Once upon a time on usenet 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.

"Short term" evolutionarily speaking but in fact it would take many hundreds
of years for other insects to fill the niche vacated by bees to any
significant degree. (And then whatever is killing bees would likely kill
them as well, assuming it's man-made and we're still here then.) Where would
these many thousands of hoverflies per square mile find fetid swamps for
their larvae to live in (within flying distance)? We're removing wetlands as
fast as we can without a care for the animals that live in them for some or
all of their lives.

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

More than you think. World-wide famine would be a major distraction.
--
Shaun.

"Humans will have advanced a long, long, way when religious belief has a
cozy little classification in the DSM."
David Melville (in r.a.s.f1)