Eli5 I just saw a meme that said bees are necessary for our existence. How does one species affect all human beings?
In: 5
Consider where you got the information: A meme.
You’ll see many comments saying “Bee’s pollinate crops”. This may be true for some niche crops, NOT “35% or more”.Most crops are self pollinating or wind pollinated.
Top 10 crops in the world:
1. Sugarcane – wind pollinated
2. Maize – self pollinated
3. Rice – self pollinated
4. Wheat – self pollinated
5. Oil palm fruit – actually pollinated by a weevil known as Elaeidobius kamerunicus
6. Potatoes – self pollinated
7. Soya Beans – self pollinated
8. Cassava – Wild stuff is pollinated by insects (not only bees) , wind, and rain, agriculturally raised varieties are manually pollinated by farmers (sticky stamen, easy to pollinate)
9. Sugar Beets – Wind Pollinated
10. Tomatoes – Self Pollinating
Literally none of the top 10 crops rely on bees, and only 1 somewhat uses them, and it uses tons of other insects too and also the wind.
Bee’s are cool and all, and pollinate a lot of things, but crops are not them. If we relied on bees to pollinate crops we wouldn’t be able to farm stuff in large quantities.
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