KIWIFRUIT, onions, celery, watermelon, tangerine, pawpaw, beetroot, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, canola, turnip, and all sorts of beans, peas and nuts.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
If your mouth is watering, or you're imagining some sort of insane recipe or diet, stop right there.
The foods listed above make up just a tiny fraction of the crops pollinated by bees. The total collection of bee-reliant crops comes to about a third of the world's human diet.
The point of the list itself is not to congratulate the bees - although it's not a bad idea - but to stress how very lost we would be if they weren't around to activate our fruits and vegetables.
Bees of the world are in a precarious and dire position, faced with an intimidating list of threats. A disorder called colony collapse has bees packing up and leaving their hives, never to be seen again - dead or alive.
Nobody knows quite what causes it, but there have been a few educated guesses. One of the main threats is the varroa destructor mite, a parasite that clamps itself on to the body of bees and sucks out their hemolymph (the blood equivalent of insects).
John Banfield, a Newcastle queen bee breeder, has grave concerns for the future of bees.
"The consequences would be catastrophic," he said. "If the honey bee disappears altogether, life on earth is doomed."
Albert Einstein prophesied that, were bees to become extinct, humans would follow within four years.
"Everything that goes into your mouth directly or indirectly is due to European honey bees," Banfield says.
"There'd be no fruit, no food for cattle or chickens, no vegetables. The future's pretty bleak without the European honey bee."
But the varroa mite isn't the only thing destroying the honey bee.
"A lot of it is to do with greed," says Banfield. "People, especially in the US, push the bees very, very hard. They don't give them time to recover before they take them to another place and use a lot of GM crops and pesticides."
By sheer luck (and remoteness), Australia is yet to report the presence of the varroa destructor.
But, Banfield says, considering the parasite has made its way to New Zealand and New Guinea, it's only a matter of time before Australia sees the mite as well.
Kelly-Ann Lees, founder of Newcastle beekeeping project Urban Hum, installs beehives in backyards and on verandahs and shed roofs to help bring bees back to the city.
Lees has installed nearly 50 hives within a 20-kilometre radius of Newcastle's city centre.
"Urban beekeeping is a good way to keep genetic diversity alive outside of big commercial settings," she says.
"Having them in your backyard also improves your own produce and that of the local area."
With rather a long waiting list for her hives, Lees is looking for commercial interest from cafes, restaurants and other Newcastle businesses interested in hosting hives or getting involved.
