates back
9,000 years. PBS. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/humans-relationship-
honeybees-goes-back-neolithic-era

Bava, R. et al. (2023) Therapeutic use of bee venom and potential applications in veterinary
medicine, Veterinary sciences. Available at:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9965945/ (Accessed: 03 January
2024).