Bees are the Keys to Global Harmonies

I have always loved Bees. friends Bees across the planet are disappearing but before we talk about this – I invite you to check out this cute story about Bees …

The Earth is herself an organism made up of multiple self regulating systems – much like the human body. Our bodies maintain things like temperature and heart rate within a specific and relatively narrow range through buffering mechanisms. These buffering mechanisms create homeostasis or balance in our bodies. If our body temperature or heart rate gets outside that range – very quickly – the wheels fall off and our bodies are unable to sustain life. We can go into a variety of panic or crisis states. Theses states are commonly called illness. The same phenomenon can be observed in any dynamic system such as the weather. I like to think of the weather as the Earth’s emotions because our emotions can be experienced much like the weather – calm one minute, raging the next. What does any of this have to do with Bees? Great question …

Eco-systems are dynamic complex systems like the human body, the Great Barrier Reef and the Earth as a whole organism all have feedback mechanism that enable, create and keep balance going. The creation of homeostasis or balance enables the system to function cohesively as a whole being. Balance is maintained through feedback mechanisms. Human emotions are one of the signalling systems that alert our conscious mind to a change in homeostasis or threat to homeostasis. Pain is another feedback mechanism for the body.

Bees too are a feedback mechanism. In fact, they are one of the fundamental feedback mechanisms for the eco-system that makes up the natural world or the Earth as an organism and if Bees were to say disappear – the proverbial wheels would, fall off much of the natural world but also much of the food production we all need to live.

Friends, our Bees globally are in trouble. Big Trouble as it happens. A global phenomenon involving Bees, everywhere except at that time in Australia, began to appear in and around 2006. Bee Hives were being wiped out on a massive and global scale for no obvious reason. They just disappeared over night. No explanation was instantly found. They were there one day, gone the next. Poooooff! This was noticed – I understand, being the self interested beings we are, due to a decline in food production revenue and not as a result of Bees dying or disappearing. In many cases no bodies were recovered. Bees were imported from Australia to re-establish hives but in a short amount of time, these Bees too also died. China was no stranger to the disappearing Bees having lost their Bees permanently in the 1980s. Bees have never returned to parts of China. The Chinese Government formally directed farmers to hand pollinate their crops!

After this pattern went on for some time, Scientists were rounded up, put on the case and asked to weigh in. The Phenomenon received a name. It is called CCD or Colony Collapse Disorder. A forensic investigation was mounted on a large scale by several groups of Scientists around the globe. Bee autopsies were conducted on those Bee bodies that were able to be found. It was discovered that the Bees were suffering from multiple maladies including malnutrition, fungal, viral, bacterial and parasitic infestation in addition to failing immune systems similar to auto-immune conditions found in human bodies and neurological disorders similar to Parkinson’s disease. Interesting. Not for the Bee!

So the Bees, before their deaths, were starving, sick, exhausted and their navigational and communication systems were malfunctioning. Not good.

Bees are essential to food production but also to the maintenance of the diversity of the Natural World. They are a vital mechanism of feedback and unable to be replaced. If they are sick and dying, just like the canary in the cage down the mineshaft – it is a signal there is something very wrong. Frogs are another example of a vital feedback loop in eco-system that makes up the Earth. Frogs manage the insect numbers which is not such an obvious need outside Australia maybe but their health is also an indication of the quality of water bodies because Frogs need bodies of water to reproduce.

So, if there is trouble with the Bees or the Frogs, there is Big Trouble for us. If one of the major feedback mechanisms for the natural world is threatened – and it is, the Bees are dying – the homeostasis that sustains the health of Plant Kingdom is unable to be secured. It is the equivalent of a high temperature or dangerously high heart rate. Death is imminent or severe departure from Health.

Here is a pretty good clip summarizing the Plight of the Bees. WA researchers are passionate about the plight of the Bees. Here is a link to an excerpt from More than Honey, a doco about the plight of the honey bee and the effects it will have not only for us human beings but also the entire planet’s ecology. Interestingly I have had some trouble ensuring the sound is working on this clip … it’s a little mysteriously these tech problems. Seems to be interfering with communicating …