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- The rapid decline of honeybees poses a threat to our global food supply.
- As pollinators of about a third of the world’s crops, honeybees are essential to producing crops like fruits, vegetables, and almonds.
- The microbiome company Seed has developed a probiotic that could make bees more resistant to some of the forces that kill them, like disease and pesticides.
- Seed hosted a breakfast in May that gave a devastating glimpse of the foods we’ll miss if too many bees die out.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Honeybee colonies are rapidly dying out, but finding ways to save them is an enormous challenge. In 2017, beekeepers in the US reported losing around 40% of their hives — a trend that has continued in years since.
Though honeybees aren’t yet on the verge of becoming extinct, their speedy decline could have severe implications for humans. As pollinators of about a third of the world’s crops, honeybees are indirectly essential to our diets. Without them, farmers will have trouble producing staple foods like almonds, fruits, and vegetables.
Read more: The honeybee population is collapsing — here’s the awful way that will affect the world
While scientists are still working to determine the exact causes of honeybee death, it likely boils down to a combination of pesticide exposure, disease-carrying parasites, pests, and changes to weather and habitat caused by climate change.
The microbiome company Seed has set out to tackle a few of these threats with a disc-shaped probiotic called BioPatties, which aims to make honeybees more resistant to pesticides and disease. Though not the only bee probiotic on the market, BioPatties has shown early signs of reducing the effects of an neonicotinoid insecticides, which bees prefer to their own food source.
On May 3, Seed partnered with culinary collective Ghetto Gastro to host a breakfast featuring foods that might disappear if honeybees went extinct by 2100.
The event demonstrated just how much we rely on bees for our meals — and gave a devastating glimpse of what will happen if too many bees die out. Take a look.
Seed partnered with Ghetto Gastro, a Bronx-based culinary collective, to present a meal with foods that rely on honeybees.
Aria Bendix/Business Insider
Everything we were served wouldn’t exist in a world without bees.
Aria Bendix/Business Insider
Most of the breakfast was plant-based, since honeybees are key pollinators of fruits and vegetables.
Aria Bendix/Business Insider
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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Source: Business Insider – feedback@businessinsider.com (Aria Bendix)