If everyone stopped eating honey and commercial beekeeping ceased to exist, how much would this impact crop pollination? How much would wild bees pick up the slack?
If everyone stopped eating honey and commercial beekeeping ceased to exist, how much would this impact crop pollination? How much would wild bees pick up the slack?
Beekeepers in the U.S. earn about half their revenue from pollination services so even if demand for honey were reduced, commercial crop pollination would not cease (though it would probably get more expensive). I discuss ways to reduce demand for managed honey bee pollination here, including self-fertile varieties of pollinator-dependent crops, mechanical pollination, and local wild pollination.