Throughout history, civilization has enjoyed the sweet honey and success of harvest that one specific species provides. Today still, honeybees (apis mellifera) are a necessary, though widely uncelebrated, component in the grinding machine of world agriculture. However, in our world today, divers human spread or influenced diseases (involving irrsponsible use of pesticides); climate change; urban and agricultural expansion and the use of pesticides (among other causes) have all had detrimental effects on the health of honey honeybee colonies globally, and the species is running out of options. Honeybee population, all over the Earth, is in rapid decline. And the human race is to blame. As main pollinators of 60% of plant species on the planet, the loss of the hardworking honeybee would ripple affect ecosystems, economies and human lives irreversibly. It is now imperative to stop this death march of the omnipotent honeybee before it is too late.

CCD has been directly linked to irresponsible pesticide use, as airborn or plant borne chemicals may be brought to the hive by foraging bees, and enter it’s food system. These may cause critical birth defects and/or disorganization within the hive.

In Andrew Matheson and Murray Reid’s Practical Beekeeping in New Zealand (4th edition) it is stated: ‘The law requires any chemicals toxic to bees are not applied to, or allowed to drift onto, any plant attractive to bees, either while the plant is flowering or if it will come into flower while the chemical is still toxic to bees.” However, like divers other little known and seemingly insignificant laws, it is often not upheld, and even more seldom penalised. This also does not account for the fact that blowing pollen, seeds and pesticide molecules can be blown scores of kilometers in unprecedented winds or be washed into waterways and enter the water cycle in storms. One possible solution to the pesticide problem that I have formulated is altogether banning of pesticides. I will, on the 1st of May, write a persuasive letter, posing my views and arguments, to the New Zealand Prime Minister.