Here is an article by our LETS Newsletter Editor and Beekeeper Chris Slade from your last newsletter…
Albert Einstein said…..
“If the bees disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would have only 4 years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man”
Which Albert Einstein was that? It certainly wasn’t the famous theoretical physicist who devised his theory of relativity through what he described as a ‘thought experiment’. He died in 1955 but the apocryphal saying first was mentioned in January 1994 when the Union Nationale d’Apiculture Francais (French Bee Farmers) were staging a protest at Brussels.
Bee that as it may, let’s follow the great Albert’s example and devise a thought experiment. Imagine, if you will, a world where there are no honeybees or other Apis species. What shall we call it? How about ‘America’?
a) Could pollination happen in America if there were no bees? b) Would the twin continents be devoid of plants, animals and man? c) How else would pollination happen? d) What plants could survive without bees aiding their sex lives? e) What animals would there be and, of course: f) How could man exist in these circumstances?
Answers: a) Yes; b) no; c) humming birds, butterflies, wind, other insects, self-pollination, tuberous reproduction; d) potatoes, maize, tobacco, tomatoes, Brazil nuts, vines, conifer forests, prairie grasslands, to name but a few e) buffalo by the million, sloth, cougar, bear of all sorts, fish, birds of all sorts, wolves, monkeys, caribou and countless others f) Eskimos even today live largely in a bee-free environment and always have done. Other humans have done so too, spreading south after having crossed the land/ice bridge from Siberia thousands of years ago. It is true that, in the recent (last 500 years) past, migrants have put pressure on the environment, probably more so in the most recent 10% of that time than the remainder added together through use of agri-chemicals and other pollutants, but even so it is self evident that mankind can exist there, possibly with the assistance of the honeybees that they introduced. Now, whether civilisation will ever evolve there is an entirely different question.
So the alleged Einstein statement is completely ridiculous and poppycock!
By Chris Slade
