Insects “hold the food chain together” (Addison 2015). Without them, the planet’s food supply would be much more limited. Because many insects are pollinators (see Chapter 1, Box 1.5), crops would suffer if they didn’t exist. We would have very little fresh fruit and vegetables to eat, and products like silk and honey would disappear.
The last two decades have seen a large decline in populations of bees and other pollinators (Carrington 2018; Vanderplanck et al. 2019).
Young people and others could think about becoming beekeepers, possibly starting in their own gardens on rooftops and balconies. To find out more about taking care of bees and marketing honey, have a look at these videos.
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In the United States, an online tool called Beescape allows users to share information about different flowering plants, the amount of toxins from applied insecticides, and where nesting habitat for wild bees can be found in the landscape near selected locations.
