How Bees Power Forests, Food, and Our Future

 


For millennia, bees have been a boon to humanity. They provide wax, royal jelly, and propolis, not to mention golden liquid honey that graces many tables around the world and is valued for its nutritional benefits.

Bees also play a vital role in keeping people and the planet healthy. Their products and even venom have been used in traditional medicine and can be used to treat ailments.

They are, however, best known as pollinators. Along with butterflies, birds, and bats, they are responsible for pollinating over 75% of crops globally, including fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds.

Understandably, pollinators reflect the health of an ecosystem, serving as a kind of warning system. When they are abundant and diverse, nature is thriving.

Yet some of the world’s 20,000 bee species are under threat, and roughly 40% of all invertebrate pollinator species, particularly bees and butterflies, face extinction, driven by habitat loss, pesticide use, climate change, disease, invasive species, and pollution.

Intensive agriculture and monoculture crops reduce the diversity of food sources for pollinators, while chemical use compromises their health and survival.

This year, the theme of World Bee Day, on 20 May, is ‘Bee inspired by nature to nourish us all.’ It’s an opportunity to reflect on all that bees offer us – as pollinators, providers of food and medicine, and partners in sustainable development.

Protecting bees goes directly to supporting livelihoods. Without pollination, agrifood systems unravel. Without agrifood systems, rural economies falter, nutrition declines, and progress on the SDGs stalls.

Around the world, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) is taking action through a wide range of programmes to protect bees and expand apiculture. They can play a crucial role in sustainable and equitable agrifood systems, which are essential for ensuring global food security.

For example, in southern Africa, the Miombo-Mopane woodlands are under pressure from deforestation and land degradation, threatening ecosystems that support over 150 million people. Through the Impact Program on Dryland Sustainable Landscapes, co-funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), FAO is promoting sustainable beekeeping in Tanzania and five other Miombo-Mopane countries as a nature-based solution (NbS) to reverse these negative trends, restore ecosystems, and support livelihoods.

This helps to preserve forest and woodlands in each country through restoration and rehabilitation-oriented activities, fosters sustainable beekeeping practices and value chains, and builds the capacities of producer organizations. It also empowers producers and their communities to become stewards of these rich, biologically diverse woodlands, while sharing solutions and lessons learned across the region.

Tanzania aims to double its honey and beeswax production by 2031, leveraging beekeeping to meet national conservation and economic goals – and helping promote healthy bees in the process.

Across Africa and elsewhere, the FAO-hosted Forest and Farm Facility is working with small producers to scale up sustainable apiculture to improve livelihoods. In northeastern Liberia, for example, honey production is transforming the lives of women who are being supported with essential equipment and training in beekeeping techniques and in how to market their products, unlocking greater income and opportunities for their children. By collaborating with other beekeepers, the women can access new markets. The bees themselves play a vital role in helping restore natural vegetation in degraded areas, and beekeepers, in turn, are dedicated to preserving forests for healthy bee populations.

FAO is also working with communities around the world to protect pollinators from pesticides, address antimicrobial resistance in bees, and help beekeepers identify and control honeybee diseases.

Meanwhile, there are small actions that all of us can take to help secure the future of these small but mighty insects, such as planting bee-friendly flowers, buying honey and bee products locally, planting hedgerows, avoiding harmful chemicals and pesticides, and making organic, sustainable food choices.

As if bees weren’t already a source of awe and inspiration, consider how they could thrive through cooperation and collective effort – a lesson for us all.