On Sun, 26 Apr 2015 09:46:12 +0100, Jeff Layman
wrote:

On 24/04/15 21:26, Hypatia Nachshon wrote:
It's not really OT, since the dire predicament of the pollinators
that give us our "daily bread" is of concern to home gardeners as
well as to consumers of commercially-produced food, organic or
otherwise.

The "pollinator" which gives us our "daily bread" is the wind. No bees
or other insects are involved. All cereal crops AFAIK are wind
pollinated, so our staple foods are not affected by the bee population.

What we would tend to lose - at least in the short term - is fruit
(including nuts), and vegetable fruits such as tomatoes, peppers,
aubergines, legumes, etc. The main problem would be the loss of soya,
not only because it is used in many forms in oriental cuisine, but
because it is a major source of animal feed. We would also need to find
substitutes for foodstuffs such as oilseed rape. As gardeners, we would
lose a lot of our home-grown crops, too.

But it would /probably/ only be a short term loss as other pollinators
such as hoverflies would move in to take the place of bees.

That all being said, I like watching bees go about their work, and would
really miss them if they disappeared.


We have been missing obvious honeybees in my area (northern NJ) for a
few years now. Other bees have taken over pollination duties. I
photograph them each season.

In fact, we just came back from a trip to SoCal and I was intrigued by
seeing all the honeybees again. We had not seen them in ages and ages
in our neck of the woods.

Boron