Honeybees? Extinction of everything?

Question

I've never believed in the whole Mayan calendar ending in 2012 and the world as well theory, but then I realized the honeybees started to dissappear unexplainably in rapid numbers about 2 years ago (Colony Collapse Disorder). And then I did some research and found that according to Albert Einstein, apparently either about four years after the bees started to dissappear so would all humanity and the earth itself follow, or once all the bees die out four years later we'd all perish-- which I think would be about 2012.

And the whole thing that if they don't pollinate plants, plants die out, and so on.

I'm aware that honeybees have had dissappearences before, in the past, but then made a comeback, but who knows.

I've read that no one knows the true reason why they are dissappearing, there are many theories floating around but none can be truely confirmed.

What are your thoughts on this?

Answer 1

Sounds like a bunch of bee p**p to me.

The bees that you hear about are European honeybees that are not native to the Americas. They are valuable as pollenators of commercial crops but there are literally THOUSANDS of other kinds of bees that live in North America. They pollinate many of the wild flowers and other plants. Lots of crops (grasses which include wheat oats barley rice corn) and trees are wind pollinated. That is, the pollin is very light and drifts with the breezes and pollinates the grasses.)

Even if all the European honeybees were to die off it would not be the end of the world. A lot of people might starve but the world would still be here.

The whole Mayan calendar thing is hocus- pocus too.

Answer 2

I'm not concerned about anything anymore.  Obama will change the bees for us.

Answer 3

I think it's important not to become paranoid and superstitious.  Here are some points that refute the argument that the world might end around 2012:

1. You can still buy plenty of honey at the supermarket, so obviously bees haven't disappeared.  It's true that some of them have gone away for unknown reasons, but it's not at a crisis level yet.  As you said, they can still make a comeback.

2. Even without bees, there are plenty of other insects like butterflies, wasps, and beetles to pollinate flowers, so plants won't die as quickly as you might think.  Perennial plants don't even need pollination to survive.

3. I'm not sure where your Einstein bit comes from, but he was a physicist, not a biologist.  Neither his statement nor your source of information is apparently reliable.  4 years is a very very tight time frame for everything to perish.

Answer 4

I watched a vid. in 10th grade a few years about this, and for a while I wondered...But i did some research on the mayans and apparently they were vicious blood-worshipers who made mass human sacrifices very very frequently.  Judging by the harshness of their society maybe they were a little too quick to predict doomsday.  More to the point of your question;  I don't think that extinction of honeybees in a certain region would cause a mass ecosystem collapse.  There are always more varieties of bee's and other pollinating organisms.  I'd personally bet more on some type of virus or micro-organism as the ruiner of humanity :(  doubt it'll come soon though:)

Answer 5

It's pretty darn scary if you contemplate on it for long.