There are many species of bees, and there are other pollinating insects too.
European honeybees have been domesticated and encouraged for a long time, and in Europe many fruit trees depended on them to a great extent.
But there were NO honeybees in the Western Hemisphere until the Europeans started colonizing it and and brought honeybees with them.
The people living in the Americas got along just fine without honeybees before that. True, they did not have apple trees or orange trees. But they grew corn and squash and beans and quite a lot of other edible plants.
It is true that agriculture in much of the world has become dependent on honeybees for pollination, and if the European honeybees were to die out, production would fall dramatically. For a while anyway.
The population of European honeybees in the world has already fallen drastically, as they have been dying off from a variety of diseases.
Fortunately or unfortunately, the solution to this problem has been scaring us for a long time. African honeybees, though they are the same species, are another "race" of bees, not domesticated and more defensive of their hives. For this reason they have not been used as much for pollination or honey production. But scientists in Brazil were working on strengthening their honeybee stock by interbreeding with African bees, and some escaped; so that hybrid African/European bees have been working their way north and are already in the US. Unfortunately, the very humans who bewail the deaths of European bees, are unwilling to have their European bees mix with African bees. Sound familiar?
Anyway, Mother Nature is going to take care of the honeybee die-off problem whether Humanity likes it or not. We will have pollinators and we will have honey. We will just have to have a little more respect for the bees.
nothing would grow. Plants need the pollen from other plants in order to grow new seeds. If there were no bees to spread pollen from one plant to another the plants couldn't produce seeds. Sure wind plays a small role but not enough to maintain plant populations.
If food was never pollinated, would you still be able to eat it?
